 Sarah Valinezhad - The Ache Under My Skin BRISTOL, R.I. — The Bristol Art Museum will present The Company We Keep: Presence, Memory, and the Things That Remain from Sunday, October 4, through Sunday, November 22, 2026. An opening reception will take place Sunday, October 4, from 2 to 4 p.m.
Featuring work by Victoria Crayhon, Kathy Hodge, William Collin Kennedy, Gabrielle LoTurco, Jeff Smudde, C. A. Stigliano, Grace Taşel, and Sarah Valinezhad, the exhibition considers how people and places remain with us through objects, images, gestures, and memory. A machine may hold evidence of the person who used it. A portrait can bring us face to face with someone while leaving much of their inner life unknown. A photograph can preserve a place and suggest the lives that have passed through it. Across different materials and approaches, the artists explore presence as something we can experience even when its source is no longer physically before us. The Company We Keep invites visitors to look closely at the relationships they carry and consider how those relationships shape the way they see the world.
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The Bristol Art Museum will host two October lectures exploring the work and legacies of artists Edward Mitchell Bannister and John Singer Sargent. Through a documentary screening, conversation, and close looking at paintings, the programs invite audiences to consider how artists shape the way we see their work and their times.
“A museum can do more than put art on the walls,” said Lynn Moran, Museum board member. “It can bring people together to look closely, ask questions, and learn something about the place they call home. These programs connect Bristol audiences with two very different American artists and the histories around their work. That kind of conversation is an important part of what the Bristol Art Museum contributes to our community and to visitors from across the region.” In Bannister’s Footsteps: Art in History, Art in Social Justice, Art in Activism will take place Sun., Oct. 18, at 2 p.m. The program begins with a short documentary about the Bannister Community Art Project and the life of Edward Mitchell Bannister, a celebrated 19th-century Black painter from Providence. A panel discussion and audience conversation will follow, exploring his artistic achievements, his place in Rhode Island’s cultural history, and the contributions of his wife, Christiana Carteaux Bannister, an educator and entrepreneur. Wayne Franklin, a Bannister Community Art Project committee member and Providence Art Club board member, will moderate. The panelists include Theresa Guzmán Stokes, executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, and Ulli Ryder, who is leading an effort to restore Bannister’s historic gravestone in Providence’s North Burial Ground. The program is sponsored by Annie Castlenovo McMullen in memory of her mother, Providence Art Club artist Mary Castlenovo. On Tues., Oct. 27, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., local art historian Jill Sanford will present Art For Your Mind: John Singer Sargent – An American Legacy. Looking closely at paintings from across Sargent’s career, participants will explore how his subjects and techniques evolved, from society portraits to informal watercolors. Sanford’s Art For Your Mind programs welcome artists and non-artists alike and encourage participants to see familiar works in new ways. The Sargent lecture is hosted by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the Museum. Preregistration for both lectures is kindly requested at [email protected]  The Bristol Art Museum announces a national call for collage for Torn Boundaries, a juried exhibit inviting artists to examine the boundaries that define, separate, connect and sometimes divide us. The exhibition will be on view from Sun., Jan. 31, through Thurs., April 1, with an artist reception on Sun., Feb. 7, from 2 to 4 p.m. Francine Weiss, Ph.D., will serve as juror for the exhibit.
“Collage is uniquely suited to exploring boundaries because its very process depends on separating, layering and bringing disparate elements into new relationships,” said <ary Dondero, Museum Curator and Board member. “Through Torn Boundaries, we invite artists to challenge familiar divisions and help us see identity, place and one another from new perspectives.” Artists residing throughout the United States are invited to submit work that explores boundaries, physical or psychological, personal or cultural, geographic or political, historical or imagined. These boundaries may define the edge of a body, place, image or identity, or shape our understanding of where one thing ends and another begins. Collage offers a powerful means of questioning those divisions. Through cutting, tearing, layering, juxtaposition, fragmentation and recombination, artists can disrupt established relationships and create new ones. Torn Boundaries asks what happens when an edge is crossed, a border is redrawn, a familiar image is removed from its context or the boundary between the body and the world is disrupted. The exhibition welcomes collage that considers edges both visible and invisible—and the boundaries that influence how we understand ourselves, one another and the world around us. About the juror The exhibition will be juried by Francine Weiss, Ph.D., an artist, art advisor and museum professional with more than 20 years of experience. She has held curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Art, Harvard Art Museums, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Fitchburg Art Museum, Photographic Resource Center and Newport Art Museum. Weiss holds a doctorate in American art and the history of photography from Boston University. Her photographs, mixed-media works and drawings have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She currently serves as director of the Vanderbilt University Museum of Art and lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee. Submission information Artists must reside in the United States and be at least 18 years old. Each artist may submit up to three original artworks for consideration The deadline for online submissions is midnight on Sunday, November 29, 2026. Notifications will be sent by email through OnlineJuriedShows. Submitted artwork may not exceed 40 inches in either direction. Diptychs and triptychs will be treated as one work. Unframed work may be submitted if it includes clips, magnets or another appropriate hanging system. Each submission must include a brief artist statement of no more than 200 words describing the artist’s creative process and the ideas or concepts informing the work. Digital images must be submitted as JPG files under 4 MB in the sRGB color space. For best results, images should measure at least 1,920 pixels on the longest side at 72 dpi. Accepted artwork must arrive at the Museum by Friday, January 15, 2027. Hand-delivered work will be accepted at the Museum, 10 Wardwell St., Bristol, on Thursday, January 14, from noon to 3 p.m. and Friday, January 15, from noon to 3 p.m. Artists may offer their work for sale. Sales will be arranged directly between the artist and collector, and the Museum will not take a commission. Cash awards will be announced. For complete submission requirements and to enter, click here. |
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