Shelburne Museum rolls out 11 new summer exhibitions

From luminist marine paintings to Ogden Pleissner sporting art, New England landscapes by Jay Hall Connaway to Victorian crazy quilts, Vermont's venerable Shelburne Museum, which touts its many "collections within collections," has organized a near-dozen diverse exhibitions for the summer season.

On view now through October 24, the museum's special exhibitions boast some new acquisitions and rarely-seen works from the permanent collection.

Several of the highlights:

Jay Hall Connaway: A Restless Nature surveys the work of “the greatest sea painter since Winslow Homer,” as he was described by critics in the late 1920s. Jay Hall Connaway (1893-1970) bridged the gap between the American realists of the nineteenth century and the modernists of the twentieth century.

The Art of Ogden Pleissner: A Retrospective from the Collection of Shelburne Museum brings together over thirty rarely seen oils, watercolors, and drypoints from all aspects of Pleissner’s oeuvre, including his signature sporting images as well as his less-known rural landscapes and urban scenes.

Upon a Painted Ocean: American Marine Paintings from Shelburne Museum examines the development of a native style from colonial ship portraits through to the flourishing of maritime art of the nineteenth century. On view are works by Martin Johnson Heade, Fitz Henry Lane, Francis Augustus Silva, and more.

Ansel Adams and Edward Burtynsky: Constructed Landscapes features over 60 landscape photographs by Ansel Adams (1902-1984) juxtaposed with Edward Burtynsky (b. 1955)'s contemporary images of “manufactured landscapes” such as mines, railway cuts and dams.

Circus Day in America celebrates the Golden Age of the American circus (1870-1950) with a comprehensive and engaging display of related ephemera and artifacts.

Embellishments: The Art of the Crazy Quilt features 19 examples of Victorian crazy quilts drawn primarily from the Museum’s renowned collection, including eight recently acquired pieces on view for the first time. These surprisingly bold expressions made by Victorian ladies were meant to be artistic statements.