Aesop’s Fables have long been used to teach moral lessons, like the ones above, to people of all ages. Aesop (ca. 620–564 BCE) may be a work of fiction himself, but various ancient authors describe him as a once-enslaved storyteller of incredible wit and attribute to him short stories with moral lessons and animal characters.

Radioactive Inactives: Patrick Nagatani & Andrée Tracey presents a series of 11 fictional portraits depicting people in highly constructed sets resembling domestic interiors. Each subject or set of subjects is placed between a television and a large window frame through which we see a red mushroom cloud rising threateningly into the sky.

The creative process of many abstract painters is highly visible in their finished artworks. Vigorous brushstrokes, saturated canvases, and atmospheric surfaces all demonstrate the expansive use of the medium.

The homelands of the ancient Maya spanned a vast region that today includes central and south Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. Maya peoples expressed their cultural practices and belief systems through distinct artistic styles and a hieroglyphic writing system. Over time, many pieces of pottery have been removed from ancient Maya sites without archaeological excavation. Even though knowledge of where vessels came from is lost, they can nevertheless offer many insights about Maya artistic production.

In the 1850s many artists from Boston, New York, and other eastern cities were establishing their reputations by painting landscapes of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Dedicated to capturing the natural beauty of Mount Washington and other regional high peaks, they rendered sweeping views of these rock formations from scenic vantage points such as the Intervale, or bottomlands, of North Conway and Lake Winnipesaukee.

This dynamic selection of 20th- and 21st-century artworks from the Museum’s permanent collection explores the ways that art can speak to or question the formal, physical, environmental, social, and institutional structures of our world. Here you will encounter the work of Robert Reed, whose abstract paintings and collages contain coded references to his life and memories.

Drawn from the permanent collection of The Fralin Museum of Art, the works of art on view in the Joanne B. Robinson Object Study Gallery highlight the role of the collections in teaching.