Past Exhibitions

June 10 – August 27, 2023
Using cloth as her canvas, Wisconsin artist Heidi Parkes ‘paints’ with scraps of fabric and thread in her improvisational quilts. Her fiber artworks incorporate heirloom textiles that elicit memories, reflect on domesticity, and tell stories of shared experience. Using hand quilting techniques such as appliqué, layering, knot tying, and embroidery, this slow, tactile construction process imbues the quilt with a record of time and place. This exhibition organized by the Woodson Art Museum showcases more than a dozen large-scale quilts sure to delight the senses. Heidi will be visiting the Museum for Residency July 18 – July 23. Check our Guest Artist page for programming details.

April 29 – June 4, 2023
Wausau East High School International Baccalaureate (IB) art students collaborate with Advanced Placement (AP) art students from Wausau West to present highlights from their respective art portfolios, the result of rigorous program curricula.

Dreams, whimsy, and the unconscious – delve into Surrealist visions of the natural world in Nature Made Strange. This exhibition explores how the Surrealist movement, which began in France in the 1930s, created an entirely new approach to the portrayals of wildlife and landscape. Freed from the constraints of strict “painting-from-life,” these images embrace and explore the dreamlike through non-naturalistic colors, experimental paint application, and collage, inviting viewers into their fantasy worlds.

This exhibition celebrates the life and career of noted watercolorist Fidelia Bridges (1834-1923). Despite inauspicious beginnings as an orphan growing up in Massachusetts, she became one of the preeminent women artists of her time and was the first woman member of the seminal American Watercolor Society. As an artist, she developed an elegant and exacting style, most often portraying birds and botanicals.

March 11 – April 16, 2023
Celebrate Youth Art Month and the creative efforts of central and north central Wisconsin students in grades 5-8 via the 46th annual Student Art Exhibition. Each March, the nation promotes art education by focusing on student work. The exhibition is open to art educators teaching in public, parochial, and home schools in central and north central Wisconsin.

December 10, 2022 through April 16, 2023
Behold the brilliance of nighttime in all its stages: the beginning, zenith, and end. From the delicate light of dawn to the moody shadows of twilight, artworks illuminate the first, musical meaning of “nocturne” – an ephemeral work of music to be performed for an evening’s audience. Scenes of the natural world and American wildlife are featured, emerging from these shades of shadow and light. The artworks extend an invitation: come look at the light’s edge.

September 10 – November 27, 2022
Majestic yet fragile, birds connect us with the natural world. Heralding each sunrise and gathering at dusk, these harbingers of seasonal and environmental change endlessly fascinate and inspire. All-new work by the world’s most talented artists provide a splendid array of perspectives and insights. After artwork is selected in May, information and images are shared when finalized as the exhibition is prepared for the fall opening. The Birds in Art exhibition opening is part of Wausau’s Artrageous Weekend.

September 10 – October 23
Visualize avian voices via sculptures inspired by the recorded calls of extinct or endangered birds. Resembling a forest of vertical forms, the sculptures by California- and New York-based artist Elizabeth Turk are enhanced by interactive elements: scannable recordings of the lost or endangered birds’ voices.
Turk is the featured speaker on opening day of Tipping Point and Birds in Art 2022, Saturday morning, September 10, 9:30-10:30 am.