EXCEPTIONAL EXHIBITS
Camilla Jerome: Patient, Patient
Open Door Gallery
December 20, 2024–March 10, 2025
Higgins Education Wing
Artist statement
I am a patient, patient. For 29 years, I waited to know the cause of my chronic pain. I have waited in different iterations of the same room with the same wholesale factory rug and the upholstered chairs with wooden armrests covered in ten coats of glossy polyurethane, to then be brought to another different but the same exam room to wait cold and sterile.
Much of my chronically ill life is spent in a state of anticipation, waiting to see the next specialist, waiting for tests, waiting for results, waiting in waiting rooms, waiting for prescriptions, waiting to come back in three months.
Waiting through the pain. Waiting for a diagnosis. It is the bated breath that requires resilience. Time spent in limbo can drastically alter the perception of seconds passed; it transforms minutes into hours, hours into days, and days into weeks. Yet, some weeks disappear, and years can feel like only fleeting moments.
Time is expansive and enduring. Moments can be suspended in the vast subconscious, and if I, too, could just float, all my pain would dissipate. The fluidity of my chronically ill and disabled body, which often feels like it’s in a constant state of change and adaptation, mirrors the transformative power of the photographic medium. Digital and analog photographs, a book, cyanotypes, gelatin silver, lumen, and chemigram prints create multiple access points for deciphering and discernment, slicing infinite time into fractions of a second.
Patient, Patient is a testament to my lived experience of being silenced and disregarded as a woman in pain. Through a combination of past and present projects, I focus on the different methods of making, meditate on the process and materiality of healing, and express my embodied knowledge.
My artistic practice has grown alongside my pain, and my life is inseparable from these images on paper, bedsheets, shells, and bone. Like a silver print developing in the darkroom, I’m bringing clarity to the surface by reaching out from the corners of my psyche to reclaim lost time and missed connections.
About the artist
Camilla Jerome (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist from the North Shore of Massachusetts. Her work engages the fluidity of the photographic medium, spanning autobiographic and documentary images, private video performances, installation, and experimental camera-less photography. Jerome’s work sits at the intersections of disability, visuality, time, beauty, and gender. Her self-revelatory practice is always on the emotional edge, a form of therapy, a form of art, and a profound journey inward.
Jerome holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; a BFA from Lesley Art and Design, Cambridge, MA; and is a member of Boston’s artist collective.
Recently.
Her artwork is a part of collections at The Washington State Art Commission, Olympia, WA; The Kessler Center, Puyallup, WA; and the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Jerome has exhibited internationally at Gallery Kayafas, Boston, MA; Galeria Valid Photo, Barcelona, Spain; CLAMP, New York City, NY; Umbrella Arts Gallery, New York City, NY; Sol Kofler Gallery, Providence, RI; Water Fire Art Center, Providence, RI; and The Scollay Square Gallery at Boston City Hall, Boston, MA.
Conservation in Action: The Higgins Armory Collection
Ongoing
Jeppson Idea Lab (317)
Not everyone gets an anvil in their office. Bill MacMillan, the Museum’s Arms and Armor Conservator, does. Bill is working to conserve a collection of over 1,000 swords, shields, helmets, and more, ensuring the objects look their best when the Museum opens its upcoming galleries for arms and armor.
You are invited to watch along through the doors of the Jeppson Idea Lab, where Bill’s full workstation is now on view. Get an early glimpse at these objects under laboratory conditions, and follow their progress through a fascinating conservation process that is equal parts technical and creative.
Community Exhibitions
Ongoing
We are proud to offer exhibitions that provide opportunities for artists of all ages to display their works at the Museum. Community exhibitions are short-term shows that are free to the public and displayed in the education wing of the Museum. These exhibitions display artwork from community partnerships, studio classes, students, faculty, and local artists.
2024/2025 Schedule
Teen Exhibit
Opening January 5, 2–4 pm
Spearheaded by the Museum’s Teen Council, this open-call exhibition, title TBD by the teens, features artwork from teens ages 13–19 years old from across Worcester County.
Submit your work
Open Call: Art in Dialogue
January 15–February 23, 2025
Opening January 19, 2–4 pm
This non-juried open call asks New England artists of all ages to create a piece in response to a work in the Worcester Art Museum collection. As an artist you can re-imagine the art, ‘talk back’ to it, be inspired by it, or converse with it.
The piece you choose can be currently on view or off view. The majority of WAM’s collection is available to view in our collection search via eMuseum. You will be asked to identify the artwork your work is in dialogue with and will have the option to provide an artist’s statement.
Submit your work