Addison Gallery of American Art

In late September 2025, I visited Addison Gallery of American Art on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. Part of a prestigious private school, this small art museum is open to the public. Currently, the museum has more than 29,000 items in its collection and focuses on American art from the 18^th through 21^st centuries. I was impressed by the variety found on display, and the regularly of new exhibits, as those I saw were on the display from the beginning of September to December or January.

The impressive building was constructed in the Georgian Colonial Revival style between 1929 and 1930, and designed by Charles Adams Platt of New York City. His other well-known work that I have visited is the Lyme Art Association building in Lyme, CT, which is located next door to the Florence Griswold Museum. The money to build this museum came from Thomas Cochran, who had graduated from the school in 1890. He gave $1.48 million for the building and expanding its initial art collection, which included fifty paintings he had previously purchased. This gift is equivalent to $28.3 million today. His had only two rule: the permanent collection could include only American artists, and the building needed to be named after his friend, Keturah Leitch Addison Cobb, who had passed away a few years before in 1925. The first director of the organization was Charles Henry Sawyer, a 1924 graduate of the school who was only twenty-four at the time of his appointment. After gaining ten years of experience, he went on to direct the Worcester Art Museum and serve with the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) during World War II.

During my trip to the museum, five temporary exhibits were on view. On the first floor was a solo exhibit for Tommy Kha, winner of the Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. Prize for 2025. Hayes was a director of the Addison Gallery and art teacher at Phillips Academy for much of his career. He was known for being good with kids and discovering up-and-coming American artists, his most famous being Alexander Calder. Kha is an avant-garde photographer who takes a new spin on self-portraits. In his exhibit Other Things Uttered, Kha explored his life as a Korean American by taking pictures of his family with life-sized cutouts of himself in the background. This is a unique concept that I have not seen elsewhere, but it could be an inspiration for future group photos or artists interested in “recursive photography”, or photographing photographic images.

A small exhibition In Focus presented nine works owned by the Addison and created by famous 19^th century American artist John Singer Sargent. Perhaps best known for his paintings and sculptures of the American West, including horses and cowboys, Sargent was also known for his portraits, especially a “scandalous” painting of a lady wearing a black dress called Madame X. While the completed painting is held by The Met, sketches are held by the Addison. Nearby, the exhibit Family Portrait included two centuries of home photography, with occasions ranging from joyous to depressing. Downstairs, the museum had a collection of model boats.

On the second floor, Captive Lands contained four galleries filled with items from the Addison permanent collection. The overarching theme was the American landscape, whether this was the overly romantic paintings of the 19^th century, resource extraction during the Industrial Revolution, tourist traps like Niagara Falls, and the many cultures living in the American West. My favorite artwork in this section was Hunting Buffalo by Nockkoist (Bear’s Heart), created in 1876. Nockkoist was Cheyenne, and during the time this drawing was made, he and seventy-one other Native Americans were imprisoned at Fort Marion, St. Augustine, Florida by the U.S. Army. Somewhat bizarrely, they were encouraged to try what we might now consider art therapy by Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt, the same person who coined the term “kill the Indian, save the man” and founded Carlisle Indian School where renown athlete Jim Thorpe was sent as a child.

My overall favorite exhibit was Making Their Way: The Florida Highwaymen Painters. From the late 1950s through the early 1980s, a group of African American artists from Florida, then racially segregated, discovered they could make money selling painted landscapes of the place they called home. They devised a system to point their art as quickly as possible and sold their art door-to-door and out of the trunks of their cars. Their work was rediscovered and gained popularity during the 1990s and early 2000s, especially when art critic Garry Monroe published The Highwaymen and gave the group its name. The picturesque landscapes and bright colors made the artwork fun, while the stories about the artist were entertaining and inspiring.

The last stop on my trip were the Library and Museum Learning Center (MLC). The Library features an extra large model boat, while the MLC features a colorful, modern modern boat called Wanderer. Created in 2006, British-Nigerian artist artist Yinka Shonibare used colorful Ankara fabric for the sails, reclaiming the visual of sailing ships from the 16^th through 18^th centuries that transported his kidnapped relatives across the Atlantic Ocean. Another treat in this section is Balloons by Alexander Calder, a screen-print of primary colors created in 1973.

The Addison Gallery of American Art is open September through July, Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Free on-street parking is located next to the building. The cost of entry is likewise free. The museum is fully accessible for those using a wheelchair or with limited mobility. The building is well-lit but could use a little more seating to prevent museum fatigue. If you are in the Andover area, this is a great place to stop by for a few hours, especially with the frequency of changing exhibits.

Abby Epplett’s Rating System

Experience: 7/10

Accessibility: 9/10