Stories about "Bates College Museum of Art"
In upcoming thesis exhibition, Bates senior studio art students each have a seat At the Table

Thursday, April 9, 2026 1:03 pm

On April 17, Bates’ graduating studio art and visual culture students will step outside of their studios to share their work with the world during At the Table: Senior Thesis Exhibition 2026.

There's something quietly radical about handing the keys of a museum's permanent collection to its community — about saying, this decision is yours. Bates Curates is an intimate evening built around exactly that. Curator Samantha Sigmon will guide attendees through three photographs by Shellburne Thurber — works that linger in doorways and dim interiors, that hold the weight of lives lived just out of frame — before opening the floor to a vote that will shape the museum's collection for good. Organized in conjunction with Shellburne Thurber: Full Circle, on view through March 21. Made possible by the Barbara Morris Goodbody Collection Endowment Fund.
Night at the museum: The community curates Museum of Art’s permanent collection

Thursday, March 26, 2026 9:13 am

During the first-ever Bates Curates event in March, faculty, staff, and students, and President Garry W. Jenkins, became “curators” as they gathered to select a new addition to the Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

In the News: February 2026

Thursday, February 12, 2026 3:16 pm

A selection of recent mentions of Bates people in the news, including music and arts achievements, coverage of Bates MLK Day observance, and op-eds on rural education from a Bates professor.

Museum’s director Carrie Cushman: The world needs museums more than ever

Thursday, September 25, 2025 3:00 pm

Carrie Cushman joined the college as director of the Bates College Museum of Art in August. She came to Bates from the University of Hartford, where she had been the Edith Dale Monson Gallery director and curator at the university’s Hartford Art School.

Sadie Williams, Ralph Steadman’s daughter and the managing director of the Ralph Steadman Art Collection, circulates on in the main gallery where an exhibition of her father’s work, “Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing,” opens tomorrow, June 6, 2025, and runs through Oct. 11, 2025, in the Bates Museum of Art. This extensive traveling exhibition spans over 60 years of Ralph Steadman’s influential and lauded career, and features more than 140 original artworks and ephemera, including sketchbooks, handwritten notes, and personal photographs. Visitors to the exhibition will encounter familiar favorites, like the artist’s illustrations for literary classics such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, as well as works for activist causes, branding iconography, and even a life-sized bronze sculpture.
‘Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing’ showcases 60 years of the artist’s uncanny, unique perspective

Friday, June 6, 2025 10:56 am

The Bates College Museum of Art exhibition offers a visual adventure through the long career of the artist and illustrator, with objects that deftly capture Steadman’s artistic practice. 

Carrie Cushman to join Bates as director of the Bates College Museum of Art

Thursday, May 15, 2025 8:00 am

Cushman comes to Bates from the University of Hartford, where she is the Edith Dale Monson Gallery Director and Curator at the Hartford Art School.

Retiring after 14 years, Bates Museum of Art Director Dan Mills reflects on highlights from ‘a good run’

Thursday, November 21, 2024 11:00 am

Mills has overseen dozens of exhibitions, encompassing multiple mediums and groupings of artists, including contemporary works from Saudi and Native American artists.

The opening reception for the Annual Senior Exhibition takes place in the Bates College Museum of Art.When Bates studio art majors reach their senior year, they embark on a thesis project that ultimately leads them to a professionally mounted exhibition at the Bates College Museum of Art. These young artists work in many mediums, but all have the same directive: to use sustained studio time to create a collection that coheres into an expression of their individual artistic beings at this particular moment in time. Even though the work presented in the annual Senior Thesis Exhibition is decidedly individual — the 15 artists from this year’s Class of 2022 work in paint, colored pencil, rotoscope animation, photography, and installation and collage — collective themes sometimes emerge from these seniors who are about to enter the broader world.Bora Lugunda ‘25 of Kinshasa, Congo, looks at photography by Jack Ryan ’22 of Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Video: See the opening of the 2022 Bates Senior Thesis Exhibition

Thursday, May 5, 2022 11:50 am

Watch as 15 studio arts students present their senior theses to friends, family, and faculty, in projects brimming with personal meaning.

Meet the artists of the 2022 Bates Senior Thesis Exhibition and themes of life-altering experiences of our times

Wednesday, April 13, 2022 8:51 am

Home is where — or what — the art is for many of these seniors participating in the studio art thesis exhibition

Quest to solve the mysteries of Marsden Hartley’s artwork receives $100K boost

Friday, February 18, 2022 12:05 pm

The enormous task of locating and documenting more than 1,600 works by Lewiston-born artist Marsden Hartley received a major gift from the Vilcek Foundation, a family foundation with a long history of collecting Hartley works.

Load more