Boston Art Review: Fourteen Must-See Museum Exhibitions to Check Out in New England This Summer

From the MFA to Ogunquit, these are the museum shows our editors are most excited about this summer.

Excerpt from article that appears in the Boston Art Review

June 11, 2024

Passamaquoddy artist Jeremy Frey has become one of the most awarded and collected Indigenous basket weavers in the country for his contemporary mastery of the Wabanaki weaving tradition. Intricately foraged and woven from fine strands of ash, cedar, and birch bark with porcupine quills and sweetgrass, the tradition has been stewarded for thousands of years by Northeast tribes—particularly the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Maliseet, and Mi’kmac. Frey, who originally learned from his mother, has been instrumental in innovating upon the ancient tradition and bringing the practice into the global contemporary art world. In 2023, the artist became represented by New York gallery Karma. His baskets take on sumptuous forms, sometimes resembling sea urchins or featuring embroidered imagery on the lids. At the Portland Museum of Art, the exhibition featuring more than fifty baskets is the first museum retrospective of a Wabanaki artist.

—Jameson Johnson