ON GOING EXHIBITIONS
Medieval Chapter House
Ongoing
Pause for a moment of peace and seclusion inside a Benedictine priory from medieval France. This chapter house once served as a meeting room for monks, and the Gothic stone arches, stained glass windows, and grand fireplace inspire a quiet awe to this day. Originally built in the 12th century and in use until the French Revolution, the chapter house was moved stone-by-stone and rebuilt inside the Worcester Art Museum in 1933.
Arms and Armor Galleries in the Making
Ongoing
Museum-wide
As the Museum prepares to open its new Arms and Armor Galleries in late 2025, you are invited to preview the project and share your experience. Try on a gauntlet, heft a sword, and view dozens of objects in “open storage” on Level 1. On Level 2, compare helmets and suits of armor from across history and around the globe, and feel the weight of a 4,000-year-old ancient Egyptian axe. And on Level 3, visit the Jeppson Idea Lab for a look at arms and armor conservation in action, where you will learn how these objects are handled and prepared for exhibition.
There is more coming soon in late 2025. Learn about the upcoming Arms and Armor Galleries.
Brie Ruais
Uncontrollable Drifting Inward and Outward Together (130lbs times two)
Ongoing
Lancaster Lobby
I see these as a balancing of opposites, a kind of turning of the cosmic sphere, night and day, sun and moon, dark and light; false binaries that suggest one can be had without the other, but they reaffirm each other, and coexist in balance (with effort).
—Brie Ruais
Spanning an entire wall of the Lancaster Lobby, Brie Ruais’ Uncontrollable Drifting Inward and Outward Together (130lbs times two) (2021) is one of the latest large-scale artworks to be discovered in the Museum.
Ruais (American, born 1982) creates ceramic sculptures through a performative process in which she scrapes, pushes, and pulls unformed clay—the equivalent of her body weight—into expressive formations. Working in quick energetic bursts, usually only 15 minutes at a time, she describes this process as one of literally and philosophically “spreading outward from the center.” The artist’s interaction with the clay, her visceral manipulation of this most elemental of art materials, is recorded within the sculpture’s final form. The strength of her creative act is juxtaposed with the relative fragility of the work as a fired ceramic.
Crystalle Lacouture
Correspondence (for Elizabeth Bishop)
Ongoing
Renaissance Court
The Worcester Art Museum has commissioned Massachusetts-based artist Crystalle Lacouture to create a new installation for the Wall at WAM. She is the 11th artist featured in this series since it began in 1998. The billboard-sized wall fills a 67-foot expanse on the second story of the Museum’s Renaissance Court. For her Wall at WAM installation, Correspondence (for Elizabeth Bishop), Lacouture created an original painting which was translated into a monumental mural that reverberates through the space and is visible through a promenade of arches integral to the design of the 1930s building in which it resides.
Lacouture makes abstract paintings that embrace the powerful symbolism of pattern and color to create sensitive, mystical designs imbued with deep personal meaning. Lacouture’s work references sacred geometries—recurring patterns found throughout nature and world religions—as well as art history, particularly art created for devotional purposes.
For her Wall at WAM commission, Lacouture was inspired by ideas of place and space, and of corresponding design elements across time and cultures. She incorporates into this site-specific installation patterns found in artworks throughout the Museum’s collection, such as the wave-like trim along the bottom which corresponds to an ancient Antioch mosaic installed directly below her mural. The title, as well as several elements of the painting, reference poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), who was born and buried in Worcester.
Lacouture’s symbolic reference to Bishop and her citations of artworks in WAM’s collection pay homage to those artists and are a larger meditation on the city of Worcester and its art museum. Lacouture invites the viewer to be present in this space and consider their own connections to it through the experience of her transcendental, monumental artwork.
Crystalle Lacouture (American, born Montreal, 1978) is an artist who works conceptually across disciplines including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. She received her BFA in Painting/Printmaking from Skidmore College and has exhibited throughout New England, New York, and beyond. She is represented by Praise Shadows Gallery, Brookline, and is based in Boston and North Adams, MA.
Correspondence (for Elizabeth Bishop) by Crystalle Lacouture is organized by Samantha Cataldo, Curator of Contemporary Art, with Delaney Keenan, Curatorial Assistant.
Contemporary art installations in common spaces at WAM are supported by the Fletcher Foundation, Larry and Marla Curtis, the Don and Mary Melville Contemporary Art Fund, the John M. Nelson Fund, and Marlene and David Persky.