30th Anniversary Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists: Contemporary American Marine Arts
Skylight Gallery, Heritage Gallery, Community Gallery

PASSAT on the Day of Departure,
1939
30” x 35 1/2”
Oil By Thomas Winchester Wells
Having been on tour since last year in four museums on the East Coast, the 30th Anniversary Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA), “Contemporary American Marine Art,” will be unveiled on the walls of the New Bedford Art Museum beginning Sunday, June 7. This is sure to be a popular show for SouthCoast summer visitors and residents alike.

The Windswept Coast
31” x 45”
Oil By Donald Demers
Fellow, ASMA
Considered to be one of the most ambitious exhibits of this genre of art ever circulated, and featuring a wide variety of subjects and mediums, works by more than 100 of the best practitioners of marine art in the country have contributed work to this show. Creations in oils, watercolors, pastels, scratchboard, pencil, sculpture and scrimshaw make this a particularly rewarding visit.
This exquisite show celebrates the splendor of the sea and sky — the stately historic ships, the beasts that thrive in the world’s waters, the activities of littoral communities, and the folk who venture to sea for pleasure and for profit.
A 110-page full-color catalog accompanies the show and will be available at the reception desk for $19.95 plus tax.

Beating the Mark
24" x 36"
Oil by David Bareford
Vault Series: Small Paintings
Curated by Joan Backes
Upper Vault
Gordian Knot
2009
Constance Mallinson
Vault Series: Small Paintings shows the work of five artists from the United States and Canada. Stanley Lewis and Leslie Bostrom live in the Northeast, Peter Kirby lives in Canada, Lorraine Peltz lives in Chicago, and Constance Mallinson lives in California. The content of their work differs as well as their chosen media — from watercolor to acrylic to oil.
The uniting factor of this show began with the subject of small scale works, as in the title for this show: Vault Series: Small Paintings. However, there are other relationships that exist between the work of these five artists.
Remembered Conversation, Pink, 2009
2009
Lorraine Peltz
Oil on canvas
Leslie Bostrom has contributed two of the watercolor studies she makes for her large scale paintings. These studies stand on their own as paintings. Bostrom has been a bird watcher, or “birder” for fifteen years. Her series: “The Bird Disaster Series” began as a comment on the decline of bird populations but has evolved and broadened into a narrative on bad luck, fate, and death.
Though working on the opposite and west coast, Constance Mallinson’s contribution to this show also reflects on nature. Here Mallinson has collaged together a tangled mass of decaying natural materials and manmade street detritus, some of the things she collects on her walks in the Southern California suburbs and canyons. Her work addresses the fragility of nature, as well as its rebirth, and our contemporary relationship with the natural world.
Lorraine Peltz’s paintings address issues of both the exterior world and an interior space of dream, desire, and memory. Her chandeliers appear to us as if from a dream, or as apparition, or as some distant recalled memory. She joins the chandelier, something inside a home or elegant interior space with motifs from outdoors such as flowers and starbursts allowing the viewer to experience his or her own fantasy within the painting’s darkened field.
Peter Kirby has based his painting for this Vault Series exhibition on an event that he has regularly experienced in summer. Waeg Day is based on a day at his Waegwalic Club where participants celebrate the pleasures of the summer season with barbecues, games, and relaxation. He has set these people in a contemporary setting while referencing figurative painting of the past.
The work of Stanley Lewis seen here is typical of his drawings and paintings. Lewis regularly paints outdoors on location and this is exactly how he worked for the painting in this show. His technique is gestural, quick, and painterly. And, like Peter Kirby he captures something of the pleasures of the summer season in this work.
— Joan Backes
Curator, Vault Series, NBAM
Vault Series: Paintings on Paper
Curated by Joan Backes
Lower Vault
Wooden Female
2009
Sheila Provazza
Oil on paper
Vault Series: Paintings on Paper includes the work of six artists who live and work in Nova Scotia. These artists demonstrate work and concerns that might represent those of artists everywhere. They use traditional media such as watercolor and oil paint as well as new technology including digital images and ink jet paintings.
Although these artists live and work in the Maritimes, similar to our own coast here in New Bedford, the work that they make does not always reflect on the landscape of their region. Would we know that they live in the Maritimes from viewing their work?
Each artist was asked to include a statement about his or her concerns relating to their work on paper for this show.
All but one of these artists was born in one of the Canadian provinces originally. All have relocated to Nova Scotia. One, Sheila Provazza, was an undergraduate at UMass Dartmouth and is from Massachusetts originally.
— Joan Backes
Curator, Vault Series, NBAM
6.6.2009 ~ 9.5.2009 | 30th Anniversary Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists: Contemporary American Marine Arts

Having been on tour since last year in four museums on the East Coast, the 30th Anniversary Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA), “Contemporary American Marine Art,” will be unveiled on the walls of the New Bedford Art Museum beginning Sunday, June 7. This is sure to be a popular show for SouthCoast summer visitors and residents alike.
Also ...
- Vault Series: Small Paintings
- Vault Series: Paintings on Paper
2.19.2009 ~ 5.24.2009 | "... Alive and Moving!" John James Audubon's The Birds of America

The City of New Bedford, the New Bedford Free Public Library (NBFPL) and the New Bedford Art Museum (NBAM) are pleased to present “… Alive and Moving!” an exhibition of rare prints from John James Audubon’s The Birds of America. This exhibit is a revisiting of the museum’s popular 1998 exhibit The Audubon Legacy.
Also ...
- Highlights from the Cape Cod Museum of Art
9.27.2008 ~ 1.31.2009 | HOME GROWN: 10 from the SouthCoast
The New Bedford Art Museum (NBAM) is proud to present HOME GROWN: 10 from the SouthCoast, an exhibition celebrating arts education and particularly these ten artists who were either born and/or raised in the SouthCoast and are now successfully pursuing careers in the professional visual arts.
Also ...
- Peter C. Stone: Selections from the "Untouchable Tree"
- What Goes Around Comes Around (youth exhibit)
6.6.2008 ~ 9.11.2008 | Jane Tuckerman Haunted

Jane Tuckerman's exceptional relationship with the medium of photography has resulted in a stunning array of imagery. Exploring the ritualistic, transformative, and magical aspects of various cultures, her work is both tranquil and unsettling. Though incredibly candid and humane, her art's undeniable strength is that it seeks to include the viewer in an open dialogue with both the artist and subject. She compels us to not only look, but to see in unexpected ways. While grounded in photography, Tuckerman often pushes her poignant exploration into the realms of painting, collage and sculpture.
Also ...
- Kathryn Lee Smith: Crossing the Fine White Line
1.23.2008 ~ 5.23.2008 | Skude 360 Degrees: An Exhibition of Paintings by Severin Haines

SKUDE 360° is an engaging and seductively beautiful array of 38 oil paintings and pastel studies focused on the dramatic land, shore and townscapes of his native Skude, located on the southwest coast of Norway. The exhibit also serves as a visual memoir of the site of Haines’ boyhood.
Also ...
- Paper Cuts, Pottery and Primitives: Polish Folk and Decorative Arts
9.20.2007 ~ 12.31.2007 | Reclaimed & Rejuvinated: Discards Into Art

This exhibit originated from a proposal made by a regional artist on behalf of a small group of fellow artists who felt their work had a major ingredient in common — that each re-employed objects and materials that society would agree had been rejected, thrown away, used up and cast off.
Also ...
- New Works by Stephen Whittlesey
- Vault Series: Alan Johnston (Scotland)
5.31.2007 ~ 8.31.2007 | Charles Henry Gifford (1839-1904) — A Local Artist's Journey
This exhibition features over 60 objects will feature art from private collections, most of which have never been exhibited publicly. A few of C.H. Gifford’s large commissioned works will be displayed alongside his “little gems” — oils, watercolors, India ink drawings, studies and sketches. By honoring one of our local artists, we will celebrate this unique period in our history when the city was brimming with a creative and entrepreneurial spirit, where artists were hard at work in their studios, supported by many art galleries and dealers, framers and gilders.
Also ...
- Transforming Art ~ As Time Goes By — Photographs by RJ Katz
- Junior Docents & Youth Art Museum Education Programs
1.20.2007 ~ 5.6.2007 | Four Figurative Artists: Pamela Hoss, Laurie Kaplowitz, Anne Leone & Stacy Latt Savage
Humanly Possible brings together four artists whose work depends — and has for their entire career as artists — upon realistic representation centering on the human figure and its familiar surroundings. In a time when the public often finds abstraction and conceptual art difficult to follow, it is sometimes comforting to guarantee realistic images in an exhibition. But these artists are not your great-grandmother's realists. Their work demands a lot of looking, a lot of thought about just what is being portrayed and a further guarantee of an intellectually challenging viewing.
Also ...
9.28.2006 ~ 12.31.2006 | Masters of Watercolors: Recent Work by Members of the New England Watercolor Society
A unique exhibition of 80 prize-winning paintings by more than 50 current members of the New England Watercolor Society, representing the broad range of artistic genres and styles they practice. Known among artists as a “difficult medium” to master, the art of watercolor painting is presented in all its glory — from works of delicate intimacy and subtlety to those of bold coloration and design.
Also ...
- Mike Mazer Paints New Bedford & Other Scenes from the South Coast
- Nature Intercepted
6.1.2006 ~ 9.15.2006 | Inviting Response: Celebrating Our First Decade

To mark the 10th anniversary of providing the public with opportunities to experience, understand and appreciate art, this special commemorative summer exhibition is designed to be a visual arts bridge between New Bedford's illustrious artistic and cultural past and its current and future blossoming as an arts and culture center. It is hoped that INVITING RESPONSE will reflect NBAM's role as a leader in promoting and advancing the range and importance of our region's long involvement with the visual arts.
1.28.2006 ~ 5.7.2006 | Nature Interrupted
In Nature Interrupted, five artists show very diverse aspects of their concern. They may focus on a rare species in danger of extinction, such as the eagle in Osmo Rauhala’s captivating video images, or the preservation of trees threatened by disease, as in Joan Backes’ paintings of tree bark, which could, in the future, become a point of reference to a species no longer in existence. Willy Heeks’s work, even though abstract, is probably the closest to early-century nature paintings, with his layerings of colors and forms that celebrate trees, oceans, earth and skies. Dannielle Tegeder’s drawings depict a certain geometric growth as in the construction of ant colonies or mole hills — it is up to the viewer’s imagination to decide whether Tegeder’s “city” is above or under the ground. Soazic Guezennec transfers the African jungle to a suburban surrounding, embellishing it with colorful billboard images resembling a tree house, giraffe or field of orchids.
9.29.2005 ~ 12.31.2005 | The Artist as Social Commentator: Prints by Honoré Daumier
Honoré Victorin Daumier (1808-1879), the French painter, sculptor and lithographer, did as much as any artist of his time to raise the political and social awareness of the citizens of France in the mid-19th century. In the span of four decades, he produced over 4,000 prints of social and political satire that reached thousands of people (many illiterate) through the illustrated journals, La Caricature and Le Charivari, and a number of lithographic albums that were produced for commercial sale.
Also ...
- Lewis Hine: The Faces of Child Labor in New Bedford 1911-1912
- INSPIRATIONS: artMOBILE & SuMmerART '05 Exhibit
- Vault Series Focus: Ragna Róbertsdóttir
6.6.2005 ~ 9.2.2005 | Visions of Moby-Dick: 3 Contemporary Artists: Aileen Callahan, George Klauba, Mark Milloff
Three contemporary artists — Aileen Callahan, George Klauba and Mark Milloff — continue the tradition of interpreting Moby-Dick visually, illuminating it in powerful, innovative and distinctly different ways. Working in diverse media and drawing on abstraction, realism and mysticism, they each bring new understanding to Melville’s multi-nuanced and memorable novel.
Also ...
- Vault Series Focus: Ragna Róbertsdóttir.
2.2.2005 ~ 5.12.2005 | Proviencetown: A Creative Colony
Representing a broad selection of artists from the early 1900s to the present that called Provincetown their artistic home, the collections of P-Town residents James Bakker and Russell Bigelow concentrate on this historically renowned creative colony. Nearly 100 works astutely chosen by the collectors for this NBAM exhibit focus on lesser-known artists who made significant contributions to what has become known as the Provincetown school. The selections include paintings, prints, sculpture, and photographs, and represent approximately 70 artists, of whom about half are still productive.
Also ...
- Digital Atelier: Reflective Visions, Karin Schminke, Dorothy Simpson Krause, Bonny Pierce Lhotka
9.18.2004 ~ 12.31.2005 | John Thornton Pantings: A Retrospective
Beginning in the early 1960s, and throughout his career as an artist to the present day, New Bedford painter John Thornton has engaged in a series of evolutionary conversations — intellectual, emotional, and visual — with issues of abstraction. Each has resulted in distinctive phases or series of works that are, nevertheless, interconnected with a visual logic that invites rather than confounds insightful viewing.
Also ...
- "A Ten Year Journey" & SuMmerART Exhibit
2.1.2004 ~ 5.25.2004 | A Textile Legacy ~ Celebrating Barbara A. Goldberg, Artist & Teacher
Barbara Goldberg's shibori patterned textiles are the cornerstone of this exhibition. In her work she has merged personal conceptual investigation with traditional Japanese techniques for indigo dyed linen, or sumptuously colored velvets. The simplicity of composition and color in her textiles often conceals the intense mastery of technique, which is Barbara's aesthetic signature.
Also ...
- "Vault Series Focus: Michael Cochran"
- "Traditional Costumes of the World Cultures: The Golden Triangle/Tri-works Collection of New Bedford"
9.27.2003 ~ 1.16.2004 | From the Ground Up: Art of the Skateboard Culture
An exhibition of art in various mediums including local, regional, national and international art of, surrounding, created by, inspired by and about skateboarders. One of the first museum exhibits of its kind in the country, From the Ground Up: Art of the Skateboard Culture showcases the art created and inspired by the skateboard world.
5.22.2003 ~ 9.12.2003 | The Etchings of R. Swain Gifford
After more than a century, American artist-etchers of the 1880s are entering a new era of appreciation, and among them Robert Swain Gifford (1840-1905) deserves perhaps the highest esteem. A resident of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, R. Swain Gifford achieved fame within the New York City art scene throughout the last decades of the 19th century. Like his friends and contemporaries Louis Comfort Tiffany, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran, Gifford was a pivotal character in the evolution of American landscape art.
Also ...
- Vault Series Focus: Ben Frank Moss Contemporary Etchings: Works by Seven Artists
- artMOBILE 2003
1.23.2003 ~ 5.9.2003 | This is a Test
"THIS IS A TEST" is an ongoing project that has almost become for the exhibits curator a sculptural document of the history of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS).
Also ...
- The Gregorian Collection: Oriental rugs
10.10.2002 ~ 1.10.2003 | New England Sculptors Association Exhibition 2002
Sculpture, more than any other art form, engages the viewer in a physical relation to the art. With sculpture, one is challenged by a changing perception of the work when it is seen from different angles. Some will find different viewpoints especially appealing.
6.6.2002 ~ 9.27.2002 | Cecil Clark Davis: A Woman Ahead of Her Time
Over the course of her rarified life, Cecil Clark Davis (1877—1955) developed into an award-winning portrait artist who painted many of the important people of her era, including flyer Charles Lindbergh, actor Lionel Barrymore, Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen and inventor Alexander Graham Bell. In many ways, she was a woman ahead of her time.
Also ...
- artMOBILE 2002 & Summer Art: "Art From Many Hands"
- Richard Harding Davis: Marion's Famous Summer Resident
1.24.2002 ~ 5.19.2002 | 7 SouthCoast Photographers
Separated into three shows, 7 SouthCoast Photographers features the works of seven of the region's outstanding commercial photographers.
Also ...
- Facets of Community: A Collaboration in Art Education
- Legends and Legacies of the Irish in New Bedford
10.18.2001 ~ 1.11.2002 | Water Street Gallery Revisited
Separated into three shows, 7 SouthCoast Photographers features the works of seven of the region's outstanding commercial photographers.
Also ...
- Nativities of the World: Nativity Scene Art, From the Collection of Eileen Canty
6.28.2001 ~ 10.5.2001 | Working Boats: Portraits from a Fishing Harbor, Paintings by Rez Williams
"This large-scale body of work, which includes six-by-10-foot bright canvases, monumentalizes the subject of the New Bedford and Fairhaven fishing fleets with reverence and an eye toward the unpredictable. The vibrantly colored and distinctive paintings are portraits of working boats, icons of the often unromantic reality of the fishing industry ... These paintings also represent the painterly pursuits of Williams, who utilizes a mixture of short, precise brushstrokes and wide, sweeping bands of color. These paintings are expressionistic documents of a culture and a way of life." - Excerpted from text by Mark H.C. Bessire, Director, Institute of Contemporary Art, at Maine College of Art.
Also ...
- Vault Series: VI Water Peter Duff Boat Models artMOBILE Youth Exhibition Traditional Eastern European Cut Paper by South Coast Resident Miroslawa Graboska Pissarenko
- Handcrafted Trawler Models by Reidar Bendiksen