On Our Summer List: Shows We Can’t Wait to See
By: Caroline Browne, Associate Art Consultant
Summer in New England invites a different way of looking at art. Museums stretch into harbor shipyards, gallery hopping becomes a coastal day trip, and ambitious exhibitions unfold against the season’s slower rhythm. With projects across Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, our team is always mapping a summer route. Here are the shows we are most looking forward to this season.
Installation view, Lucy Raven: Rounds, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2026. Photo by Mel Taing.
Lucy Raven: Rounds at the ICA Watershed, East Boston
Every summer the ICA transforms its raw, 15,000-square-foot Watershed space in the East Boston Shipyard into a single immersive exhibition, and getting there by water shuttle across Boston Harbor is half the pleasure. This year the space belongs to Lucy Raven, whose Rounds includes the U.S. premiere of Hardpan, a large-scale kinetic sculpture, alongside a new moving-image installation. Raven works at the intersection of film, sound, and sculpture, and the Watershed’s industrial scale gives the installation room to unfold at full intensity. On view through early September, and admission is free.
Visitors outside the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. November 4, 2022 | Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Art of the Americas, reinstalled, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
On June 19, just ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary, the MFA reopens its 18th-century Art of the Americas galleries in a major reinstallation. The reimagined displays consider the role artists played in shaping a pivotal period in American history, bringing beloved works back into view alongside pieces that have spent years in storage. For anyone thinking about American art this milestone summer, it is essential viewing.
Betsy James Wyeth, Post-it note, 3 × 3 in. (7.6 × 7.6 cm). Courtesy of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.
By Design: The Worlds of Betsy James Wyeth at the Colby College Museum of Art, Maine
One of the most interesting projects in New England this summer is a three-venue collaboration shared between the Colby College Museum of Art, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the Brandywine Museum, exploring the design vision of Betsy James Wyeth, the collaborator and creative partner of Andrew Wyeth. For its chapter, running June 12 through November 2, Colby invited four contemporary artists to respond to the environments she created. We love an exhibition that treats a familiar name from a genuinely fresh angle.
Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine. Photo: Dave Clough.
Bianca Beck at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland
Midcoast Maine remains one of our favorite gallery destinations, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland anchors it. This summer CMCA presents the vivid abstract sculptures of Bianca Beck, alongside a strong roster of other artists. Beck’s work merges bodily abstraction with an almost carnivalesque palette, making the exhibition feel both playful and psychologically charged. If you are making the trip, the Farnsworth and a cluster of excellent private galleries are all within a short walk.
Bianca Beck. Courtesy of the artist, Uffner & Liu, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Photo: Art Archival / Joel Tsui.