Summer in New England is made for road trips, and we’ll have a list of must-see exhibitions from across the region later this month for those ready to venture beyond Greater Boston. For those staying a little closer to home, Boston’s galleries are gearing up for a strong summer season. From neighborhood spaces to longtime fixtures of the city’s exhibition landscape, these are ten shows we’re making sure to duck into before the season slips away.
We’re also pleased to be supporting a new pop-up art fair at Wayland Town Center this June. Gallery Hang: Wayland Edition will bring together Steven Zevitas Gallery, Robert Klein Gallery, Caira Art Editions, LaiSun Keane, and Praise Shadows Art Gallery for a three-weekend pop-up art fair featuring exhibitions, artist talks, and public programs.
Installation view, “Miren por mi ventana,” Behind VA Shadows, Cambridge, MA, 2026. Courtesy of Behind VA Shadows.
“Miren por mi ventana,” May 24–June 30, 2026
Behind VA Shadows
2 Linden Street, Cambridge, MA
For its latest show, Behind VA Shadows—the DIY space dedicated to showcasing the art of local museum professionals—has teamed up with the Tertulia Latine Artist Collective for “Miren por mi ventana” (“Look through my window,” an apt theme for Harvard Square’s gallery behind glass). Curated by Christopher Carlos Montejo, an artist who works with youth at the MFA and ICA by day, the show features work from twenty artists on themes of latinidad, diaspora, and home, from Rafael Arturo’s tender photo of a front stoop turned beauty parlor to Beatriz Whitehill’s painting Chisme, in which vejigantes seem to eavesdrop on gossip shared around a table. As usual, this small storefront gallery manages to contain multitudes. PS: While you’re in the area, you can check out Behind VA Shadows’ brand-new second space, the even tinier Shadowbox at 1 Brattle, where Isola Murray’s whimsical “Sewerfolk” stars Penny the rat and Midge the pigeon. —Jacqueline Houton
Celeste Diaz Falzone, LESTER LETTERS, 2026. Yarn, embroidery floss, felt, rope, pompoms, 82 x 57 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
“Celeste Diaz Falzone: Works,” May 30–July 11, 2026
The Distillery Gallery
516 East 2nd Street, Boston, MA
There’s a genre of artists who create work that is whimsical and serious at the same time. It’s easy to call it “world-building,” but I think that’s only because our world rarely holds both qualities at once, and we don’t quite know what to do when it does.
At the Distillery Gallery, the space is stuffed with more than thirty works Celeste Diaz Falzone calls her favorite creations from the past two years. Knit and crocheted sculptures are suspended, slouched, tucked into corners, and hung prominently. They feature plush characters with red-lipped smirks, bizarro scenes, and snippets of text. One impressively sized patchwork blanket inextricably spells out “SOUPSTAIN” above dancing creatures with dollar signs on their bandanas and flip-flops on their feet. The exhibition also includes illustrations and a clothing rack of garments made or altered by Falzone, each adorned with her signature toothless faces. They’re affordably priced so I convinced a friend to buy a khaki skirt at the opening.
The sheer output is impressive. Hand-knitting and crocheting are slow, tedious forms of labor, and the density of the installation makes visible the countless hours embedded in the work. Falzone describes her practice as devotional, and I believe her. —Jameson Johnson
Sal Lopes, Silence equals Death, Washington D.C., 1989. Courtesy of Leica Gallery Boston.
“Sal Lopes: Living with AIDS,” June 4–August 9, 2026
Leica Gallery Boston
74 Arlington Street, Boston, MA
In one of the most desperate periods of modern history, the AIDS crisis revealed both the worst and the best of human nature. Between 1988 and 1992, as Boston and the rest of the country grappled with fear and uncertainty, photographer Sal Lopes set out to document how the city responded. He followed three intertwined threads—the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt, the AIDS Action Committee’s Buddy Program, and the daily life of the Boyce family, whose child Brianna lived with AIDS—to understand how Boston confronted the crisis on both public and deeply personal levels. Building on a decade spent photographing Vietnam veterans and the Vietnam Memorial, Lopes created a portrait of a city shaped by grief, care, and collective action. Nearly forty years later, “Living with AIDS” stands as a vital record of compassion and resilience during one of Boston’s most devastating public health emergencies. —Jessica Shearer
Carlos Paronis, Vincent and Soyica, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Storefront Art Projects.
“Where Are All the Black People At?: How We See It,” June 6–July 11, 2026
Storefront Art Projects
83 Spring Street, Watertown, MA
Storefront Art Projects aims to highlight the “exceptional artwork, ideas, and activism by regional artists and makers with our neighborhood and the greater Boston community.” Their latest exhibition, curated by Archy LaSalle, does just that with “Where Are All the Black People At?: How We See It,” featuring the work of photographers Jules Cleophat and Carlos Paronis. The question the exhibition poses about where Black people are, particularly in the art world, is a good one. Data from the Burns Halperin Report in 2022, detailed in Artnet, shows that only “2.2 percent of acquisitions and 6.3 percent of exhibitions at 31 U.S. museums between 2008 and 2020 were of work by Black American artists” and that Black American artists created just 7,370 of the 339,969 objects acquired by those museums over the period studied.
Storefront will tip the scales of representation just a little with this show. The vivid work of Paronis—typically capturing landscapes, objects, and people—focuses on “experimentation with alternative photographic processes as he merges conceptual and documentary work together to share real stories, feelings, and experiences.” These real stories will appear in the artist’s photographs of people surrounded by the city’s natural beauty.
Cleophat’s dynamic and daring work shot from thrilling angles captures the gritty underbellies of subway tunnels and trains alongside soaring skyscrapers, where he climbs high above the city streets to get the best shot. —Jacquinn Sinclair
Lily Fein, Sandy Creek, 2026. Porcelain and glaze, 6 x 6 x 8 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
“Night Blooms,” June 13–July 11, 2026
Lucy Lacoste Gallery
25 Main Street, Concord, MA
Perhaps more than any other medium, ceramics seem to me to be the most OF a place, or rather, places. The clay and minerals harvested from the earth, the water that eases the hand and strengthens the slip, the centuries upon centuries of regionally specific knowledge that informs glaze production and firing techniques. It’s a fitting form, then, to hold artist Lily Fein’s personal and family history in her solo show “Night Blooms.” Guided by a hand‑drawn map of her grandparents’ hometown of Pułtusk, Poland, Fein has created two oil paintings and more than twenty vessels using her preferred method of coiling and pinching the clay, marking them with traces of her lineage—symbolic coordinates for a place she’s never visited but that continues to shape her sense of home. —Jessica Shearer
Cristi Rinklin, Thicket, 2025. Oil and acrylic on aluminum, 40 x 60 inches. Courtesy of Hallspace.
“Learning with Trees,” May 26–August 14, 2026, and June 15–August 1, 2026
Boston City Hall Galleries and Hallspace
1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA, and 950 Dorchester Avenue, Dorchester, MA
Trees are neighbors, but they are not distributed equally. In Boston, access to tree canopy often follows the same patterns as wealth and race, with historically redlined neighborhoods experiencing higher temperatures and fewer of the environmental benefits that trees provide.
Curated by Martina Tanga and organized in partnership with Tree Boston, “Learning with Trees” approaches the urban forest as both an ecological and civic subject across two exhibition locations at Boston City Hall and HallSpace in Dorchester.
At City Hall, Bruce Myren, Joel Janowitz, and just practice (Amanda Ugorji and Sophie Weston Chien) examine the relationship between trees and the built environment, while artists at HallSpace—including Jane Marsching, Yuko Oda, Elizabeth James Perry, and Cristi Rinklin—explore histories of place, stewardship, and ecological interdependence. Across photography, painting, textiles, and installation, the artists position trees as teachers, timekeepers, and community builders. Their works encourage viewers to think beyond the scale of individual lives and consider the larger networks of exchange, cooperation, and care that sustain both forests and cities. —Jameson Johnson
Grandfather on a Bench with Girls, Andrea, Kay, Echa, and Marisa Newtowne Court, Cambridge, MA. Courtesy of the Community Art Center.
“A Place Called Home: Community Art Center,” June 25–August 28, 2026
Street Theory Collective
541 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA
Cambridge and photography have had my heart as long as I can remember, and so I am beyond ecstatic about “A Place Called Home: Community Art Center” at Street Theory Collective this summer! It showcases the archive of photographs from the mid-twentieth century to the present at the Community Art Center (CAC). I love that the CAC’s collection of photographs provides a view of Cambridge from the people who make this New England city so special to me. It’s the youth—parts of families that are not just passing through, but rooted and growing here. Through the camera, they see themselves as much shaped by the city as they are shaping it. From snapshots of kids playing in Columbia Park and breakdancing in the basement of Newtowne Court to spearheading their own youth film festival Do It Your Damn Self! and posing poised on the steps of Washington Elms, we see cornerstones of The Port neighborhood and, for some, familiar faces. In these photographs we have glimpses into the everyday lives and aspirations of children, mostly of color, coming of age in the context of one of the most culturally rich and technologically innovative places in the world. It is an invaluable collection that is sure to fortify all visitors with new perspectives of Cambridge. —Alisa Prince
Emily Eveleth, The Temptation of Chastisement, 2022. Oil and colored pencil on Mylar, 30 x 30 inches. Courtesy of Anderson Yezerski Gallery.
“Bad Optics,” June 26–August 1, 2026
Anderson Yezerski Gallery
460 Harrison Avenue, A16, Boston, MA
If the GoFundMe donation hits your account and no one’s seen your Instagram story, did it even happen? “Bad Optics,” a group show at SoWA’s Anderson Yezerski Gallery, mines the (often amusing) pitfalls of performative benevolence in our increasingly self-obsessed society. Local artists working in a wide array of mediums will depict the many guises of visibility-first generosity and the forces—from politics to consumerism to religion—that reward or reproach altruism calibrated for engagement. It’s a pattern that feels increasingly familiar: The angel on your shoulder has a lot of outfit changes, and she wants you to get her good side. —Jessica Shearer
Kristy Moreno, NO PARKING ON THE DANCE FLOOR, 2024. Stoneware, underglaze, slip, and glaze, 17 x 12 ½ x 11 ½ inches. Courtesy of the artist and Praise Shadows, Boston.
“Punchline II,” July 24–August 8, 2026
Praise Shadows Art Gallery
129 Kingston Street, Boston, MA
Who among us couldn’t use a laugh right about now? Praise Shadows organized the first installment of “Punchline” in New York in the summer of 2022, and I’m pumped to see part two at the gallery’s beautiful new Boston digs this summer. Co-curated by comedian and bowl-cut exemplar Atsuko Okatsuka, her multihyphenate husband Ryan Harper Gray, and Praise Shadows founder Yng-Ru Chen, the show features works by ten women artists with sharp senses of humor, including “hat installations” by Pat Oleszko, ceramic sculptures by Kristy Moreno and Chiara No, and paintings by Madeline Donahue, whose takes on parenthood I find so darn relatable that I suspect she might be spying on me. —Jacqueline Houton
Sonya Tanae Fort, Generations IV, 2025. 24 x 35 unframed. Courtesy of ShowUp.
“The Ties that Bind Us,” July 30–August 9, 2026
ShowUp
524B Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA
In award-winning fine art photographer Sonya Tanae Fort’s images, the everyday moment is made more glorious. Typically shot on black-and-white film, Fort’s rich photographs—like the photo of her parents which hung in Boston’s Museum of Fine Art at the same time the Obamas’ portraits were on display in 2022—capture and preserve connection, intimacy, and lived experience. Sunlight pierces through a vista where a couple kisses tenderly in Sunkissed In A Quiet Place, and in another, a spoonful of food is fed to a child in Dinner with Daddy. Fort’s upcoming exhibition, “The Ties That Bind Us,” on the heels of “In Plain Sight” (currently at the Stoughton Public Library), will feature more than a dozen thoughtful photos where the slight touch of a hand, locked lips, and the proud display of big hair convey the beauty in living, loving, and being. The work pushes audiences to pause long enough to bear witness. —Jacquinn Sinclair
