Curated by Julia Trotta (September 3–21)
Curated by Clemence White (September 24 – October 12)
Curated by Matthew Higgs (October 15 – November 9)
The New York Studio School is pleased to present Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory), September 3–November 9, 2025. Originally conceived and first exhibited at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, where it was organized by co-director Anne Collins Goodyear in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition focuses on the artist’s paintings of the moon, created between 2020 and 2024.
Based on direct observation, each work documents the date, time, and place of its making, underscoring Craven’s interest in the relationship between the cyclical rhythms of nature and the personal experience of time and memory. Craven’s repeated renditions of the moon, captured as both an eternal presence and an ever-changing one, reflect her deep fascination with seriality, a hallmark of her practice, as she revisits and reinterprets motifs over time. The return of the work to New York from Maine mirrors the cyclical nature of the moon, and of life itself, both primary concerns of Craven’s work.
To highlight the experimental breadth of Craven’s practice, the exhibition features the artist’s “laboratory” of lunar studies, a collection stored and inventoried in carefully labeled cardboard containers. This presentation will offer visitors insight into the artist’s process, revealing how Craven’s canvases trace both a celestial trajectory and a personal one.
Unfolding in three rotations—as the exhibition did at Bowdoin—each installation reaffirms the resilience of Craven’s subject matter. The inaugural iteration will be curated by Julia Trotta, Independent Curator (September 3–21). Clemence White, Director at Karma, will curate the second rotation (September 24–October 12). The third and final installation (October 15–November 9) will be curated by Mathew Higgs, Director and Chief Curator at White Columns. Collectively, the exhibition will draw from 185 compositions, each executed from direct observation of nature. Just as the moon reveals itself in both rural and urban environments, adopting shifting nuances in these different contexts, so too Craven’s depictions of this glowing orb will render accessible new constellations of thought as filtered through the vision of each curatorial contributor.
The movement of Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) from Maine to New York echoes the artist’s own trajectory and underscores her deep commitment to both locales. This connection is accentuated by the exhibition’s formative relationship to Ann Craven: Painted Time (2020-2024), on view at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine through January 4, 2026, and Spotlight: Ann Craven, on view at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine through September 14, 2025. The New York Studio School’s presentation of Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) testifies to both the resilience and transformation implicit in the work of Ann Craven and affirms its enduring and essential qualities.
