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The Gallery

Shaping Empathy Featuring Rowan

October 12, 2025–March 8, 2026

Shaping Empathy: Featuring Rowen by Hayley Morris encourages visitors to explore aspects of the relationship between a caregiver and child and practice the building blocks of empathy—the skill of understanding and caring about how another person feels. 

Rowen is a stop-motion clay animation video about Morris’s own experience of motherhood, and the powerful ways both mother and child are continuously shaped by one another. The artist’s approach to animation, featured in the exhibit in a separate behind-the-scenes video, is deeply rooted in experimentation with physical materials—paper, clay, fabric, fibers, found objects, and natural elements. She strives to tell stories that are both playful and poetic, blending character-driven and abstract elements with a tactile, sensory quality.
 
Immersed in the space alongside the artist’s work, Museum visitors—children and their own caregivers—can engage with activities designed to support empathy development, and skills such as kindness, perspective taking, and respecting oneself and others. Activities include practicing caring for others by role playing with baby dolls, sharing ways they like to show care by posting notes on a talk-back board, and reading books together to explore different characters’ feelings, perspectives, and ways of offering support.

The Art of Being Green

Artists for Humanity (AFH)
June 1 –September 1, 2025

Menagerie of Movement

By Bernie Zubrowski
October 13 – April 27, 2025

Perspective Play

By Drew Katz
April 14 – September 15, 2024

Slate Lines

By Sarah E. Jenkins
September 24, 2023 – March 24, 2024

Weathered Shapes, Wooden Quilts

By Laura Petrovich-Cheney
September 4, 2023

Small Stories: Vignettes in Blue

By Renee Romero
November 14, 2022 – February 26, 2023

Love and Maya

By Sneha Shrestha
August 6, 2022 – November 13, 2022

Protect Trans Dreams: A Portrait Project

By Noah Grigni
April 13, 2022-July 24, 2022

Looking and Seeing

By Woomin Kim January 28 – July 29, 2021 woominkim.com

Warm & Fuzzy Feels

An Installation by Chanel Thervil
March 23 – July 19, 2020 chanelthervil.com

Sneha Shreshta, also known as IMAGINE

August – December

April 13, 2022-July 24, 2022

Protect Trans Dreams: A Portrait Project

by Noah Grigni

Protect Trans Dreams: A Portrait Project, features a series of large-scale acrylic portraits by artist Noah Grigni (they/them).These portraits, displayed alongside Grigni’s original watercolor illustrations from the children’s book It Feels Good To Be Yourself by Theresa Thorn, celebrate transgender (trans) kids and their visions for the future.

The paintings portray each child on their own terms, in the fantasies they imagined. Some are silly and playful, others earnest and serious. To create these portraits, Grigni connected with 7 trans kids across New England, ranging in ages from 6 to 12 and interviewed them about their dreams. The paintings illustrate the ideas they described, including visions that range from making music and writing stories, to intricate scenes of fallen angels crying tears of joy, and celestial wolves circling in the sky. The scenes depicted in these portraits, painted using soft and vibrant jewel tones, are connected by motifs of stars and flowers, and by simple circles reminiscent of halos framing each child’s head. The halos serve as a reminder that the dreams of trans children—just like the dreams of all children—are sacred, and deserve to be nurtured and celebrated.

The portraits are displayed alongside watercolor illustrations by Noah from the book It Feels Good To Be Yourself by Theresa Thorn. The book was created to introduce and celebrate the concept of gender identity for young readers. The exhibition also features a cozy book nook with drawing prompts focusing on identity and dreams, inviting museum visitors to read, write, and create their own masterpieces highlighting their dreams.