2023 is the year of Art in Common at Mystic Museum of Art (MMoA), celebrating art as a language we all share.

This inaugural exhibition, Gifts to the Museum, features 61 paintings, photographs, etchings, drawings, books, prints, sculptures, and ephemera from private collectors, now publicly accessible. These distinguished gifts advance the museum’s mission of promoting the experience of art as widely as possible.

Two large donations feature early members of MMoA, formerly the Mystic Art Association (MAA). The Slater Memorial Museum contributed 14 paintings by MAA artist George Adams (1912-1965). Collector Nancy Lamb Handler donated 15 paintings, drawings, and sculptures by MAA artists in honor of her parents Horace and Doris Lamb, including Poppies and Figurine by Nathaniel Stanton Little (1893-1971).

The Providence Art Club of Rhode Island donated an edition of the landmark printmaking portfolio entitled Hot Type.

Some gifts commemorate the ties between donor and artist. Barbara Bates Lauterwasser contributed a landscape painting that she received from the artist, her uncle Kenneth Bates, as a wedding present in 1947. MMoA President Cynthia Martin and her husband donated Floating Maple Leaves in the Rain by their friend Michael Melford. Similarly, collectors Bill and Paula Alice Mitchell donated 13 works on paper by their friend Grant Silverstein.

Other gifts commemorate ties with specific places. Y.E. Soderberg’s humor and love of Mystic enlivens the map donated by Jim and Bette Collins. Noank is represented in the works on paper donated by Ann Spence Merriman, which includes a portrait by Lars Thorsen (1876-1952).

From a different point of view, Terri Kiral-Keunzer, who worked as a model at MAA, donated a collection of ephemera, including the skirt she wore for the painting Love Notes by Margaret Bourque (1920-2018).

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THANK YOU TO THE GENEROUS DONORS WHOSE GIFTS TO THE MUSEUM MADE THIS EXHIBITION  POSSIBLE:

James and Bette Collins
Terri Kiral-Keunzer
The Family of Horace and Doris Lamb
Barbara Bates Lauterwasser
Cynthia and Robert Martin
Ann Spence Merriman
Bill and Paula Alice Mitchell
Amelia S. Onorato and Luanne Rice
Providence Art Club
Slater Memorial Museum

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Support for this exhibition was provided by CT Humanities (CTH), with funding provided by the Connecticut State Department of Economic and Community Development/Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) from the Connecticut State Legislature.