Many artists and curators in Greater Boston are contemplating ideas of self, belonging and community this season. “Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ruminates on identity, gender and how society shapes who we are. Artist Brittany Nelson examines queer experiences and the ways human isolation is mirrored by the exploration of space at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. “Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston focuses on how lithography allowed people across economic groups to own and worship devotional art. Check out our list of must-see exhibitions on view this winter.



‘List Projects 34: Brittany Nelson’
MIT List Visual Arts Center
Jan. 15 - March 29

Brittany Nelson is a photographer based in New York City. She develops images, videos and objects in an effort to elicit connections between the exploration of space and the queer experience. Her work revolves around themes of loneliness, isolation and coded language. Nelson is an artist-in-residence at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for life and intelligence beyond Earth. This exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Center will debut new photographs and a moving-image work filmed at the Green Bank Observatory (National Radio Astronomy Observatory) in West Virginia. This observatory contains one of the world’s largest radio telescopes, and it is a well-utilized site for SETI researchers. Nelson also draws inspiration from literature and cinema. Her video work is inspired by “Rebecca,” a novel published in 1938 by Daphne du Maurier that explores a woman’s developing fixation on her husband’s late first wife.