Living Indigenous
2026-02-28 10:00 - 2026-08-23 16:00 (America/New_York) | Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Pkwy, Wilmington, DE, 19806, United States
Living Indigenous – Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington, DE)

The Delaware Art Museum is closed on Monday and Tuesday

Dates: February 28 – August 23, 2026
Price: Free with museum admission
Location: Delaware Art Museum, Gallery 9, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, Delaware
Explore contemporary Indigenous creativity at Living Indigenous, an exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum that celebrates the work of Indigenous artists living in or connected to the Delaware community. Developed in partnership with the Nanticoke Indian Museum, the exhibition highlights artistic voices that reflect cultural heritage, identity, and community connections.
The exhibition brings together intergenerational artists, offering perspectives that link history, cultural traditions, and modern Indigenous experiences. By centering these voices during the United States’ 250th anniversary era, the exhibition emphasizes broader stories of the inhabitants of Turtle Island, connecting past knowledge with present-day artistic expression.
Visitors will encounter a diverse range of artwork—from painting and mixed media to contemporary interpretations of Indigenous identity. Additional works and ephemera by Indigenous artists are installed throughout the museum’s permanent galleries, expanding the narrative beyond a single exhibition space.
Exhibition Highlights

Artwork by Indigenous artists connected to the Delaware region
Collaboration with the Nanticoke Indian Museum
Intergenerational perspectives linking tradition and contemporary life
Additional Indigenous works are displayed across the museum galleries

Venue: The Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington connects visitors with American art, illustration, and contemporary exhibitions through rotating shows, educational programs, and cultural events.

Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life
2026-03-15 11:00 - 2026-07-23 16:00
Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life
March 15, 2026 – June 7, 2026

Open Wednesday–Monday. Closed Tuesdays except for special events.

Curator: Kerry Bickford
Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life brings together ten contemporary artists who engage with the long tradition of still life while reframing it for the twenty-first century. Historically a genre associated with technical skill and symbolic meaning, still life has also served as a space for experimentation — a place where artists explore texture, composition, and coded messages about wealth, mortality, and desire.
The exhibition is organized into two thematic sections:
Abundance
This section examines how still life imagery has historically symbolized prosperity and status. The featured contemporary works interrogate systems of wealth, commerce, and exchange — asking how objects signal value and how consumer culture shapes perception. Fruit, fish, flowers, and meat become markers not only of bounty, but of economic power.
Excess
The second section focuses on the environmental and social consequences of overconsumption. Many works incorporate discarded or repurposed materials — bath towels, reclaimed toys, grocery flyers, and other found objects — reflecting on industrial production and waste. These reinterpretations of still life question what remains after abundance tips into excess.
The Brandywine Museum of Art presents John Sloan’s Street Theater, an exhibition exploring the graphic work of John Sloan (1871–1951), a central figure of the Ashcan School. Emerging in the early twentieth century, Sloan and his contemporaries rejected idealized subjects in favor of the realities of modern urban life, particularly in New York City.
Best known for his paintings and etchings of everyday city scenes, Sloan captured sidewalks, rooftops, tenements, shop windows, and neighborhood theaters with both humor and social awareness. While his oil paintings employed loose, modern brushwork, his prints reveal a more intricate approach, using etching to record fleeting gestures, crowd interactions, and private moments glimpsed through open windows.
This exhibition draws from a collection of more than 500 prints donated to the museum by the late Paul Preston Davis, presenting over 50 works that highlight Sloan’s mastery of the medium. The selection underscores his deep interest in human behavior — from children playing in the streets to the rhythms of working-class neighborhoods.
Sloan’s art offers insight into a transformative period in American life. During his lifetime, the city shifted from horse-drawn transportation to automobiles; women’s public roles expanded dramatically; and social norms were reshaped through movements such as suffrage and Prohibition. Through his prints, urban life becomes both stage and subject — a “street theater” unfolding in real time.
Together, the exhibition expands still life beyond decorative tradition, connecting it to urgent contemporary concerns about sustainability, consumption, and economic imbalance. The familiar language of fruit and flowers becomes a lens for examining extraction, production, and responsibility in modern society.

The City on Paper
2026-03-28 10:00 - 2026-08-16 16:00 | Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Pkwy, Wilmington, DE, 19806, United States
The City on Paper – Delaware Art Museum

The Delaware Art Museum is closed on Monday and Tuesday

Dates: March 28 – August 16, 2026
Price: Free with museum admission
Location: Galleries 11 & 12, Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Pkwy, Wilmington, Delaware
Explore urban life through the lens of printmaking in The City on Paper, an exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum featuring 47 drawings and prints that capture city scenes from 1875 to 2007. The exhibition highlights how artists have documented the energy and architecture of cities such as New York, Paris, and Wilmington, portraying grand boulevards, quiet alleyways, towering skyscrapers, and the people who animate these spaces.
Printmaking plays a central role in the exhibition, with works created through techniques including etching, woodcut, lithography, monotype, and screen printing. Drawn entirely from the museum’s own collection, the exhibition includes new acquisitions alongside rarely displayed works, offering visitors a chance to see pieces that are not often on view.
The exhibition features works by 45 artists, including notable figures such as Peggy Bacon, Stuart Davis, John Marin, Martin Lewis, John Sloan, Wayne Thiebaud, and James McNeill Whistler. Together, these artists present a rich visual narrative of city life across more than a century of artistic interpretation.
Exhibition Highlights

47 works on paper exploring city life and architecture

Printmaking techniques including etching, lithography, and screen printing

Artwork spanning more than 130 years of urban imagery

Works by 45 artists from the Delaware Art Museum collection

Venue: The Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington presents American art, illustration, and contemporary exhibitions while offering educational programs and community events throughout the year.

Citizen Artist
2026-04-11 10:00 - 2026-07-19 16:00
Citizen Artist – Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington, DE)

The Delaware Art Museum is closed on Monday and Tuesday

Dates: April 11 – July 19, 2026
Price: Free with museum admission
Location: Fusco Gallery, Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Pkwy, Wilmington, Delaware
Explore the role of artists as community builders in Citizen Artist, an exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum that reflects on the relationship between art, public service, and civic identity. Timed with the United States Semiquincentennial in 2026, the exhibition highlights artists who worked through major federal arts programs designed to support creative workers and strengthen communities.
Beginning with the New Deal arts initiatives of the 1930s, the exhibition examines programs such as the Public Works of Art Project, the Works Progress Administration, the Farm Security Administration, and the Treasury Section on Fine Arts. These programs employed artists who created murals, photographs, performances, and educational programs that connected art to everyday American life.
The exhibition also explores the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) of the 1970s, which funded job programs that many communities adapted to employ professional artists. In Delaware, these efforts helped expand community arts programs and contributed to the development of institutions such as the Delaware Art Museum and The Delaware Contemporary.
Through historical works and contemporary commissions, Citizen Artist highlights how artists have served their communities while shaping cultural life across generations. The exhibition also connects with the statewide Citizen Photographer initiative, inviting Delaware residents to contribute photographs that reflect identity, place, and civic life during the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Exhibition Highlights

Artwork connected to New Deal and CETA artist employment programs

Contemporary commissions exploring the role of artists in civic life

Community participation through the Citizen Photographer initiative

Part of Delaware’s cultural programming for the U.S. Semiquincentennial in 2026
