New Bedford Art Museum maps 2026 slate: Mexican resistance art, ecology show, and rare Mary Cassatt works

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Two months into 2026, the New Bedford Art Museum is laying out an ambitious year of exhibitions, from a March show on contemporary Mexican art to a summer exploration of ecological futures — all while presenting rarely seen masterpieces now on view.

“True to our mission the art museum presents provocative exhibitions of local art as well as art from around the world,” Executive Director Suzanne de Vegh said, describing a lineup designed to “fascinate and engage” visitors. Currently, the museum is showing “The Homecoming,” which assembles significant works from private SouthCoast collections.

According to de Vegh, the exhibition offers a rare public glimpse of pieces by luminaries including Käthe Kollwitz and Mary Cassatt — works that in many cases have not been publicly displayed in decades, if ever. In March, the main gallery will open “Resistance: Cultural and Political Narratives in Mexican Art,” bringing together contemporary Mexican artists engaged with themes of freedom, Indigenous knowledge, and contested histories.

The exhibition features sculpture, installation, performance-based documentation, textiles, and printmaking, organized around the persistence of culture against oppression and change. “The artists address how histories are constructed, contested, and reclaimed,” de Vegh said.

Summer will see “Vanishing Ecologies: Mycelium Dreams,” an exhibition that places ecological anxieties and hope at center stage. Artists grapple with the Anthropocene, split between collapse and adaptation, examining how humanity and technology have reshaped the planet’s future.

Community collaboration remains a priority, de Vegh said. Each spring, the museum presents the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s MFA Thesis exhibition in the People’s Gallery, highlighting some of the region’s freshest voices.

In the fall, the juried show “AgriCultural,” produced with the Southeastern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership, will elevate contemporary stories layered in the land, with entries invited from artists who farm, farmers who make art, and creators inspired by agriculture’s often unsung narratives.

A landmark survey of self-taught art is also planned for the fall in partnership with the American Visionary Art Museum. The show will spotlight local artists Peter C. Stone and Duane Barton — marking Barton’s museum debut — alongside select pieces from notable regional collections.

The season’s finale, “Fire of Our Ancestors,” organized by Assistant Curator Alison Borges, aims to connect heritage and creativity, which de Vegh called a fitting close to a year “bursting with dialog and discovery.” For de Vegh, every exhibition “feels like Christmas morning” when it comes together.

She hopes visitors leave transformed by the experience — refreshed, inspired, and potentially enlightened.