Current Exhibitions
Upcoming Events
At the Central Library
Interested in proposing an exhibition for the Central Library's Gallery J space? View our Exhibition guidelines.
The Denim Project
Central Library in Copley Square (Gallery J)
April 4 - June 26
Established in 2010, The Boston Modern Quilt Guild is an inclusive group of artists from the Boston Metro Area focused on building a supportive community. Together we create individual pieces as well as collaborative works with a modernist perspective.
In 2023, the Guild launched its Denim Project to spotlight the combination of sustainability and fiber arts, particularly as American landfills process approximately 11.3 million tons of textile waste; globally, denim alone generates over 200 million tons of waste annually.
With the Denim Project, Guild members created denim-centric, entirely upcycled works to not only connect ourselves with one another but also to realize what is possible when we look beyond traditional textile sources into our closets, our cabinets, and our personal histories.
Terrains of Independence
Central Library in Copley Square (Leventhal Map & Education Center)
Thursday, April 3, 2025 - Saturday, March 28, 2026
In the Leventhal Map & Education Center’s exhibition Terrains of Independence, maps will offer an entry point to a reconsideration of the Revolutionary War through the lens of locality and place.
In 1775, a collision of word-historical forces, driven by ocean-spanning empires, conflicts over trade and settlement, and new ideas about society and government, came together in the spark of the American Revolution. Yet although both the causes and the consequences of the Revolution were grand in scale, the war ignited in the tinderbox of a very specific local geography: Boston and the surrounding towns of Massachusetts.
Why did it happen here?
The revolutionary moment was as much about places as it was about people or ideas. In and around Boston, the tensions of Britain’s colonial empire had been rising for decades before the 1770s. The commercial geography of the city and its region, zones of friction between classes and communities, and contestations over the environment all helped to create the conditions that led to an era of revolutionary upheaval in Massachusetts.
Becoming Boston: Eight Moments in the Geography of a Changing City
Central Library in Copley Square (Leventhal Map & Education Center)
Monday, March 31, 2025 - Monday, February 1, 2027
Maps trace out the complicated history of places, and we can use them to document geography in much the same way that we can use diaries and letters to document biography.
In the eight cases of this exhibition, we follow the changing spatial forms of the place we now call Boston—from before the landscape carried that name all the way through the struggles, clashes, and dreams that continue to reshape the city today.
These maps don’t merely depict facts about how the city looked at different moments in its history. Instead, they invite us to contemplate how geographic forces, both natural and human, have constructed the physical and social world around us, through large and small transformations that have transpired over many centuries.
The Leventhal Map & Education Center regularly mount exhibitions in our gallery, located in the historic McKim Building in the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. All of our exhibitions feature scholarly research as well as activities for families, children, and educators. Our permanent exhibit, Becoming Boston: Eight Moments in the Geography of a Changing City, is available anytime our public gallery is open.
Central Library in Copley Square (Special Collections Department)
The year 2024 marks two significant anniversaries relating to Serge Koussevitzky (1874–1951): the 150th anniversary of his birth and the centennial of his appointment as the ninth conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Koussevitzky’s arrival in Boston in 1924 heralded the start of a twenty-five-year tenure that would forever transform both the orchestra he conducted and the state of contemporary classical music in the United States. This display showcases Koussevitzky’s life in Boston and his lasting impact on the world of music.
Teen Central Permanent Rotating Exhibit
Central Library in Copley Square (Teen Central)
This exhibition is in partnership with the Department of Youth Services (DYS) and the DYS Art Showcase program.
Since 2008, the BPL and DYS Metro Region staff have partnered to facilitate monthly library visits to DYS Metro.
This presentation of artwork represents a selection of the work from the annual DYS Art Showcase, which highlights and promotes the talents of young people from across Massachusetts. Each year, BPL Youth Services will select and purchase art from the Art Showcase for display in a permanent, rotating collection at Teen Central. The BPL is proud to support these artists and all at DYS.
For more information, please contact BPL Teen Outreach Librarian Maty Cropley at mcropley@bpl.org.
At the Branch Libraries
Art Exhibit: Audrey Diallo - Viscera
Jamaica Plain Branch Library
Thursday, March 6, 2025 - Wednesday, April 30, 2025
The Jamaica Plain Branch Library, in partnership with The Friends of the Jamaica Plain Branch of the Boston Public Library, is excited to announce the next exhibit of its 2025 annual rotating art program, Viscera, an exhibition by Somerville-based artist Audrey Diallo.
Audrey Diallo's art is inspired by her experiences in West Africa, where the people and communities of Guinea, Mali, and Senegal left a lasting impact. Her work captures the beauty and wisdom she encountered, drawing on the region’s life, art, and nature. "Some experiences are beyond words," Diallo explains, "but on canvas, I can express them fully."
Viscera refers to the body’s internal organs, symbolizing life’s unseen core. Diallo explores the mystical ties between animal forms and ancestral spiritualism through black-and-white silhouettes on vibrant backgrounds, often featuring women as spiritual guides and caretakers in everyday rituals. This exhibit highlights the soft, essential roles people play in society, blending spiritual and cultural symbolism.
More information about Audrey and her work is available on her website, opens a new window. Additional information is also available on the Friends of the Jamaica Plain Branch Library website, opens a new window.
This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of The City-Wide Friends of the Boston Public Library, opens a new window, a volunteer, community-based organization that seeks to enhance public awareness, recognition, status and financial support of the library system through advocacy and education.
Michael Lewy - Artifacts: City of the Forgotten
Connolly Branch Library
Wednesday, April 16, 2025 - Saturday, June 14, 2025
The Connolly Branch is proud to feature work by visual artist Michael Lewy on display from April 15 - June 15, 2025.
About the Exhibit:
My work has always been shaped through technology, using machines, a camera, or a computer as intermediaries to create art. This past year, I set out to learn how to paint and draw. I failed, at least in the traditional sense, but failure often leads to something unexpected.
I scanned those rough paintings into the computer, using them as texture maps applied to 3D digital models. The process transformed the paintings into digital objects. The marks and lines created divots and wear, making them look like they had been weathered over time.
They felt like totems from a lost civilization—relics of something left behind, buried under the weight of forgetting. It made me think about history and what happens when we forget the past. What happens when we live in a permanent present? All one has to do is look around to see the consequences.
About the Artist:
Michael Lewy is an artist who works in a variety of media including photography, video, and computer graphics. He received his MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 1996; He has been working at MIT as an office administrator since 2000 and also works as an illustrator for such clients as the New York Times Book Review and HiLow books. He is the author of Chart Sensation, a book of power point charts and has shown at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Pacific Film Archives, and Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston. He currently lives in Jamaica Plain, MA, with his wife and daughter. More information may be found on his website: https://mlewy.com/
Roslindale in Paint - Wendi Gray and Richard Pepp
Roslindale Branch Library
Thursday, April 17, 2025 - Friday, May 30, 2025
The Roslindale Branch, in partnership with the Friends of the Roslindale Branch Library, are proud to host a collection of work by local artists: Wendi Gray and Richard Pepp. This exhibit is on view from Thursday, April 17 through Friday, May 30 (during operational hours).
About Wendy Gray:
I am a Plein Air painter and I live in Roslindale. I enjoy working in various mediums like oil pastel, oil paint, casein, gouache, and soft pastel En Plein Air, but I also enjoy painting from life indoors as well. I’m inspired by the outdoors and like painting streetscapes the most. I will paint anything though. I love light and how it transforms something very simple into something a little more interesting to look at. Painting outside on the street and inside local businesses has enabled me to connect with my community in a really unique way and I am grateful for that.
About Richard Pepp:
After I retired after almost half a century of teaching college English, I thought I needed a hobby as well, and I decided to take a class to learn how to paint with watercolors. After all, I reasoned, I used watercolors as a kid; how hard could it be? I quickly learned that people who knew painting said, “Oh yeah, watercolors, that’s the hardest.” Over the next few years I took other classes, mostly of the adult ed “paint what you want” variety. With very little formal instruction, I filled up notebooks with sketches, many of them portraits drawn quickly as I rode the Orange Line to my adjunct job. (Nobody ever looked up from their phone.) Looking for a broader scope and inspired by the Gloucester paintings of Edward Hopper, I decided to paint what I saw in Roslindale. Working from sketches, photos, and en plein air painting, sometimes with Wendi Gray, these watercolors reflect what I’ve seen on the walks that my wife Adria and I have taken for many years, around the neighborhood, to the square, past houses, busy streets, cars, and, blessedly, the Arnold Arboretum.