Community Calendar

In Pegasus Gallery and The Niche:

November 14, 2025 – January 23, 2026
Opening Reception on Tuesday November 18, 4:30-6:30pm at Pegasus Gallery.

Chip Rutan photographs the lower Connecticut River Valley and shoreline. His images depict locations he has known since childhood, and captures the momentary and transient nature of place, memory, and of home.

Photographs in Rutan’s “Space and Time” series were initially created with a Polaroid film camera between 2022 and 2023. The resulting images were digitally scanned, edited, and reprinted, while retaining the distinctly imperfect visual qualities of the Polaroid media. His human subjects were photographed from afar, so their likeness is impossible to discern, yet each composition contains a nostalgic and psychologically charged atmosphere of familiarity. Subjects walk along the beach, lounge, swim, and in many works, they appear to blur into the haze of dominant horizon lines. Rutan describes his photographs best as “ephemeral and dreamlike… portal(s) to a simpler time and place.”

Rutan lives in Old Saybrook, and has exhibited his photographs regionally and nationally. He holds an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (at Hartford), and a BA in Mathematics from the University of New Haven.

Pegasus Gallery is located within the library on the first floor of Chapman Hall
Hours: Monday-Thursday: 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m.; Friday: 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. when classes are in session. Winter break hours are Mondays-Fridays 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m.

The Niche is in Founders Hall across from the Registrar’s Office
Hours: Monday-Thursday 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m.; Fridays 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

The Norman Rockwell Museum is honored to present a rare series of early twentieth century lighting advertisements by Norman Rockwell and fellow Golden Age illustrators Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell, Stanley Arthurs, Worth Brehm, and Charles Chambers created for Edison Mazda Lamps, a division of the General Electric Company. These luminous, richly painted works were widely circulated in published advertisements through the 1920s and are on loan to the Museum for the first time through the generosity of GE Aerospace.

Step back into the vibrant world of the 1920s and 1930s with Jazz Age Illustration, a major exhibition exploring the art of popular illustration during this transformative era. Featuring over 100 works by renowned artists such as Aaron Douglas, John Held Jr., and Frank E. Schoonover, the exhibition delves into the cultural impact of illustration during a time of dramatic social change.

Organized by the Delaware Art Museum, Jazz Age Illustration is the first major exhibition to survey the art of popular illustration in the United States between 1919 and 1942—a vibrant and transformative era of innovation, evolving styles, social change, and expanding popular media.

Eight local wineries and vineyards have partnered up to showcase the incredible wine Western Massachusetts has to offer. Guests can start at any of the 8 locations:

- Agronomy Farm Vineyard
- Black Birch Vineyard
- Cameron’s Winery
- Glendale Ridge Vineyard
- Hardwick Winery
- Home Fruit Wine
- Mineral Hills Winery
- Wine Haus & Vineyard

Simply make a purchase to get your passport stamped and then check out the next location. The passport will be open from now until December 20th. A stamped passport gets you entered to win one of eight prizes, with a prize coming from each location ranging from wine to merch to tickets and more!

New England's largest walk through light show. 1 mile trail, over 2 million lights, trees wrapped to heights of over 90' in height

Clara Dreamz is a contemporary take on the classical Nutcracker ballet. Clara's family is celebrating Christmas and she is given a beautiful nutcracker doll by her Uncle Drosselmeyer. Clara's brother becomes jealous and in his jealousy, breaks Clara's new doll. With a little magic and beautiful dreams, Clara sees her doll come to life, repaired, and ready for a battle with the mice and the Mouse King. Clara later experiences The Land of Snow and The Land of Sweets in her dreams where she is rewarded with many fun and beautiful dances in her honor.
Friday, Dec 12, 6:00 pm
Saturday, Dec 13, 2:00 pm

The Norman Rockwell Museum is honored to present a rare series of early twentieth century lighting advertisements by Norman Rockwell and fellow Golden Age illustrators Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell, Stanley Arthurs, Worth Brehm, and Charles Chambers created for Edison Mazda Lamps, a division of the General Electric Company. These luminous, richly painted works were widely circulated in published advertisements through the 1920s and are on loan to the Museum for the first time through the generosity of GE Aerospace.

Step back into the vibrant world of the 1920s and 1930s with Jazz Age Illustration, a major exhibition exploring the art of popular illustration during this transformative era. Featuring over 100 works by renowned artists such as Aaron Douglas, John Held Jr., and Frank E. Schoonover, the exhibition delves into the cultural impact of illustration during a time of dramatic social change.

Organized by the Delaware Art Museum, Jazz Age Illustration is the first major exhibition to survey the art of popular illustration in the United States between 1919 and 1942—a vibrant and transformative era of innovation, evolving styles, social change, and expanding popular media.

Eight local wineries and vineyards have partnered up to showcase the incredible wine Western Massachusetts has to offer. Guests can start at any of the 8 locations:

- Agronomy Farm Vineyard
- Black Birch Vineyard
- Cameron’s Winery
- Glendale Ridge Vineyard
- Hardwick Winery
- Home Fruit Wine
- Mineral Hills Winery
- Wine Haus & Vineyard

Simply make a purchase to get your passport stamped and then check out the next location. The passport will be open from now until December 20th. A stamped passport gets you entered to win one of eight prizes, with a prize coming from each location ranging from wine to merch to tickets and more!

“New Songs for an Old Poet” is a series of four concerts spanning July through December 2025. Organized by long-time Valley vocalist Peter W. Shea, who is also the principal performer, the series presents an enormous variety of songs, all of them musical settings of the great nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose verses have been set to music more than any other poet. All are works that Peter has in some way helped to bring into the world, either by suggestion, commission, or premiere, as part of his thirty-year project on Heine and the music his poetry continues to inspire.

“Seas, Birds and Trees,” to be presented on Heine’s 228th birthday, is an evocative potpourri of works by eleven composers, among them Massachusetts residents Clifton “Jerry” Noble, David Kidwell, John Craig Cooper and Gregory Hayes, as well as Vermonters Paul Dedell and Zeke Hecker.

The ocean was a major recurring theme in Heine’s poetry, particularly the shore and islands of the cold and stormy North Sea, where he spent several holidays in his twenties. The sea’s bleak beauty haunted Heine the rest of his life, inspiring him to write poems that combine rich descriptions of the natural scene with fanciful and ironic tales and poignant love-songs. Those sea poems in turn have inspired much of this concert’s music, which consists of seven solo songs with piano, a suite for piano four-hands, and five pieces for one or two voices and various combinations of instruments. Pianist Brenda Moore Miller will accompany Peter on the solo songs, and will collaborate with Clifton J. Noble on the piano four-hands suite. Noble will also accompany the pieces with additional musicians. Mezzo-soprano Justina Golden will join in two vocal duets, and five wind and string players, including hornist Jean Jeffries and flutist Nina Wurgaft, will each play in two songs.