This fall, three exhibitions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, 87 N. Main St. in Oberlin, is drawing on its outstanding collections to craft new narratives in modern and contemporary art, according to a news release.
“The Allen’s collections are legendary, and it’s thrilling to see our outstanding curators highlight major works alongside many new acquisitions, while remaining on the cutting edge of contemporary art,” said Jon L. Seydl, director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, in the release. “As always, our exhibitions are developed both to support teaching at Oberlin College and to share our work with the diverse communities of Lorain County, Northeast Ohio and beyond.”
The exhibits
• Picturing Paris: Monet and the Modern City takes Claude Monet’s early cityscapes of Paris as its central focus. In 1867, the artist received special authorization to paint “views of Paris from the windows of the Louvre.”
Joining highlights from the Allen’s permanent collection by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and others, this exhibition unites three of Monet’s important cityscapes of Paris, all painted from an elevated viewpoint inside the Louvre. Seen together for the first time, Oberlin College’s Garden of the Princess, the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin’s Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, and the Kunstmuseum in the Hague’s Quai du Louvre are among Monet’s earliest renderings of Paris and attest to the city’s importance as a growing modern metropolis.
This exhibition is in the Stern Gallery and will end Dec. 23.
• At the intersection of tradition and innovation, Fibers of Becoming: Contemporary Paper Works by Sarah Brayer, Aimee Lee, and Lin Yan, shows the transformation of handmade paper into expressions of cultural memory and contemporary identity. Each artist works within distinct East Asian papermaking traditions — Brayer with Japanese washi, Lee with Korean hanji, and Lin with Chinese Xuanzhi — yet all three engage in a dialogue between ancient craft and modern vision.
Their works embody the paradoxical nature of paper — seemingly delicate yet remarkably resilient. Through their hands, the medium of paper allows space for improvisation and renewal, while remaining a vessel of remembrance and tradition.
This exhibit is in the Southwest Ambulatory and Stern Gallery and will end June 26, 2026.
• The exhibition Kitsch, Craft, Critique follows the afterlives of the Pattern and Decoration movement (P&D) of the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Drawn from the Allen’s collection, this globe-spanning presentation stages a dialogue between historical Pattern and Decoration artists and those working today in lineages of feminist, queer and non Western art.
Pushing back against sleek, reductivist postwar artistic modes, Pattern and Decoration artists offered an alternative vision of modernist artmaking rooted in critical craft practices.
The exhibition includes works by Joyce Kozloff, Judy Pfaff, and Miriam Schapiro, alongside recent works by Edie Fake, Sanaa Gateja, Ellen Lesperance, Takashi Murakami, Maria Nepomuceno, Xiyadie and others.
This exhibition is in the Ellen Johnson Gallery and will end Dec. 23.
Other exhibitions on view this fall include: Video Space: Max Almy; Shared Art: Suzanne Benton; Femme ’n isms, Part III: Feminine Faces and; Intimate Spaces; Shining Prints: The Tale of Genji Reimagined in Japan; and From Page to Stage: Kabuki’s Heroic History Plays in Japanese Woodblock Prints.
For more information on the exhibits, visit https://amam.oberlin.edu/exhibitions-events.