On view in the Gordon Room August 11 – November 1, 2025

Exhibiting China revisits the Boston Athenaeum’s 1850 art exhibition, the first one held at 10½ Beacon, just one year after the building opened. Among the 268 paintings featured in that show were five portraits by Chinese portrait artist Lamqua. Thanks to generous loans from the museums that now own them, this installation reunites these portraits for the first time in 175 years alongside a curated selection of other works originally shown in the landmark 1850 exhibition, highlighting the artistic and cultural dialogues of the period.

Originally owned by prominent China Trade merchant and Athenaeum proprietor Augustine Heard (1785–1868), the portraits were produced in the studio of the Chinese artist Lamqua (1801–1860), who specialized in Western-style portraits for European and American clients. They depict Chinese businesspeople who facilitated trade for Americans in China during the nineteenth century. Exhibited at the Athenaeum for the first time since 1850, these five portraits prompt us to consider the people with whom American merchants worked, and how they amassed the fortunes that supported institutions back home.

On view in the Leventhal Special Collections Cases May 14 – September 13

The printing press has produced books and pamphlets, newspapers and ephemera, that have documented and shaped the pressing matters of their age. From London to Boston, printing shops popularized epic poems, utopian novels, and slave narratives that would connect reading communities across the Atlantic. This exhibition features printed objects that reveal how their makers captured the attention of their audiences through authorial frontispieces, detailed engravings, and tantalizing title pages. If you look closely, you can see the worn edges of pages, marginal scribblings, and pasted newspaper clippings that reveal their use over time. Together, these objects demonstrate how the printing press has impacted the debates of its places and times, providing a medium for matters, ranging from religious freedom to racial oppression to oceanic exploitation, that continue to press us today.

This installation is a result of a collaboration between the English Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Boston Athenaeum. Graduate students in Prof. Alex Mueller’s “History of the Book” course selected and curated these objects for exhibition.

On view in the alcove gallery June 10 – September 6

A Living Archive examines the collaborative work of paper and printmaker May Babcock and photographer Lindsey Beal. Together the artists integrate alternative photographic processes such as anthotypes and creative papermaking techniques to create work that reflects the New England landscape. The exhibition will explore their use of natural materials—such as pokeberries, seaweed, and lily of the valley—in their papermaking and photographic processes and how their most recent project explores the larger histories of industry within New England.

About the artists:

May Babcock is an ecocentric artist who transforms sediment, seaweed, and excess plants into handmade paper, revealing the complexities of various waterways. Rooted in hand papermaking and place, her interdisciplinary practice reconnects people to the voice of the land and waters. Babcock exhibits nationally and internationally, installs public art at universities, airports, and historic sites, and has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She founded Paperslurry.com, a hand papermaking blog.

Lindsey Beal is a photo-based artist in Providence, Rhode Island where she teaches at the Rhode Island  School of Design.  Her work examines historical American views on technology, parenting, and sexual & reproductive health, and how they reflect today’s political and social landscape. Committed to process, she connects her work to early photographic history and techniques, often incorporating sculptural photographs, hand paper making, or artist books into her work.

On view in the alcove gallery January 14 – May 17, 2025

802

Time feels so vast that were it not
For an Eternity—
I fear me this Circumference
Engross my Finity—

Emily Dickinson

Over the course of a year, photographer S. Billie Mandle explored a corner in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom. Using a large-format camera and long exposures, Circumference documents the possibilities evoked in the intimate space. Capturing the ephemeral light and atmosphere in the room, Circumference traces the spiritual resonances that linger in spaces. “Circumference” appears in countless poems and letters by Dickinson, an unsettled concept the poet relied on to evoke the boundary between the visible and invisible, the known and unknown.

Focusing on the corner invites an exploration of boundaries and oppositions. Mandle’s photographs marinate in this chasm, documenting the space as small and big, endless and finite, empty and inhabited, known and unknown. Throughout the series the bedroom undergoes a renovation, removing the yellow flowered wallpaper and leaving behind plain, patched walls. The changing light from the adjacent window is the only constant, enveloping the space. The photographs offer a glimpse into Dickinson’s silent, written worlds and invites the viewer to listen to and read the images.

About the artist: S. Billie Mandle is from Northern California and works in Massachusetts. She is an Associate Professor of photography at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and received her BA in biology from Williams College and an MFA from MassArt. Her quiet, attentive images engage with themes of place and contingency.

Her work has been widely exhibited and her work is held in several public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Getty Library, and LACMA Library. Her work has been supported by fellowships from Yaddo, Lightwork, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the University of California Los Angeles Archives.

On view in the Ewald Family and John P. Ryan and Claire P. Mansur Special Collections cases January 17 – April 26, 2025

Best in Show highlights the special relationship between humans and their friendly canine companions. Through sculpture, prints, books, and other media, this exhibit considers the themes of companionship, sport, and service alongside their representation in visual and material culture from the Boston Athenaeum’s extensive special collections. Dogs have provided comfort, protection, inspiration, and socialization opportunities for centuries. Each object will speak to these themes and explore this long-loved connection.

On view June 10 – September 6, 2025

“There is no record so true as the good photographic study; as we see the conditions of plant life eternally changing everywhere, the value of these permanent authentic records to future generations cannot be overestimated.” — Edwin Hale Lincoln, 1916

Photographs of daisies, lilies, ferns, milkweed and other plants welcome visitors to Wild Flowers of New England. Centering around the work of Massachusetts-based photographer Edwin Hale Lincoln, this exhibition explores his photographic effort to document and preserve New England’s wildflowers.

Over three decades, Lincoln explored the forests around his Berkshire home, studying the lives of native wildflowers, and photographing the plants in his studio. Lincoln created a unique photographic language, blending scientific specificity and artistic expression, producing portraits that celebrate the ephemeral beauty of native plants.

Wild Flowers of New England places Lincoln’s work in conversation with botanical printers and photographers of the past and present and contextualizes his practice within larger preservationist movements. Through Lincoln’s lens, visitors will see the timeless allure of New England’s wildflowers and the enduring power of botanical artistry.

On view February 4 – May 3, 2025

For over fifty years, acclaimed illustrator Frank M. Costantino provided the world’s leading architects, designers, and developers with hand-drawn project designs from his studio in Winthrop, Massachusetts. This captivating exhibition of his work features over 80 drawings and watercolors.

Focused on Boston and New England projects, the exhibition showcases key landmarks such as the Hynes Convention Center, Esplanade 2020 Vision, and the Old State House renovation. Costantino’s meticulous detail and vibrant depictions, from finished renderings to preparatory sketches, reveal his creative and collaborative process.

This exhibition not only celebrates Costantino’s unparalleled skill but also highlights the Athenaeum’s dedication to local artists and architectural heritage.

September 9 – December 30, 2024

Step into the captivating world of artist Claire Van Vliet.

A MacArthur Fellow, Van Vliet is widely recognized for her innovations in hand papermaking and her imaginative artist’s books.

The exhibition highlights Van Vliet’s vibrant pulp paintings, made by “painting” with pigmented paper pulps, her striking prints and broadsides, and her captivating sculptural book structures. Handmade paper is integral to the meaning and experience of each of the artworks on view.

Thematic threads throughout the exhibition illuminate Van Vliet’s collaborative spirit, exploration of social issues, and profound connection to the natural world, resonating with the expressive language of poets like Rita Dove, Keri Hulme, Galway Kinnell, and Denise Levertov.

Marking the 70th anniversary of Van Vliet’s Janus Press, the show celebrates a recent gift to the Boston Athenaeum of a complete Janus Press collection by an anonymous donor.

In Cousins, Kristen Joy Emack explores the innocence and intimacy of girlhood. Photographing for over a decade, the artist pictured her daughter and three nieces as they grew into themselves, chronicling their developing relationships, maturing confidence, and expanding worlds. Over the course of the project it became collaborative, as the girls began posing and presenting themselves to the camera, aware of their role within the frame.

A sense of communion permeates the series as dangling arms, small hands, and braided heads fit perfectly together. Beyond each other, through their poses and presence the girls integrate into the landscape, harmonious with the patterned shadows, rippling water, and curved branches that surround them. An intuitive bodily connection and shared emotional and spiritual knowledge bonds the girls together. Cousins offers a glimpse into the under-examined world of young girls of color, powerful in their relationships and secured in each other’s connecting presence.

About the artist: Kristen Joy Emack is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, a Saint Botolph Fellow and a Massachusetts Cultural Arts Fellow. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, in both galleries and photo festivals, and has been published in magazines including Vogue Italia, National Geographic, OATH, The Horn Book and The Sun. She has lectured at multiple universities including Harvard, Hofstra and Boston University, and her work is in multiple private collections and institutions in the US and Europe. Emack has recently released her first monograph, Cousins, published by L’ARTIERE in Italy. Kristen is a public school educator who lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

March – August 22, 2024

Albums could be found in almost every household in the United States by the late nineteenth century. The rise of commercial photography and color printing at this time created an abundance of pictures, and albums provided a way to organize, preserve, and share them. Some albums feature family photos, colorful advertisements, or portraits of celebrities; others document travel, war, or historical events. Though most albums contain images that were mass produced, each is a unique assemblage. This exhibition highlights a small sample of the many different types of nineteenth-century albums in the collection of the Boston Athenaeum.