Associate Professor of Art Scott Reed describes the imagery in his ink drawings as comprising “Worlds within worlds, personalities within personalities, characters all.”

Drawn from the Museum’s collections, this exhibition presents paintings, texts, and objects created to assuage grief, memorialize the dead, and remind viewers of religious beliefs during a period when death was an ever-present part of American life.

Inspired by Buddhism showcases Colby’s strong holdings in Asian art, including works from the Lunder Collection, with objects from Cambodia, China, Tibet, Korea, and Japan.

The currents series provides solo exhibition opportunities for emerging artists with connections to Maine. currents 6presents process- and performance-based works by Gina Siepel, including the artist’s hand-built river workboat based on the traditional bateau and video documentation of her trips along the Kennebec River with a series of “guides”—individuals invited by the artist to share their expertise and personal reflections on the river. The exhibition also features Siepel’s photographic restagings of Winslow Homer’s iconic images of wilderness guides and videos exploring often overlooked historic markers and their surrounding environments. Commissioned by the Colby Museum, the installation by Siepel—a graduate of the Maine College of Art and alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture—reconsiders the artist’s role in society and creates what she describes as “living links” to the past.

The Fall Faculty Exhibition presents an opportunity to view recent work by Colby College faculty members Bevin Engman, Gary Green, Maggie Libby, Harriett Matthews, Abbott Meader, Nancy Meader, Garry Mitchell, and Scott Reed.

On view this summer is a dynamic group of new acquisitions in a wide range of media, including paintings by Bob Thompson, David Salle, Helmut Federle, and Nicole Wittenberg, all gifts from the Alex Katz Foundation; print purchases by Julie Mehretu, Vija Celmins, and Lee Bontecou made possible by Lindsay Leard Coolidge ’78; sculptures by Louise Nevelson and Kiki Smith from the Lunder Collection; and a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois on loan from Barbara and Ted Alfond.

A leading figure of the Aesthetic movement, James McNeill Whistler valued beauty and “art for art’s sake.” Primarily composed of works from the Lunder Collection, this exhibition considers Whistler in the context of other 19th-century artists who similarly embraced Aesthetic ideals.