Looking for America, April 10 – July 19, 2026
Hank WIllis Thomas Two Dancers, 2018
Multimedia quilt including sports jerseys
81 x 82 x 2 in. Image courtesy of Hank Willis Thomas.
Looking for America brings together Hank Willis Thomas and a cohort of artists who have worked alongside him over the years, celebrating the profound creative synergy that emerges within a shared studio environment. Anchored by Thomas’s incisive engagement with history, memory, and visual culture, the exhibition examines how ideas circulate, expand, and transform when artists collaborate, support one another, and participate in sustained dialogue.
The exhibition centers on Thomas’s investigations into archival imagery, protest histories, diasporic identity, and the distortions—both deliberate and accidental—that shape the American narrative. Works such as Raise Up, A Place to Call Home (Africa America Reflection), and selections from his retroreflective series interrogate photography’s capacity to both reveal and obscure, reminding us that the stories we inherit are never static. Together, Thomas’s inquiries crystallize the exhibition’s central question: What does it mean to look for America, and whose America are we seeking?
Surrounding Thomas’s contributions are works by artists who have shared space, practice, and discourse with him—Deborah Willis, Andina Marie Osorio, Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster, Adam Easterling, Will Sylvester, Sam Giarratani, Christine Wong Yap, Jennifer Hoffman-Williamson, Karinne Smith, Hector René Membreño-Canales, and Chris Bernsten. Their diverse approaches extend the exhibition’s focus on history, materiality, diaspora, and the image as a site of memory. The resulting constellation reveals a harmony born not of uniformity but of distinction, grounded in curiosity, rigor, and the daily exchange of ideas.
Ultimately, Looking for America foregrounds the power of creative communities—artists raising one another up, reshaping shared visual languages, and generating new meaning through proximity and collaboration. Echoing the line from Easy Rider, “A man went looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere,” the exhibition suggests that America is not a fixed destination but an ongoing search—one that becomes collective, reflective, and, through these intertwined practices, joyously generative.
The exhibition will occupy the Ogunquit Museum of American Art’s temporary exhibition galleries and extend across the Museum’s grounds. Several large-scale sculptures will be installed throughout the gardens, and Thomas and his studio will take on the 2026 mural project—the third commission in the Museum’s ongoing mural series.
Carl Sprinchorn: All the World is a Painting, August 6 – November 15, 2026
Carl Sprinchorn, Lumberjacks, Shin Pond, 1941. Oil on board, 36 x 41 ½ in. Courtesy of Jay DeMartine. Photo by Luc Demers.
The Ogunquit Museum of American Art (OMAA) is pleased to present Carl Sprinchorn: All the World is a Painting, a major exhibition devoted to an underrecognized voice in American modernism. Born in Sweden and arriving in New York in 1903 to study with Robert Henri, Sprinchorn (1887–1971) developed a wide-ranging practice informed by global travel and deep artistic community. His friendships with figures such as Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Marguerite and William Zorach, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, and Florine Stettheimer placed him within the vibrant artistic networks that shaped early twentieth-century American art.
Although long associated with Maine—where he produced some of his most compelling images—Sprinchorn’s career reflects a much broader cultural and aesthetic landscape. The exhibition highlights his deft movement between working-class subjects and scenes of leisure, between intimate portraits and energetic compositions of lumberjacks, hunters, dancers, and swimmers. Together, these works illuminate the artist’s negotiations of identity as a Swedish immigrant, a gay man, and a modern painter attuned to shifting ideas of region, nation, labor, and the natural world.
All the World is a Painting brings renewed attention to Sprinchorn’s contribution to American art, contextualizing his practice within wider discussions of modernism, queer history, environmental concern, and transnational artistic exchange.
This exhibition will run contiguously with a presentation of Sprinchorn’s work at Bates College Museum of Art from October to December 2026. Together, the two projects represent the most comprehensive presentation of his paintings and drawings to date, deepening our understanding of an artist whose relevance continues to grow. Both exhibitions will be bridged by the largest survey of Sprinchorn’s work, to be published by the University of Maine Press.
American Conversations, April 10 – November 15, 2026
Winslow Homer, Untitled, ca. 1883, pencil on paper, 13 ½ x 8 1/3 in. Gift of Helen and Michael Horn, 2022.1.1
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art announces American Conversations, an exhibition examining how artists have contributed to the ongoing dialogue surrounding the idea of “America” over the past 125 years. Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, the exhibition frames “Americanness” as a dynamic, collective concept ever in flux.
Drawing primarily from OMAA’s permanent collection and supplemented by significant loans from Art Bridges and other partners, American Conversations is structured as a constellation of visual dialogues. Each section pairs two works of art, inviting viewers to consider how artists across generations and backgrounds engage with themes central to American identity and experience. Some pairings bring contemporaries together; others create transhistorical encounters that illuminate shared concerns or surprising resonances across time and place.
A defining feature of the exhibition is its evolving nature. Throughout its run, pairings will shift regularly—whether by substituting one work to reframe the other or by introducing entirely new conversational pairs. This approach mirrors the fluidity of conversations shaping American art and life, emphasizing that the meaning of “America” is neither static nor singular.
The rotating structure also enables OMAA to share a wider range of collection works, including artworks that are seldom on view. By presenting these objects in fresh contexts, American Conversations encourages visitors to encounter the collection anew and engage in the broader, ongoing process of defining—and redefining—what America has been, is, and might yet become.
Maggie Strater: In Her Own Light, April 10 – November 15, 2026
Henry Strater, “Margaret Strater”, 1924, oil on canvas, Gift of the Estate of Henry Strater, 1988.1.62.
The Ogunquit Museum of American Art is pleased to present Maggie Strater: In Her Own Light, the first exhibition dedicated to the life and work of Margaret (Maggie) Connor Strater (1893–1976). Long overshadowed by the prominence of her husband, artist Henry Strater, Connor Strater forged her own artistic path as a painter, sculptor, and active participant in early twentieth-century art circles. Trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she became an enduring presence within the Ogunquit art community.
This focused exhibition brings together three sculptures by Connor Strater that have never before been on public view, offering rare insight into her distinct formal sensibilities and technical skill. Complemented by archival materials, photographs, and portraits of the artist created by friends and contemporaries, the presentation illuminates the personal and professional challenges she navigated, and the creative triumphs that define her life.
