Exhibitions Archives

June 12 – August 29, 2021

Quilts are a narrative art form, featuring themes that are political, spiritual, communal, and commemorative. Infused with history and memory, quilts map out intimate stories and legacies through a handcrafted language of design.

June 12 – August 29, 2021

A giant, map-like quilt, created by Sarah FitzSimons, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Art Department faculty artist, features varying shades of blue fabric to convey the Pacific Ocean’s underwater topography and sewn lines depicting surface currents. FitzSimons notes other commonalities: “Both water and fabric flow. Both cover. Both can conceal, reveal, and shift. Pacific Quilt proposes a link between our daily cycle of sleeping and waking, with the rise and fall of ocean tides.”

May 28, 2021 – February 6, 2022

Birds make us happy. We admire their beauty and diversity and envy their ability to soar and fly. Acute observers, artists strive to capture the essence of of their subjects and interpret birdlife through intense study and observation, photography, and sketching, often spending hours in the field before taking to the studio. Celebrating avian life and the artists who share their talents, this exhibition of artwork from the Museum’s collection focuses on five themes:

• Day at the Beach
• Ducking Out
• Enchanted Evening
• Follow the Line
• In the Pink

March 6 – June 6, 2021

Artworks from the collection share the spotlight with stories about why and how they were created by artists and acquired by the Woodson Art Museum. Discover the tale and trace the trail that led to the acquisition of a rare oil painting by John James Audubon and a hand-colored aquatint created for Audubon’s The Birds of America.
Anecdotes about noteworthy owners and personal relationships are woven throughout other stories. A watercolor painting by Frank Weston Benson, Chickadees, which had been owned by poet Robert Frost, became the perfect way to honor a member of the Museum’s founding family, fondly remembered for wearing a chickadee-embroidered sweater.
Experience artwork by three generations of Wyeth painters, N.C., Andrew, and Jamie, comparing and contrasting their distinct styles and gaining insights into their inspiration and work.

June 1, 2020 – May 17, 2021

Hunting is deeply rooted in human culture, extending over all seven continents. Through the work of painters, sculptors, and graphic artists dating from the early nineteenth century into the twenty-first century, the changing role of birds and animals within the context of the hunt is illustrated and celebrated.

March 13 – April 25, 2021

Celebrate Youth Art Month and the creative efforts of Central Wisconsin students in grades 5-8 via the 44th Student Art Exhibition. Each March, the nation promotes art education by focusing on student work. The exhibition is open to art specialists teaching in public, parochial, and home schools in Central Wisconsin.