Painted sculpture of a tan skinned woman in a cream dress and blue headpiece, with one hand to chest.

Permanently on view

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The Permanent Collection at Danforth Art consists of approximately 3,500 objects in all media. The Museum has been building the collection since its founding in 1975, and actively collects and holds examples of American Art in all media from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

Danforth Art Museum’s mission is to collect, document, preserve, display, and interpret original works of art and the resources in its care in order to uphold and advance the academic goals and core values of Framingham State University and to enrich the community at large. The museum seeks to educate and inspire students, faculty, and the public through access, engaging exhibitions, and educational programming.

The collection includes familiar names from American art history as well as significant holdings of contemporary regional art from both established and emerging artists.

Below, explore a selection of these works more deeply in this online gallery. For more information about the work, please click on the thumbnail version of the artwork below to open a page from our collections database.

Figuration in American Art

Painting of a woman seated in a white dress with a boy standing to her right in a blue onesie in front of a green floral background.

Marie Danforth Page, Portrait of Mrs. Frederick L. W. Richardson

Representations of the figure, particularly through formal portraits, are laden with symbolic meaning. Throughout art history, elements such as pose, costume, and background served as key components in decoding figural representation. Solemnity in pose or elaborateness of dress was meant to convey history, class status, and, more personally, character. Works by Gilbert Stuart, Marie Danforth Page, Gerrit Beneker, and other collection artists from the nineteenth century to the present day depict the myriad ways in which monumentality in figuration can be deployed to create a social identity.

Painting of a man from the knees up, wearing a blue collard shirt and a black leather apron and gloves. He is light skinned, blue eyed, and short brown hair, looking diagonally to the left. Behind him are various steel working objects and a large crane moving metal objects in a hazy environment.

Garrit A. Beneker, Man at Steelworks

Realistic painting of an older white man with short white hair and a ruddy complextion. He is depicted from the chest up, wearing a black coat with wide lapels and a white undershirt. The background is primarily solid brown-red.

Gilbert Stuart, Dr. Nathaniel Coffin

Woman in a red dress standing on a grey table amongst various foods and serve ware with a white cat at the top right corner of the table.

Haley Hasler, Self-Portrait as a Woman Serving a Meal

Painting of a man with yellow-peach skin, wearing a deep brown-green jacket. He has wide, narrow eyes and short grey-white hair.

Jon Imber, Portrait of Philip Guston in a Green Coat

Portrait painting of an older woman, seated from the waist up, with light skin, wearing a brown empire dress and tan shawl and lacy top. Her light brown hair is under a white lacy cap.

Gilbert Stuart, Mrs. Nathaniel Coffin

Abstract portrait painting of a face looking straight out, with light skin, short red hair, yellow painted lips, and red and blue eyelashes. The face has deep shadows on the cheeks and forehead, and the background is a similar shade to the person's skin color.

Susanna Coffey, Self-Portrait (Reverse Head, Sepia)

Portrait painting of an older woman from the waist up, seated, wearing a fir coat, several layers of clothing in red, blue, and white. She is light skinned, looking out at the audience, and her grey hair is up under a blue cap.

Florence Hosmer, Woman with Blue Cloche Hat

Nathan Goldstein, Jackie

Portrait painting of a woman in 19th century clothing, with a white ruffled neck and lacy bonnet with blue ribbons. Her black hair is pinned up in curls and she has a wide gold belt buckle at her waist and a red shawl around one arm.

Albert Gallatin Hoit, Mrs. Hannah Parsons Keegan

Portrait panting of a light skinned woman, seated, facing to the right, wearing a plain yellow dress with decorated sleeves. Her hair his blond and curled under and she is holding a paper in her hands.

Ivan Gregorovitch Olinsky, Pleasing News

Portrait painting of a man in a 19th century black suit with tall neck. He is seated with a red curtain behind him to the right. He is facing to the left looking out at the audience, with short balding hair.

Chester Harding, Portrait of Abel Phelps

Portrait painting of a man with light skin and brown hair. His face is elongated and shadowed, and he is wearing a green blazer top, with one arm up at his chest holding a paintbrush.

Jack Kramer, Self Portrait

New England Academic Traditions

Outdoor scene in dark colors with a pale nude woman being carried off by a centaur in the upper left corner. A red drapery is flying out and behind the woman.

Phillip Leslie Hale, Deianira, Wife of Hercules, Being Carried Off by the Centaur Nessus

Boston was a rich cultural capital at the turn of the twentieth century, yet it was also a city that struggled with modernism. However, artists of The Boston School could be both vibrant and progressive, and their work mirrored the time in which it was created. Both the women and men who studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts used intensive figure studies to help establish a distinctive style that positioned Boston as a city wavering on the cusp of the modern era. While some artists were more eager for change than others, creating a truly modern art in New England worked a circuitous path before blossoming in a number of new and expressive manifestations. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the places where the historical and the modern met was through the landscape. Works by artists known as The Boston Five reference a more unsettled, and modern, landscape view.

Painting of six women of various ages in black dresses and white caps seated by an old stone building along a dirt road.

Charles Sprague Pearce, A Village Funeral at Brittany

Painting of a woman in a very wide, ornate gold frame. The woman is standing in front of a red and gold background. She has pale skin, hair piled up on her head, and is wearing a glittering black dress with a transparent gold shawl around her shoulders.

Phillip Leslie Hale, Glitter

Painting of an attic space with an angled wood beam ceiling. The room is a deep tan, and there is a woman, seated facing right, looking at a small mirror. She is wearing a yellow dress and behind her on the opposite wall are dresses and a hat hanging around a rectangular mirror propped up on a table.

Marion L. Pooke, The One Night Stand

Zoomed in detail of an abstract bird shape in gold and black outlines on a grey-black smooth background.

Grace Hartigan, Cellini Cup

Still life painting with a deep brown textured background. There are four pieces of worn, tan paper with different symbols and writing on the fronts. Across are four different sized keys hanging vertically at different heights. On the right half of the painting are three brown leaves.

Conger Metcalf, Deception with Keys (Inganno con Chiave)

Realistic landscape painting of a calm body of water with a sloping spit of land on the far right with red and orange trees. In the background are tall rounded mountains and a blue sky with gold and purple clouds.

Jasper Francis Cropsey, Lake George

Realistic landscape painting with a stony outcrop on the front left and a slop of red grass to the right. There are pine trees behind this followed by a far off view of fields and trees, two ponds, and rounded mountains with a clouded sky.

Albert Bierstadt, Near North Conway, New Hampshire

Portrait painting of a cream skinned man, seated, wearing a grey suit. He has short dark hair and a large beard. One hand is in his pants pocket while the other is leaning on a desk next to the chair that has papers and a nude figurine on top.

William Paxton, Portrait of the Artist’s Father

Portrait painting of a woman in a high necked white shirt, black bow at her neck, and a black hat seated in a green chair. Her brown hair is pinned up under her head with cream skin and calm expression while looking downward.

Marion L. Pooke, Portrait Study in Profile

Winter landscape painting with a snow covered ground and a leafless tree. Behind it is a collection of pine trees. Towards the top center behind the main tree is the hint of the sun with a wide glare ring around it.

Robert Woodward, Storm Sun

Expressionist painting of a dreary winter scene. The sky and ground are mottled shades of grey with a large leafless tree in the foreground. In the background are a few groupings of two story yellow houses with red chimneys.

Max Weber, Untitled (Winter Scene)

Drawing of woman in top hat holding a cane, with arm around a horses neck

Edmund Charles Tarbell, Mary and Newcastle Poppy

Abstract landscape painting of a harbor with a small dock and sail boat in the foreground. Behind is a sandbar with some grass and rocks. The background is flat with a light blue and yellow sky.

Charles Hopkinson, Nausham Island

Realistic landscape painting with green and brown ground and a small pond on the bottom left. Behind this are a few groupings of trees, windblown, with a white and grey stormy sky.

John Joseph Enneking, Landscape

Painting in Boston

Painting of a man wearing a suit, seated under and looking up at an ornate chandelier.

Karl Zerbe, Under the Chandelier

Boston Expressionism, a movement defined by an attention to figural abstraction, was deeply rooted in early twentieth-century symbolism and expressionism in Europe. Working in Boston from the late 1930s through the 1950s, many of these artists studied under Karl Zerbe at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, although multiple generations of artists working in this expressive vein have followed. Boston Expressionists embraced different aspects of expressionism—the social, the religious, the mystical—but all found commonality in the need to convey a personal and emotional reaction through expressive mark-making. At a time when abstraction was the dominant trend in the art world, these artists retained an element of the figure in their work, using the figure as an expression of the struggle with identifying and codifying an artistic identity.

Three images of a woman in a long purple robe in the kitchen cooking at a stovetop

Suzanne Hodes, Mother Three Times

Abstract painting of swirls of colors, primarily in tans, whites, and black, with a hint of blues and reds at the top center and top right.

Natalie Alper, Votive Song

Red-orange background with a large hand holding up a very small baby in a white onesie.

Barbara Swan, Baby (Aaron at Four Months)

Painting of a mass of blue and red fishes devouring each other in the ocean.

Hyman Bloom, Seascape II

Picasso styled painting with flat, geometric shapes in white, red, pink, blue, and hints of yellow that roughly make an image of a flat figure with wide almond eyes.

Karl Zerbe, Archaic Figure

Painting of a red flat landscape with four blue crescents with green trees and yellow sky in the background.

Lois Tarlow, As The North River Meets the Sea

Painting of a soft yellow flat background with blue and purple glass bottles spaced evenly apart in a grid pattern, filled halfway with water. Nest to each alternating are lemons or limes, and the shadows are blue going out to the right.

Barbara Swan, Lemons and Limes

Painting with a stained glass window feel. The background is smears of bright red, orange, blue, and green with a netted pattern across in black. There are vertical bars in black connected with arched tops throughout. In the center is a figure made of blues, teals, and yellows of a woman with a flowing skirt and hair, holding a long necked stringed instrument and a bow in each hand.

Esther Geller, Rebec Player

Abstract expressionist painting with a deep black background with hints of white and teal at the top right and red at the bottom left. There are faces in white and teal emerging from the scene, but in half ghostly forms or odd angles.

Hyman Bloom, Séance II

Vertical skinny painting with a dark black-blue background and an abstract skeleton in a flimsy red dress.

Hyman Bloom, Skeleton in a Red Dress

Abstract cityscape painting with red, orange, and yellow buildings all askew. There are figures walking in the streets in front of the old styled city buildings. The sky is shades of red, white, and black.

Lawrence Kupferman, South End Facade

Painting in primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. There is a wide swath of yellow on the bottom half with scattered branches with blue leaves around a red robed figure holding the branches. The figure has long brown hair, a calm face, and a hint of a beard.

Arthur Polonsky, The Flowering Staff of Aaron

Abstract expressionist painting of a young boy kneeling and leaning over a chair, gripping the back rungs of the chair and head pressed against the back. There is a table behind him, against a green paneled wall with a landscape painting above. To the far right is a blue lined section like a long heavy curtain.

Steven Trefonides, The Spell

Abstract painting of three child-like figures, two playing stringed instruments, in front of a green background with black squares scattered throughout.

David Aronson, Three Musicians IV

Abstract painting of an interior room with grey walls with streaks of yellow and blue. There is an orange bed to the left, a man in a grey suit reading a paper seated in the center next to a window. To the right are two tables, a brown dog, and a painting just visible hanging on the wall.

Harley Manlius Perking, Interior

Contemporary, Regional Art

Landscape painting in soft colors with trees on either side of a small brook.

Robert Ferrandini, “Here the eye ultimately composes itself…”

Danforth Art is committed to the work of contemporary regional artists, and is proud to be the home for the Annual Juried Exhibition and the New England Photography Biennial. The museum has significant holdings across media from artists who worked to shape a vibrant artistic tradition in and around Boston, and those who are actively engaged with the art scene throughout New England. Their works reference art historical traditions while remaining boldly contemporary.