Four New Exhibits Open at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center This November

One of the things I love most about Brattleboro is how this small town continues to surprise me with big creative energy. The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) is a perfect example: a place where cutting-edge art exhibitions and programming meet small-town warmth, and every new exhibit feels a little like a gift to the community.

Phong Bui with Meyer and Lillian Schapiro, c. 1994. Photo by Eyal Danieli.

This November, the museum is celebrating the opening of four new exhibitions with a lively community party featuring live music, free food, and plenty of inspiration.

If you’ve been looking for an excuse to spend a cozy November evening surrounded by art, music, and friendly faces, here’s your chance. The BMAC opening party kicks off on Saturday, November 15, at 5 pm (doors open early at 4:30 pm for members).

Founded in 1972 and located inside Brattleboro’s historic Union Station, BMAC has long been a hub for contemporary art in southern Vermont.

The nonprofit museum presents rotating exhibits, artist talks, film screenings, and hands-on workshops, all designed to make art accessible to everyone.

Admission is always “pay as you wish,” making art more accessible without traditional cost barriers.

This fall, the museum unveils four diverse exhibitions that, together, explore legacy, identity, time, and transformation, featuring works ranging from miniature embroideries to large-scale abstract paintings.

Singing in Unison, Part 13: Homage to Meyer Schapiro

Emily Mason, "Stillness is Volcanic" (1966), oil on canvas, 54 x 43 inches. © Emily Mason and Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, Inc. (ARS). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY. — Emily Mason, “Stillness is Volcanic” (1966), oil on canvas, 54 x 43 inches. © Emily Mason and Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, Inc. (ARS). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY.

Occupying three of the museum’s seven galleries, this sweeping exhibition pays tribute to Meyer Schapiro (1904–1996), one of the most influential art historians of the 20th century.

Conceived by Phong H. Bui, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail, the show honors both Schapiro’s scholarship and his human warmth.

Over his six decades as a professor at Columbia University, Schapiro revolutionized how art was studied and understood. His lectures, writings, and friendships with artists like Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, and Arshile Gorky shaped generations of art thinkers.

For curator Phong H. Bui, this exhibition is deeply personal. “Over the last ten years of his life, Schapiro and his wife, Dr. Lillian Milgram, took me under their wing, adopting the inquisitive young Vietnamese artist and scholar as their surrogate Jewish grandson,” said Bui.

When invited by BMAC to curate an exhibition in Brattleboro, Bui proposed paying homage to his mentor, who summered in southern Vermont for decades, beginning in 1933.

The exhibit includes works by 30 artists connected to Schapiro, including Grace Hartigan, Wolf Kahn, and Emily Mason, alongside Schapiro’s own drawings and paintings. Visitors can also join Bui for an in-person walking tour of the exhibition on Sunday, November 16, at 1 pm.

Erika Ranee: I Don’t Like to Draw

Erika Ranee, "You Need Time to Catch Up with Yourself" (2024), ink and shellac on canvas, 14 x 11 inches. Collection of Tom Burckhardt and Kathy Butterly. — Erika Ranee, “You Need Time to Catch Up with Yourself” (2024), ink and shellac on canvas, 14 x 11 inches. Collection of Tom Burckhardt and Kathy Butterly.

The museum’s Director of Exhibitions, Sarah Freeman, curated this solo show featuring recent abstract works by Erika Ranee, whose layered compositions draw inspiration from both the grit of urban life and the quiet details of nature.

“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.”

Freeman describes each piece as “a time capsule, recording the days, weeks, months, and years that Ranee worked on it.” Even her use of shellac, she adds, “seems to reference the passage of time, as moments are captured and frozen in shiny pools like amber.”

Ranee will also lead an artmaking workshop at Brattleboro’s River Gallery School on January 17, giving visitors a chance to explore her intuitive process firsthand.

Elliott Katz: The Purpose of Your Trip

Elliott Katz, "Pride'n Beauty" (2025), cast bronze. — Elliott Katz, “Pride’n Beauty” (2025), cast bronze.

Vermont-based artist Elliott Katz makes his solo museum debut with a profoundly moving exhibition that transforms BMAC’s historic Ticket Gallery, once the train station’s ticket office, into an installation exploring 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’s history as a site of travel and regulation becomes an apt metaphor for Katz’s work.

One of the most striking pieces reimagines the suitcase his great-grandfather carried into the Manzanar internment camp in 1942, rendered in alternating sections of precious woods, with his ancestor’s detainee number and signature transformed into a gilded emblem.

Ray Materson: Common Threads

Ray Materson, "3 Sisters" (1991), sock threads, 5 x 3.5 inches. Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery. — Ray Materson, “3 Sisters” (1991), sock threads, 5 x 3.5 inches. Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery.

Presented in connection with the Brattleboro Festival of Miniatures, this intimate exhibition features seven small-scale embroidered artworks by Ray Materson, none larger than five inches in any direction.

Each image is painstakingly stitched from thousands of unraveled sock threads, a technique Materson invented while incarcerated as a young man.

Curated by BMAC Director Danny Lichtenfeld, the show is “a testament to the myriad ways in which creative, personal, and economic need can foster uncanny ingenuity.”

Plan Your Visit to BMAC

All four exhibitions open Saturday, November 15, with the opening party starting at 5 pm and early access for members at 4:30 pm. “Singing in Unison, Part 13: Homage to Meyer Schapiro” will remain on view through February 15, 2026, and the other three exhibitions continue through March 6, 2026.

The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 am–4 pm, and admission is by donation. The museum is wheelchair accessible and located at the intersection of Main Street and Routes 119 and 142 in downtown Brattleboro.

For details, accessibility requests, or upcoming programs, visit brattleboromuseum.org or call 802-257-0124.