New Exhibitions
Our People, Our Places, Our Stories: The African Collection
We will be opening two new exhibitions at the beginning of February. In celebration of our 30th anniversary year, we will be revisiting one of the Bermuda National Gallery’s inaugural collections in Our People, Our Places, Our Stories: The African Collection, which will be displayed in the Humann and Young Galleries.
Part of of BNG’s permanent collection, the African Collection was purchased by the people of Bermuda in 1996 and brings together 40 works representing 22 peoples from 12 countries in Sub-Saharan West Africa, ranging from ritual sculpture to masks and functional objects.
Alongside this, we will be presenting a small selection of striking works by French documentary photographer and film director Catherine de Clippel (above and below) focusing on the architecture and ritual practices of West Africa.
Testing Boundaries: In the Studio with Nancy Valentine and Christina Hutchings
Opening in the Upper Mezzanine Gallery, Testing Boundaries: In the Studio with Nancy Valentine and Christina Hutchings looks at a diverse range of artworks created by a mother, Nancy Valentine (American/Bermudian, 1925-2019, above left), and daughter, Christina Hutchings (Bermudian, born 1953, above right), both former Bermuda Biennial artists and each a pioneering creative in her own right.
The genesis for this exhibition arose from a pairing of works in Illusion and Abstraction: Capturing the Landscape, held at BNG in 2021. There, two artworks – Quarry in Warwick (below, bottom image) and Modern House on North Shore (below, top image) – sat side by side, united in their distillation of the Bermuda landscape into a study of shape, colour and form. Despite being created over 60 years apart and in very different mediums – the first in oils in 1950 and the latter, a mixed-media collage, in 2014 – the synergy between the two was evident.
Testing Boundaries looks at the work of these two Bermudians, whose lives and studio practices are intertwined, and who each forged a unique path both as women and as interdisciplinary artists.
Our People, Our Places, Our Stories: The African Collection and Testing Boundaries: In the Studio with Nancy Valentine and Christina Hutchings will be on display from February through to June.