Historic Northampton, in collaboration with The Northampton Center for the Arts and A.P.E. Gallery, is offering an exciting opportunity to contemporary artists: the Contemporary Art at Historic Northampton exhibit series. Artists are invited to submit a proposal to exhibit work at Historic Northampton which draws on or is inspired by selected objects from the museum's permanent collection. This successful program is entering its second year, making Historic Northampton a destination for art and history lovers alike.   The museum is part of Northampton’s monthly Arts Night Out. Artist Elizabeth Stone, the featured artist for May 2014, created Portrait of Jenny Lind, shown at left (cropped), for the exhibit, Nightingale Uncaged: Jenny Lind in Northampton. Stone was inspired by a portrait of Jenny Lind in the museum's collection.

Artists who would like to apply for a show at Historic Northampton will be required to first visit Historic Northampton to view the designated gallery space. Applicants are encouraged to conduct preliminary research from the museum’s online catalog.  The museum's wide-ranging collection covers the 17th to the 21st centuries and includes photographs, documents, manuscripts, fine art, furniture, ceramics, glass, metals, toys, tools, textiles and costumes. Not all objects have been photographed for online viewing. Printermaker Therese Moriarty created a series of monotype prints for the November 2014 exhibition Splendor and Sorrow: Glimpses of World War I. Moriarity incorporated World War I letters and stories of Northampton soldiers into landscape views of France and the Alps. At left is Letters Home.

Click here to access the museum's online collections catalog.

Submissions for solo and group shows/installations will be considered for October 2015 through June 2016. Two and three dimensional work in all mediums will be considered. Each exhibition will open the Friday of the monthly Arts Night Out in Northampton (the second Friday of each month) and will be on view until the weekend prior to the next Arts Night Out. The gallery dimensions are: 10.5' x 22.75' (there is a 5' wide doorway into the gallery at one end of one of the long walls.) Access to objects and more detailed research from the rest of the collection will be available to artists after acceptance of proposals. Artist Pamela Petro developed the interactive exhibition Hiraeth in Northampton: An Exploration of Longing for the November 2013 exhibition. Exhibit viewers were photographed standing behind a photograph on glass of a gravestone from the Bridge Street Cemetery holding a card with the epitaph of their choice from a Northampton gravestone.

The deadline for submitting proposals is May 15, 2015.