City Hall Galleries
The galleries at Boston City Hall foster a vibrant local art scene by diverse artistic voices, presenting memorable exhibitions that engage, challenge, and reflect the city's community.
Update: We are accepting submissions for a show featuring emerging artists at the City Hall Galleries! Submit your artwork by October 20, 2024.
You can find information about the galleries, as well as what's currently showing, on this page.
Events
EventsExhibits | September 23rd - November 1st, 2024
ExhibitsLocation: The Mayor’s Neighborhood Gallery, 2nd Floor
Presented by the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center’s Faith-Based Cancer Disparities Network, this photographic exhibition showcases the resilience and hope of local cancer survivors from the Greater Boston area. Captured by Sam Ogden, these portraits offer a glimpse into glorious, triumphant and fulfilling lives.
To learn more about this project please visit Faith-Based Initiatives - DF/HCC.
Location: The Scollay Square Gallery, 3rd Floor
The Menino Arts Center proudly announces their 35th Annual Scollay Square Members Exhibition. The show features work from over 40 different Hyde Park Art Association members across different mediums and is curated by Sasja Lucas.
To learn more about this exhibition please visit Current Exhibits – Menino Arts Center.
Awards juried by Mariana Rey, Julia Ryan and Alexandra Paul Zotov will be announced at the reception.
Location: The Mayor’s Office Gallery, 5th Floor
Jennifer Jean Okumura's solo exhibition invites people to celebrate the beauty and resilience of the human spirit. Drawing inspiration from the diverse landscape and rich cultural heritage of Boston, Okumura's artwork explores themes of immigration, identity, and the power of creativity. Through her gestural marks, Okumura captures the essence of the joie de vivre and the enduring joy of human connection.
“My work is centered around the main idea of being nowhere and everywhere, waltzing around cultural boundaries with beliefs and traveling through form and energy, attempting to incorporate conflict, balance, and harmony to shape the work's influences, thoughts, and hope for the same thing and shared moment.”
To learn more about this exhibition please email jenniferoku25@gmail.com or visit https://jenniferjeanart.com/home.html.
Location: The Mayor’s Office Gallery Display Case, 5th Floor
This exhibition showcases the work of four emerging ceramicists whose practices explore the intersection of materials, memory, and personal narratives. Through their abstract forms and tactile surfaces, Olivia Leigh Curtis, Claire Pellegrini, Charlene Tsai, and Cheyenne Yu invite viewers to engage with the materiality of their work and contemplate the interplay between the physical and the emotional.
Olivia Leigh Curtis (she/her) is an emerging glass and ceramic artist. She holds a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in glass. Her process-based work is composed of glass, ceramics, and metal, and is driven by experimenting with phenomena across media. She has shown work in MassArt’s 6th Alumni Biennial, the 2023 MassArt Auction and the Glass Art Society's 2023 Member Exhibition. She was a recipient of the Stephen D. Paine Scholarship and her work has been recently published in Corning’s New Glass Review 42.
Claire Pellegrini (they/she) is a mixed-media artist and botanist from New England. They seek to highlight the small, overlooked, and impermanent details of the natural world in a permanent medium. Their practice includes slip cast ceramics, often imitating the form of bones they have found themselves (such as a seal vertebrae or an opossum skull). All of their work is treated as collage, meshing and remixing natural and human-made forms. They are interested in exploring the distance and divide that humans place between themselves and the natural world.
Charlene Tsai (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist, working with acrylic paint, fibers, and ceramics. She draws inspiration from the textures of both manmade and natural materials and is fascinated by the interplay between hard, unyielding surfaces and soft, pliable forms. Through her work, she explores various relationships, with a particular focus on the connection between the mind and body, the physical manifestation of stress. Her works invite active engagement from the viewers, evoking familiarity of everyday objects while remaining ambiguous. Charlene was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, and currently lives in Boston, MA.
Cheyenne Yu (she/her) is a San Francisco born, Boston based artist who recently graduated from a BFA in Studio Art from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her work is a tapestry of diverse influences, deeply rooted in the power of touch and sensory experiences, while harboring a profound desire to explore and reflect on family relationships, memory and Asian American identity.
Location: The Emerging Gallery, 8th Floor
The exhibition ‘Cuerpo, amores y saberes; arte y representación afrocolombianas’ (Body, love and knowledge; Afro-Colombian art and representation) brings together the work of 4 artists whose aesthetic languages comprise photography, animation, illustration and portrait intervention. The show aims to highlight healing practices and knowledge about the body, forms of collective care, amatory arts and communion with ancestors, preserved in traditional and ancestral medicine practices among Afro-Colombian communities. These expressions of knowledge also comprise ways of carrying the body and contesting notions of privilege and distinctions created in colonial times, to question them and affirm other ways of being and exist in the world.
These types of care, the treatment of ailments and illnesses of the body and spirit, and the relationship with ancestors are manifestations of each culture's capacity to produce and preserve the knowledge that guarantees its survival. Although these modes of knowledge have often been dismissed by hegemonic knowledge, they have long proven their effectiveness in weaving community and reproducing other ways of being and living in community.
This exhibition includes artworks by Joyce Rivas Medina, Jeison Riascos (El Murcy), Wilson Borja Marroquín and Margarita Ariza Aguilar.
To learn more about this exhibition please visit Consulado de Colombia en Boston.
Cuerpo, amores y saberes;
arte y representación afrocolombianos
Organizada por Consulado de Colombia en Boston , curaduría por el PhD. Carlos Correa Angulo
La exposición “Cuerpo, amores y saberes; arte y representación afrocolombianos" reúne el trabajo de 4 artistas cuyos lenguajes estéticos comprenden la fotografía, la animación, la ilustración y la intervención del retrato. Tiene como objetivo resaltar las prácticas de curación y los conocimientos sobre el cuerpo, las formas de cuidado colectivo, las artes amatorias y la comunión con los ancestros que se conservan en forma de prácticas de medicina tradicional y ancestral entre las comunidades afrocolombianas. Estas expresiones de conocimiento también comprenden formas de llevar el cuerpo y de disputar las nociones de privilegios y distinciones que tienen una matriz colonial, para cuestionarlas y afirmar otras formas de ser y estar en el mundo.
Esta exposición muestra que, como cada pueblo, cultural y grupo social, las y los afrocolombianos han preservado conocimientos que se transmiten de forma oral, a través de la escucha y la observación y por otras formas menos institucionales de aprendizaje. Estas formas del cuidado, el tratamiento de padecimientos y enfermedades del cuerpo y del espíritu y la relación con los ancestros son una manifestación de la capacidad que tiene cada cultura para producir y preservar los conocimientos que garantizan su sobrevivencia. Aunque estos modos de conocimiento han sido muchas veces desestimados por los saberes hegemónicos, han probado, durante mucho tiempo, su efectividad para tejer comunidad y para reproducir otras formas de ser y vivir en colectivo.
La exposición incluye obras de Joyce Rivas Medina, Jeison Riascos (El Murcy), Wilson Borja Marroquín y Margarita Ariza Aguilar.
Long-term installations
Long-term Installations- Location: 3rd Floor Mezzanine, Boston City Hall
- Dates: Ongoing
We Belong is a light-based public art installation with the intent to promote ideas of belonging and inclusion among communities in Boston. In LED neon, the work forms the text “We Belong – here – together – guided by the same stars” in a circular format, with a constellation that maps and connects Boston’s neighborhoods.
With the support of a City of Boston Transformative Public Art grant, the installation will travel to multiple Boston neighborhoods in 2022-2023, beginning with the East Boston Social Centers from July-September 2022. Local residents are invited to participate in the project by sharing what the concept of “belonging” means to them.
Yu-Wen Wu is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Boston. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Wu’s subjectivity as an immigrant is central to her artwork. Arriving in the United States at an early age, her experiences have shaped her work in areas of migration—examining issues of displacement, arrival, assimilation, and the shape of identity in a new country. Passionate about data, mapping, and its storytelling, Wu’s work lies at the crossroads of art, science, politics, and social issues. Her wide range of projects include large-scale drawings, sculpture, site- specific video installations, community-engaged practices, and public art. Wu has been awarded numerous grants, exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is included in several private and public collections.
The Mayor's Poetry Program is an annual program in which Boston residents are invited to submit poems to be displayed throughout City Hall and in an online gallery for one year. The theme for 2024, selected by Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola, was "Resistance".
All poems are displayed next to the elevators on the south side of Boston City Hall, except two noted below, which are located at the north side elevators.
First floor- Sam K Yoon, "Soup"
- Danielle Fontaine, "Praise"
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Katya Zinn, "Dog in a Graveyard"
- Frances Sharples, "Fingerpainting" (North Elevator)
- Quintin Collins, "Remember, God Called Job Down To Answer For His Crimes"
- Sarah Nnenna Loveth, "Imperialism" (North Elevator)
- Anna-Celestrya Carr, "Dyslexics Of The World"
- Ming Li Wu, "Parajito"
- Zoe Gadegbeku, "Living Rhyme"
- Petra Dankova, "Little Girl In Hub Resistance"
- Mariona Lloreta, "Arabesque"
- Ida Rahimi, "The Only Way Out Is The Way Through"
- Cheryl Clark Vermeulen, "Goths At A Cemetery"
- Ali Tervo, "Stretch Marks"
- Myles Taylor, "I Put My Makeup On In The Car"
Gallery locations
Mayor's Art Gallery
The Mayor's Gallery exhibits work by Boston area artists who have received recognition for their artwork through grants, awards and other types of public display.
Directions: It's located on the 5th floor of City Hall. From City Hall Plaza or Congress St. entrances, take South Elevators to the 5th floor, follow signs to Mayor's Office: signage marks the gallery entrance. If you are planning to attend an opening you must enter from Congress Street.
Mayor’s Neighborhood Gallery
Directions: Located on the 2nd floor near the South Elevators. From City Hall Plaza or Congress St. entrances, take South Elevators to the 2nd floor.
Scollay Square Gallery
The Scollay Square Gallery showcases the many arts organizations and artists community groups that support local artists throughout the City.
Directions: It's located on the 3rd floor/main lobby of City Hall. When entering from Congress St, take elevators to 3rd floor, proceed through lobby, passing the information desk on your right. The gallery is ahead of you. When entering from City Hall Plaza, proceed through lobby, passing the information desk on your right. The gallery is ahead of you. Signage marks the gallery entrance. If you are planning to attend an opening you must enter from Congress Street.
The Emerging GalleryThis is the newest of City Hall's galleries. It showcases Boston's up and coming artists.
Directions: It is located on the 8th floor of City Hall. When entering from Congress Street or Cambridge Street, take the elevators to the 8th floor. The gallery is in the hallway to the left of Room 801, which is perpendicular to the elevators.
Recurring Programs
Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Awards
These annual awards recognize fresh, original and contemporary works of art created by Boston artists.
National Arts Program
The City of Boston's National Arts Program invites City of Boston employees and their immediate family members to submit artwork every year.
