Clark Art Institute

Announces 2026 Season

By: Clark - Dec 09, 2025

 

The Clark Art Institute announces its exhibition schedule through 2026. The lineup includes the first public presentation of the Aso O. Tavitian Collection with an exhibition featuring selected highlights from the 331 works of art that were given to the Clark in 2024.

“We are eagerly anticipating the arrival of our 2026 exhibition series,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “From great contemporary art both inside and outdoors to the magnificent paintings, decorative arts, and sculpture that are a part of the Aso O. Tavitian Collection, this year promises to delight our visitors with exceptional encounters with art.”

The Clark’s new exhibitions in 2026 include:

Sónia Almeida: Stages
Clark Center and Manton Research Center
February 14, 2026–January 24, 2027

Sónia Almeida will present three site-responsive installations for this exhibition in public spaces at the Clark. Almeida (b. 1978, Lisbon; lives and works in Boston) is professor of fine arts at Brandeis University, where she teaches printmaking, painting, and fabric arts — practices she generally combines in a single installation. The artist is fascinated by patterns, image reproduction technologies, and instructional materials. The subtitle “Stages” reflects her interest in how an artwork performs and the choreography it implies for viewers, but also in process: steps and layers, of which there are many in Almeida’s richly textured works.

This year-long installation, free and open to the public, is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Robert Wiesenberger, curator of contemporary projects.

Generous support for Sónia Almeida: Stages is provided by Margaret and Richard Kronenberg.

An Exquisite Eye: Introducing the Aso O. Tavitian Collection
Clark Center special exhibitions galleries
June 13, 2026–February 21, 2027

The Clark celebrates the transformative gift received in October 2024 from the foundation of the late collector, philanthropist, and connoisseur Aso O. Tavitian with an introductory look at this exceptional collection. The exhibition highlights a selection of works from what is arguably the most significant private collection of European art assembled in North America in the twenty-first century.

Born in Bulgaria of Armenian descent, Tavitian immigrated to the United States in 1961. Beginning in 2004 and continuing until his death in 2020, he assembled a treasure trove of artistic masterpieces that reflect a profound interest in the human experience. This presentation traces the history of European art from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century through the lens of some of the greatest achievements in painting, sculpture, and decorative arts.

Featuring works by many of the most acclaimed artists of the early modern era—Jan van Eyck, Andrea della Robbia, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean-Antoine Watteau, and Jacques Louis David, among others—this exhibition marks the first public presentation of selections from the Aso O. Tavitian Collection. The full collection will go on view in summer 2028 when the Clark opens the new Aso O. Tavitian Wing adjacent to the current permanent collection galleries.

An Exquisite Eye: Introducing the Aso O. Tavitian Collection is organized by the Clark and curated by Esther Bell, deputy director and Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Chief Curator; and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, Aso O. Tavitian Curator of Early Modern European Painting & Sculpture.

An Exquisite Eye: Introducing the Aso O. Tavitian Collection is made possible by Denise Littlefield Sobel. Major funding is provided by Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt, with additional support from Robert Dance and Robert Loper, the Asbjorn Lunde Foundation, Inc., and Kathleen Morris and Robert Kraus.

Giorgio Griffa: Paths in the Forest
Lunder Center at Stone Hill
June 13–October 12, 2026

Giorgio Griffa (b. 1936, Turin, where he lives and works) has been a vital figure in Italian art for more than half a century. In his signature style, the artist records marks, lines, letters, and numbers in acrylic paint on unstretched, unprimed canvases. Over thirteen cycles of painting, each focused on a different compositional idea, Griffa tests the capacities of his materials and the limits of representation itself. The artist has been featured in major exhibitions around the world and participated in three editions of the Venice Biennale, yet the Clark’s survey, coinciding with the celebration of his ninetieth year, will be Griffa’s first solo exhibition in the United States.

Giorgio Griffa: Paths in the Forest is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Robert Wiesenberger, curator of contemporary projects.

Giorgio Griffa: Paths in the Forest is made possible by the Edward and Maureen Fennessy Bousa Fund for Contemporary Projects and the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (14th edition, 2025), with the aim of promoting Italian contemporary art internationally. Additional support is provided by Michael Alper and Bruce Moore.

CoastLines: American Prints and Drawings
Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper, Manton Research Center
July 4–September 27, 2026

This exhibition presents American nineteenth- and twentieth-century watercolors, etchings, drawings, lithographs, and wood engravings from the Clark’s permanent collection that depict the culture and landscapes of the coastline. Focused on representations of the eastern seacoast of the United States, the exhibition situates the coastline as a site of contact and exchange, of economic and cultural activity, and a terrain integral to nation building. Through the Clark’s strong works on paper collection, the exhibition brings to the forefront the artist’s “line” in drawing and in print, made innovative and exceptional at the intersection of land and sea.

This exhibition is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Hannah Chew, Class of 2026, Williams College/Clark Graduate Program in the History of Art.

Also on View:

Shadow Visionaries: French Artists Against the Current, 1840–70
Clark Center special exhibitions galleries
Through March 8, 2026

Although Realism is often seen as the dominant aesthetic of mid-nineteenth-century France, many artists working outside painting embraced imagination, dreams, and allegory instead. Working against the grain, figures such as Victor Hugo, Charles Meryon, Rodolphe Bresdin—and a roster of early French photographers—offered an alternate vision anchored in memory, fantasy, and longing. These “Shadow Visionaries” recognized the potential of prints and photographs to construct a spiritual consciousness in the art of mid-1800s France.

Shadow Visionaries: French Artists Against the Current, 1840–70 encompasses the Gothic nostalgia of architectural photography, the social critique embedded in searing allegorical illustrations, and the literary connections with fantastical art, among other themes.

The exhibition is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Major funding for Shadow Visionaries is provided by Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt with additional support from the IFPDA Foundation and the Troob Family Foundation.

Gridlocked: The Geometry of Weaving
Manton Research Center reading room
Through May 17, 2026

The Clark library’s series of year-round public installations, Paginations, presents Gridlocked: The Geometry of Weaving, exploring facets of the art and science of weaving, as considered through a selection of manuals, pattern books, textile samples, and artists’ books. Going beyond practical applications, this display celebrates the intentional and inadvertent geometries related to the act of weaving.

Raffaella della Olga: Typescripts
Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper, Manton Research Center
Through May 31, 2026

For the past decade, Raffaella della Olga has made unique artist’s books using modified typewriters and multicolor ink ribbons on a range of materials — from tracing paper to photo paper to sandpaper. Della Olga (b. 1967, Italy; lives and works in France) worked briefly as an attorney before becoming an artist; now, seeking refuge from the limitations of language, she grinds down the characters on her machines and communicates through form, color, texture, and rhythm. Della Olga plays her typewriters like instruments, following a script in some cases and improvising freely in others.

This exhibition, the artist’s first solo museum show, assembles her books alongside her typewritten paintings and cut fabric wall-hanging works. Her work is accompanied by rare and artist’s books from the Clark library, spanning the late nineteenth century to the present, which reflect the typewriter’s still-vivid potential as a creative tool.

Raffaella della Olga: Typescripts is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Robert Wiesenberger, curator of contemporary projects.

Major funding for Raffaella della Olga: Typescripts is provided by the Edward and Maureen Fennessy Bousa Fund for Contemporary Projects and Dena M. Hardymon, with additional support from Katherine and Frank Martucci. Generous support for the catalogue is provided by Michael Alper and Bruce Moore, with additional support from Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip Aarons.

Ground/work 2025
Clark Campus
Through October 12, 2026

Featuring specially commissioned monumental sculptures located across the Clark’s campus. Ground/work 2025 focuses on global conceptions of craft, defined as the physical process by which artists transform the world around them. Each of the six international artists participating in the exhibition exemplifies how artisanal traditions can be reinvented to generate contemporary form and meaning. The Ground/work 2025 artists are: Y? Akiyama (Japan), Laura Ellen Bacon (United Kingdom), Aboubakar Fofana (Mali), Hugh Hayden (United States), Milena Naef (Switzerland), and Javier Senosiain (Mexico).

Ground/work 2025 is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by independent curator Glenn Adamson.

Ground/work 2025 is made possible by Denise Littlefield Sobel. Major funding is provided by the Edward and Maureen Fennessy Bousa Fund for Contemporary Projects, Karen and Robert Scott, and VIA Art Fund, with additional support from Thomas and Lily Beischer, Girlfriend Fund and Agnes Gund.