On Exhibit Now

Currently in Our Galleries

Being Seen: Celebrating SouthCoast Pride
A community-driven public art statement expressing unity throughout the region

Outdoor Public Art: On display beginning January 12
Gallery Show Dates: February 13-March 13, 2026
Opening Celebration: Saturday, February 14, 3:00-5:00pm
FREE and Open to the Public

DATMA presents “Being Seen: Celebrating SouthCoast Pride,” a temporary public art installation, exhibition, and educational initiative honoring the LGBTQ+ community. First debuting to the public on June 12, 2025, as part of New Bedford’s Pride Block Party, this project will tour 4 SouthCoast MA municipalities by its close in November 2026.

Using upcycled textiles, the design was produced under the direction and mentoring of NY-based textile artist / LGBTQ+ activist Liz Collins who served the project as the Visiting Creative Director. This collectively-created, public art installation includes collaboration with the SouthCoast MA LGBTQ+ Network, the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA), and about 100 SouthCoast residents and organizations who have either donated materials or created a panel for the public art installation.

An accompanying indoor gallery exhibition provides deeper significance to the public art component while also connecting our region with this important movement. The exhibit includes a community salon-style art installation of LGBTQ+ artists from a Call-For-Art organized by SouthCoast artist Kate Frazer Rego, accompanied by a history of the Pride Movement with a focus on the legacy of local figures such as David B. Boyce (1949-2014). Boyce was not only a long-time resident of New Bedford but also portrayed in an important, renowned sculpture by artist George Segal, “The Gay Liberation Monument.” Additional local figures will include local residents directly involved with advocating for Massachusetts’s Marriage Equality Act that paved the way for rest of the nation.

The artwork and indoor exhibition was first displayed in June 2025 on the facade of New Bedford City Hall, and is now traveling to locations across the SouthCoast inviting our entire region to experience this significant message in their own community, including:

June 2025 — City Hall, New Bedford & Gallery X
September 30 – October 30th, 2025 — UMass Dartmouth CVPA, University Gallery
February 13 – March 13, 2026 — Marion Art Center
June 2026 — Fall River, MA

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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Jodi Stevens

EXHIBITION COMMITTEE

Chair
Philip Tifft

Maria Bayazid
Kate Corkum
Sharon Giblin
Andrea Green
Elizabeth Howland
Harriet Ingerslev
Bernie Klim
Sarah Mitchell
Alice Shire

Coming Soon to Our Galleries

Common Waters: Once Removed, Always Returning
Susan Darwin & Lou Schellenberg

A community-driven public art statement expressing unity throughout the region

Show Dates: March 21 - April 17, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 21, 3:00-5:00pm
FREE and Open to the Public

The Marion Art Center is pleased to present its newest exhibition, Common Waters: Once Removed, Always Returning. The show features the art of Lou Schellenberg & Susan Darwin. Each artist will command a floor at the MAC for this exhibition. Both artists work from observation, reference, and memory, creating colorful paintings filled with experiences of places they know and travel to. In addition to having successful lifelong careers in art, Susan and Lou are cousins who share a love of Buzzards Bay, where they have common roots.

Susan Darwin is in the midst of her 10-Year Location Series which increasingly brings her to remote locations. Susan began her 10-year Location Series in 2020, turning her attention to a different location each year and creating 20 paintings annually that serve as a visual essay of what that location inspires and what it means to her. In a hurried world, where we are all caught up in our own stories, this series examines how a location can have the power not only to define us, but to awaken us and hopefully teach us to be here at any given moment.

Starting at a grand property on the banks of the Hudson River, she painted natural objects and tranquil scenes at the Locust Grove Estate in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 2020; produced a variety of paintings having to do with New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 2021; made works pertaining to life and land in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 2022; captured the diversity of the towns, flora, and fauna of New Jersey in 2023; and then traveled the East Coast in 2024, painting a 6.5-pound lobster and other sea creatures as well as vistas from Newfoundland to Florida. In the sixth year of the series, 2025, she traveled Cross Country looking for inspiration. Darwin says:

This past year took me to California and up the West Coast to Oregon. I was also able to paint in Detroit and Las Vegas. One year is not nearly enough time to cover the ground I had intended with “Cross Country,” but the assignment nevertheless gave me an abundance of options to explore. The Location Series is meant to highlight all there is that is explorable, near and far. I’m interested in going to places and looking for paintings.

Lou Schellenberg shares paintings that are inspired by decades spent along the North East coast from Massachusetts and Maine to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. She is a visual artist who divides her year painting in Pennsylvania, and Nova Scotia, Canada. Lou was raised in NY and New England and has a deep connection to the northeast coast. Living both rural and city experiences has influenced her life and work. For over thirty years Schellenberg’s landscape paintings have combined observation and invention, creating paired down compositions of dwellings and structures in the landscape and her surroundings. After receiving an MFA (SUNY Albany), she moved to Pennsylvania and taught as an Associate Prof of Art for 20 years.

Schellenberg has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows in the US and Canada. Her paintings and public commissions are in many collections including Penn Medicine, The Milton S Hershey Medical Center and LL Bean, Maine. Her artwork is currently represented by The Willard Gallery in Maine, Blue Print Gallery in Dallas Texas, Warm Springs Gallery in Virginia and Keisendahl and Calhoun, PA.

darwin Statement