
Photographers Bremner Benedict, Ville Kansanen, Ellen Konar, Steve Goldband, Jason Lindsey, Connie Lowell, Simon Norfolk and Camille Seaman seek “to shed light on the critical issues of climate change and the water cycle, using the power of photography to evoke awareness, empathy and action” in “Ceding Ground” that opens September 8 and continues through October 15 at the reopened Griffin Museum of Photography, 67 Shore Rd., Winchester, Massachusetts. “Through their distinct lenses, these artists explore the intricate relationship between human activity, climate patterns, and the earth’s life-giving waters.”
“Portrait of an Unlikely Space,” a historical-contemporary exhibition “bringing together small-scale portraits — from miniatures and daguerreotypes to silhouettes on paper and engravings in books — of African American women, men, and children from the pre-Emancipation era,” will be on view from September 8 through January 7, 2024 at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven, Connecticut. Co-organized by artist Mickalene Thomas and Keely Orgeman, the gallery’s Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, the show also features works in a wide range of media by contemporary artists, including Thomas, who are engaged with similarly intimate subject matter.
“What We Carry,” Quincy, Massachusetts-based Kayleigh MacDonald’s ongoing project that uses portraiture to investigate sustained vigilance as a source of trauma, opens October 13 through November 10 at the James Library & Center for the Arts, 24 West St., Norwell, Massachusetts. “Through portraits of women and gender non-conforming individuals with what we physically carry on us for protection, viewers are invited to acknowledge the emotional burden such ownership requires,” MacDonald said. “The subjects in this series range from close friends to chance encounters on the street or in my community. The pervasiveness of such instruments and tactics is felt through the sheer volume of portraits. The variance of weapons, locations, and subjects speak for themselves.”
As an artist, curator and cultural worker, Ara Oshagan, who was born in Beirut, Lebanon, has explored collective and personal histories of dispossession, legacies of violence and identity. His exhibition, “Disrupted, Borders,” on view through October 29 at the Armenian Museum of America, 65 Main St., Watertown, Massachusetts, combines photography, collage, installation and film and “connects many of the diasporic and homeland entanglements that have occupied me over the past decade or more, from Los Angeles to Beirut to Artsakh,” Oshagan said.
Through the use of historic and contemporary works, “Homecoming: Domesticity and Kinship in Global African Art,” on view through May 25, 2024, at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, 6 East Wheelock St., Hanover, New Hampshire, explores the role of women artists and feminine aesthetics in crafting African and African diaspora art histories. “I hope the exhibition encourages everyone to discuss the kindred themes of domesticity and kinship in their everyday lives,” said Alexandra Thomas, the museum’s curatorial research associate and the exhibition’s curator. “Who performs the labor that builds and sustains our communities and how is that reflected in the visual and material culture of the world around us?”