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SHELBURNE, Vt. (December 12, 2025)—Shelburne Museum is pleased to announce its 2026 exhibitions, featuring major presentations that will explore American art, regional identity, material culture, and contemporary creativity. The museum will present five exhibitions that highlight both the breadth of the museum’s permanent collection and the vitality of new contemporary work. The museum will be open May 9 through October 25, 2026.
“As we look toward 2026, our exhibitions reflect the museum’s commitment to presenting art and material culture that illuminates the many ways Americans have represented themselves, their histories, and the landscapes they call home,” said Kory Rogers, Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art at Shelburne Museum. “From Norman Rockwell’s vision of Vermont to the exuberance of Carl D’Alvia’s monumental sculptures to the extraordinary needlework created by young women in the 19th century, these exhibitions invite visitors to reconsider familiar stories and encounter new ones.”
Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont
Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, Murphy Gallery
June 20—October 25, 2026
As the nation marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, Shelburne Museum will honor one of America’s most iconic painters with Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont. The exhibition explores how Rockwell (1894–1978) shaped an idealized vision of Vermont—nostalgic, resilient, and mythic—during his prolific Arlington years (1939–1953). In a time marked by the Great Depression and World War II, his images offered a reassuring portrait of American life. The exhibition places Rockwell within the vibrant Arlington artist circle—including Mead Schaeffer (1898–1980), John Atherton (1900–1952), and Gene Pelham (1909–2004)—whose work helped mythologize Vermont as democracy’s “granite-strong refuge.” It also considers his public friendship with Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, part of a broader crafting of New England as both authentic and marketable. Featuring newly acquired Rockwell paintings celebrating Vermont’s granite industry, the exhibition examines not only his imagery but the intentional mythmaking that embedded Vermont at the heart of Rockwell’s American vision.
Varied and Alive: New and Rarely Seen Treasures from the Collection
Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, Colgate Gallery
May 9—October 25, 2026
(and May—October 2027)
Guided by founder Electra Havemeyer Webb’s vision of Shelburne Museum as a “project varied and alive,” this exhibition celebrates the museum’s vast and varied permanent collection. Objects ranging from the 19th to the mid-20th centuries showcase the incredible depth and breadth of the museum’s collection rooted in Mrs. Webb’s collecting legacy. A curatorial tour de force, objects on view include folk art paintings, circus posters, porcelain, textiles, toys, and trade signs—some beloved favorites, others not seen in decades.
Carl D’Alvia: (mono)LITHS
Shelburne Museum Grounds
June 20—October 25, 2026
Carl D’Alvia’s brightly colored aluminum sculptures—part of his ongoing “Liths” series—bring a sense of play and whimsy to the museum’s expansive grounds. Referencing ancient monoliths as well as 20th-century sculptural icons, these monumental forms are both hard-edged and humorous, serious yet soft, collapsing traditional binaries with wit and invention. D’Alvia’s animated shapes—slouched, sprawled, or flopped—seem to breathe with personality and movement, engaging in a playful dialogue with the museum’s historic architecture, gardens, and collections. Coated in automotive paint, the “Liths” activate outdoor spaces with bold color and presence, inviting visitors to reconsider what monuments can be and who they’re for.
On Point: Needlework from the Garthwaite Family Collection
Dana-Spencer Galleries at Hat & Fragrance + Needlework Gallery
May 9—October 25, 2026
On Point: Needlework from the Garthwaite Family Collection will emphasize extraordinary examples of schoolgirl artworks made in Vermont, ranging from samplers, silk-on-silk embroideries, and sewing boxes to memorials, family registers, theorem paintings, and more. The exhibition features highlights from the Garthwaite Family’s collection of more than 100 Vermont schoolgirl artworks, alongside select textiles and related ephemera from Shelburne Museum’s permanent collection. Special emphasis is placed on new research into women’s education in the state and the Connecticut River Valley at large. In raising the larger issues of women’s education in the 19th century with a focus on Vermont, this exhibition represents an important contribution to emerging scholarship on schoolgirl artwork.
Big River: Ogden Pleissner in Wyoming
Pleissner Gallery
May 9–October 25, 2026
The landscape of the American West has long been a source of inspiration for artists. American 20th-century painter Ogden Pleissner often recalled formative experiences spent at the CM Ranch in Dubois, Wyoming, and the nearby Wind River Reservation. This place would become a recurring character in Pleissner’s life and work, serving as respite and inspiration from the 1920s through the 1940s. Big River: Ogden Pleissner in Wyoming explores this region through sketches, watercolors, oil paintings, and select archival materials consider Pleissner’s engagement with the land and the settler and Indigenous communities who call this place home.
Download a PDF version of this Press Release HERE.
Hi-resolution images are available HERE.
Image credits:
- Norman Rockwell, The Craftsman, 1963. Oil on canvas, 47 1/4 x 38 1/4 in. Collection of Shelburne Museum, gift of Polycor and Rock of Ages Corporation. 2024-12.1. Photography by Andy Duback.
- Unidentified photographer, Electra Havemeyer Webb, Ralph Nading Hill, and Captain A.A. Fisher Admiring the Miniature Boat Boston, ca. 1950s. Gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 in. Collection of Shelburne Museum Archives.
- Carl D’Alvia, Tandem, 2025. Auto paint on aluminum,126 x 144 x 29 in. Courtesy of the artist and Hesse Flatow Gallery. Photography by Charles Benton.
- Unidentified maker, Pictorial Sampler, ca. 1815. Silk and watercolor on silk ground, 14 1/2 x 12 1/8 in. Garthwaite Family Collection. Photography by And Duback.
- Ogden M. Pleissner, On the Wind River, ca.1940. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 15 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. Collection of Shelburne Museum, bequest of Ogden M.Pleissner. 1985-31.53. Photography by Andy Duback
About Shelburne Museum
Founded in 1947 by trailblazing folk art collector Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888–1960), Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, is the largest art and history museum in northern New England and Vermont’s foremost public resource for visual art and material culture. The Museum’s 45-acre campus is comprised of 39 buildings including the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education and Webb Gallery featuring important American paintings by Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, John Singleton Copley and many more. Construction is underway for the Perry Center for Native American Art, designed in partnership with Indigenous voices and devoted to the stewardship and exhibition of the Native American art in the museum’s care, scheduled to open in 2027. For more information, please visit shelburnemuseum.org.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Leslie Wright
Director of Marketing and Communications
Shelburne Museum
lwright@shelburnemuseum.org
802-985-0880
Kristen Levesque
Kristen Levesque Public Relations
kristen@kristenlevesquepr.com
207-329-3090
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