Copyright keenesentinel
Four new exhibits open at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center on Saturday, Nov. 15. All are welcome to a 5 p.m. opening party with the artists and curators, featuring live music, free food and a cash bar. Doors open to BMAC members at 4:30 p.m.The new exhibits include a tribute to the late art historian Meyer Schapiro and solo shows featuring Erika Ranee, Elliott Katz and Ray Materson.“Singing in Unison, Part 13: Homage to Meyer Schapiro” was conceived by Phong H. Bui, co-founder and artistic director of The Brooklyn Rail, a prolific curator and leading figure in contemporary American art and culture.Meyer Schapiro (1904-1996) was one of the most important and influential art historians and critics of the 20th century. A professor at Columbia University for nearly six decades, he fundamentally reshaped how art was studied and understood. Through his legendary lectures, books, essays and relationships with many of the leading artists and intellectuals of his time, Schapiro left an imprint on both academic art history and modern art practice.Over the last 10 years of his life, Schapiro and his wife, Dr. Lillian Milgram, took Bui under their wing, adopting the inquisitive young Vietnamese artist and scholar as their surrogate Jewish grandson. When invited by BMAC to curate an exhibition in Brattleboro, Bui proposed to pay homage to his mentor, who summered in southern Vermont for decades beginning in 1933.Occupying three of the museum’s seven galleries, the exhibition includes works by 30 artists connected to Schapiro, including Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Arshile Gorky, Grace Hartigan, Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason, among others. It also features a selection of Schapiro’s own drawings and paintings.Bui will lead an in-person walking tour of the exhibition on Sunday, Nov. 16, at 1 p.m.“Erika Ranee: I Don’t Like to Draw,” curated by BMAC Director of Exhibitions Sarah Freeman, consists of recent abstract paintings made by Ranee from acrylic, shellac, spray paint, ink, graphite, oilstick and found materials.“I build each painting through a form of layering, drawing from the detritus of my daily experiences,” said Ranee. “I take cues from the cacophony of city streets, its sounds and smells, as well as from minutiae of the natural world, and pull it all together in an intuitive visual freestyle.”According to Freeman, each piece is a time capsule, recording the days, weeks, months and years that Ranee worked on it. “Even her use of shellac seems to reference the passage of time,” said Freeman, “as moments are captured and frozen in shiny pools like amber.”Ranee will offer an artmaking workshop at Brattleboro’s River Gallery School on Jan. 17.Vermont-based artist Elliott Katz’s first solo museum exhibition, “The Purpose of Your Trip,” transforms BMAC’s historic Ticket Gallery into a poignant reflection on heritage, migration and self-invention.“Katz traces his Japanese American family’s journey across North America — their migration in the 1920s, internment during World War II and their eventual life in Vermont — and reimagines personal heirlooms and tools as evocative artworks,” said curator DJ Hellerman. “The exhibition bridges past and present, capturing the ambition and imagination needed to build a meaningful life.”The Ticket Gallery itself, originally a train station ticket office, acts as a powerful metaphor, representing the movement and regulation of people, whether by choice or by force. It is an apt setting for works such as the replica of the suitcase that Katz’s great-grandfather carried into the Manzanar internment camp in 1942. Katz transforms the suitcase’s original twill fabric pattern into alternating sections of precious woods and renders his great-grandfather’s detainee number and signature as a gilded emblem.“Ray Materson: Common Threads,” presented in connection with the Brattleboro Festival of Miniatures, consists of seven tiny artworks — none larger than five inches in any direction. Each picture is hand embroidered from thousands of unraveled sock threads, a technique Materson developed when he was imprisoned as a young man. Curated by BMAC Director Danny Lichtenfeld, the exhibition is a testament to the myriad ways in which creative, personal and economic need can foster uncanny ingenuity.“Singing in Unison, Part 13: Homage to Meyer Schapiro” closes Feb. 15, 2026. The other three exhibitions opening Nov. 15 remain on view through March 6, 2026.Founded in 1972, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center presents rotating exhibits of contemporary art, complemented by lectures, artist talks, film screenings and other public programs. BMAC is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is “pay as you wish.” Located in historic Union Station in downtown Brattleboro, at the intersection of Main Street and Routes 119 and 142, the museum is wheelchair accessible. For more information and accessibility requests, visit brattleboromuseum.org, call 802-257-0124, or email office@brattleboromuseum.org.BMAC is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Brattleboro Food Co-op, Brattleboro Savings & Loan, Brattleboro Subaru, C&S Wholesale Grocers, and Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters.
