Reflecting on the Past/Dreaming the Future

The Hampden Gallery Triennial is a juried exhibition showcasing cutting-edge works by emerging and established artists working in all media. It is a platform that reinforces Hampden Gallery’s mission to foster creativity and advance the careers of artists at all levels. Works were selected through an artist call open to those living or working within fifty miles of UMass.

I am thrilled to serve as the inaugural juror for the Hampden Gallery Triennial, a new exhibition that celebrates artistic voices living or working within fifty miles of UMass. As director of the Fitchburg Art Museum, where I steward our own annual juried exhibition, I understand the power of such a show and its role as a locus for creativity in the community.

In choosing works for the show through an online artist call, I was guided by two criteria: the quality of the individual artworks and the exhibition’s over-arching theme: Reflecting on the Past/Dreaming the Future.

Determining aesthetic quality can be a tricky business. It is admittedly subjective. I identified artworks that stood out both visually and conceptually, with strong craftmanship, clear intent, and consistency. I looked for artworks that offered new expressions — works that sparked an intellectual, psychological, or emotional response.

The exhibition’s stated theme, Reflecting on the Past/Dreaming of the Future, further shaped my selections. Many works involve overt references to times gone by, like Louise LaPlante’s silhouette figures in How to Train Your Raven and Susan Montgomery’s feminist historical watercolor portraits. Others suggest times ahead, including Anita Hunt’s Dystopia collages and Toby Barnes’s batik-based works. But most others are far more personal, metaphorical, or enigmatic, like Madge Evers’s cyanotypes, Elizabeth Stone’s Light Beings, and Kellie Murphy’s Pixie DNA.

And, of course, I freely admit that my personal tastes and interests played a role in the process. I am especially interested in beauty, not as an end unto itself, but as a form of visual eloquence that helps to persuasively tell a story or create a mood.

I endeavored to put together a set of artworks that would, both obviously and subtly, create a mental and aesthetic space for visitors to consider what has come before and what is yet to be.

Nick Capasso is the director of the Fitchburg Art Museum, a community-oriented museum in Fitchburg, Massachusetts with art historical collections, changing exhibitions of regional contemporary art, and educational and community and economic development programs.

Prior to his appointment at Fitchburg, Capasso was Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, a museum of contemporary art in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Throughout his twenty-two years in the deCordova Curatorial Department, he organized or co-organized more than seventy-five exhibitions and played a central role in the expansion of the deCordova Sculpture Park. In 2011, he attended the Getty Foundation’s Museum Leadership Institute.

Capasso has also worked extensively with contemporary public art as an art historian, guest curator, critic, lecturer, private consultant, and design selection panelist. He was Board Chair of Boston’s UrbanArts Institute from 2000-2010 and was Chair of the Public Art Curatorial Committee at the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy from 2008 – 2017.

Featured artists include: Eileen Claveloux, Sonja Vaccari, Alice Denison, Ann Cloutier, Nancy Myrdal Carroll, Louise Laplante, Ethel Poindexter, Matthew Mattingly, Steve Stankieiwicz, Tekla McInerney, John C. Anderson, Stephen Earp, Madge Evers, Anita S. Hunt, Monica Hamilton, Kerry St. Laurent, Toby Barnes, Daniel Hales, Diane E. Travis, Cynthia Fisher, Susan Sensemann, Daisy Patton, Elizabeth Stone, Sophia Jakobson, Dominique Thiebaut, Lisa Barthelson, Charlott Treiber, Alexis Fedorjaczenko, Gary Orlinsky, Kellie Murphy, Laurieanne Wysocki, Christopher Sullivan, Sara Casilio, Susan Montgomery, Kristina Martino, and Gabriella Adams.