This exhibition brings to light the otherwise invisible facets of migrants’ experiences crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. These contemporary still-life photographs feature the personal possessions of migrants and asylum seekers that U.S. Border Patrol agents confiscated and discarded from 2003 through 2014.

For thousands of years, the rainbow has been a cross-cultural symbol of hope, positivity, and a bit of magic. Dedicated to the celebration of rainbows, Spectrum showcases interactives inspired by the rich and numerous colors of our world. Participatory stations throughout the ARTexperience Gallery encourage visitors of all ages to create a rainbow block print, match colored fiber to emotions, build a colorful town, and more.

Visual Language: The Art of Abstraction presents a selection of abstract, non-representational artworks from Boise Art Museum’s Permanent Collection. A cross-section of abstract artwork, created by the most significant American abstract artists working from the 1980s through the early 2000s, features Color Field paintings, lyrical abstraction, and minimalism.

Ever-present, the sky hugs earth and serves as the backdrop to our world. Early morning mist; stark-blue skies; electric-pink sunsets; black, silent, star-filled nights – in all its shifting forms – the sky is reassuringly there while simultaneously reflecting the temporary realities of our lives back upon us. Portraits of Sky investigates our fascination with the world above, through artist illuminations of clouds, stars, and the sky in its transitory splendor.

Myths, Fables, and Fortunes is a journey of discovery focused on the natural environment of the Northwest. Drawn from the Museum’s Permanent Collection and spanning over six decades, the exhibition highlights our shifting perspectives and connection with the land during a period of dramatic change and development.

Silver Linings celebrates the legacy of artists of African descent spanning the twentieth century through the contemporary moment. It includes Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Christ and His Disciples Before the Last Supper (1908-1909) and the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art’s most recent acquisition of Carrie Mae Weems’s Color Real and Imagined (2014). Silver Linings includes an array of media spanning sculptural works by Elizabeth Catlett and Selma Burke, and photographic works by Lorna Simpson and Renée Cox.

RYAN! Feddersen creates installations and public artworks that invite people to consider their relationships to the environment, technology, society, and culture through participation. The Coyote Now exhibition will include two large-scale, interactive artworks— a site-specific, 55-foot mural that visitors will be invited to color on, and a large, interactive, kinetic sculpture. Feddersen’s mural illustrates an original story of Coyote.

Katazome (rice-paste resist dyeing using stencils) is one of the most important textile processes in Japan, used for centuries to dye kimono. Katazome Today: Migrations of a Japanese Art examines the contemporary evolution of katazome and the metamorphosis of the process through globalization. Diving into the practices of a select group of contemporary artists, the exhibition also shares the many ways these artists honor and carry on the traditions of the technique through their varying interpretations.

Jean LaMarr is an internationally recognized artist, educator, and Native American advocate with ancestral ties to Pyramid Lake, Nevada, and Susanville, California. For decades, her work has sparked powerful and important conversations about cultural stereotypes, representations of Native women, legacies of colonization, and environmental justice.

The Fractured Giant is a site-specific installation by Jacob Hashimoto in BAM’s Sculpture Court and marks his first solo museum exhibition in Idaho.  Combining traditional kite- and pattern-making techniques, printmaking, and collage into a sculptural environment, the artist has created an immersive installation with thousands of thin, hand-made papers.

Using sculpture, painting, and installation, Jacob Hashimoto creates complex worlds from a range of modular components—bamboo-and-paper kites, model boats, and even Astro-turf-covered blocks. His layered compositions reference video games, virtual environments, and cosmology, while also being deeply rooted in art-historical traditions….

Montana-based artist Willem Volkersz (b. 1939) is a significant contemporary artist known for his neon and paint-by-number installations. He was a pioneer in the use of neon in art and developed early and sustaining loves for photography, travel, American roadside culture, Pop Art, and Folk and Visionary Art.

Often considered the art of imitation, the depiction of the still life has been practiced by artists for centuries. From the ancient Greeks to 17th century Dutch painters, from Cubists to today’s contemporary artists, still life endures as a significant form of artistic expression—one that is contemplative and transformative—yet frequently overlooked.

Stephen Towns is a painter and fiber artist whose artwork explores the ways American history influences contemporary society. His work draws visual inspiration from medieval altarpieces, nineteenth-century photography, Dutch wax print fabrics, and from African American story quilt. Guest curated by art historian, cultural producer, and writer Kilolo Luckett, the exhibition features artwork created between 2014 and 2021 that explores the American dream through the lives of Black Americans from the late eighteenth century to present.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was known for his minimalist, often conceptual, installations and sculptures that assembled quantities of a common object, such as a string of lights, stack of paper, or individually wrapped candy, to convey complex meaning and encourage audience participation. Through the manner of displaying the artwork, along with the process of the viewer’s participation, each work became a metaphor for loss and healing, as seen in light bulbs that expire and are replaced, or as papers or candies are taken by visitors and replenished by the art museum. This cycle of depletion and renewal over time is key to the visitor’s experience with, and understanding of, Gonzalez-Torres’s creative practice.

Cuba has a diverse culture and complex history that is both fascinating and often misunderstood. Paradox, dark humor, beauty, sadness, and vulnerability connect the works on view in the exhibition Contemporary Cuban Art. Guest Curator Jill Hartz has conceptualized this exhibition through the lenses of history, identity, and materiality as a structure to draw visitors into their own paths of discovery of contemporary Cuban art. Most of the Cuban artists, whose artworks are featured in the exhibition, have benefited from a free education and meticulous training from a young age. Their extensive knowledge of Western art history and their honing of practice and technique have provided strong foundations for their individual visions and expression.

Using materials often associated with the domestic sphere, such as embroidery, weaving, and fiber elements, Suchitra Mattai creates large-scale installations, sculptures and two-dimensional artworks that navigate her family heritage while also unraveling historical narratives. She reclaims vintage and found materials, such as hand-made saris and other historically rich objects as a way of making sense of the world around her and the multiple cultures she inhabits as an Indo-Caribbean American.

Ideas about the American West, both in the popular imagination and in commonly accepted historical narratives, are often based on a past that never was, and fail to take into account important events that actually occurred. At once, “The West” can conjure images of rugged colonial settlers, gun-toting-cowboys, or vacant expanses of natural beauty. Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea offers multiple views of “The West” through the perspectives of forty-seven modern and contemporary artists.

Re-Framed examines the notion of a shared American identity while recognizing the complexity of factors that determine each person’s cultural and social viewpoints. Featuring many never before shown artworks from the Permanent Collection, Re-Framed presents a multiplicity of artists who offer meaningful insights….

Displayed in BAM’s ARTexperience Gallery, a space designed for children and families, the exhibition highlights a selection of artworks, featuring the use of non-traditional media in surprising and creative ways. One of the most important and personal decisions an artist makes when creating an artwork is the choice of medium. The medium is crucial to….

Outside the Lines is the fourth and final exhibition inspired by Boise Art Museum’s Art Cards, a project designed to encourage engagement with artworks in BAM’s Permanent Collection. Based on the Art Card deck True Colors, this exhibition explores the ways in which artists employ the elements of art and principles of design to convey mood, provoke emotional responses, and communicate with viewers.

Organized every three years by the Boise Art Museum, the Idaho Triennial is a juried exhibition highlighting the quality and diversity of contemporary artistic practices in our state. For more than 80 years, BAM has celebrated the creativity of artists living and working in Idaho, and the Museum’s series of biennial and triennial exhibitions has become a respected and treasured tradition.
The juror for The 2020 Idaho Triennial is Grace Kook-Anderson, the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art at the Portland Art Museum.