By: Emily Barnabas ’26
The Student Ambassadors hosted their biannual student opening at the McMullen Museum of Art on September 5, 2025, debuting three feature collections: Medieval | Renaissance, A Fresh Vision, and Martin Karplus. With overflowing trays of charcuterie and platters of cannolis, students enjoyed crafts, games, live performances, film, and of course, new art!
Sexual Chocolate started a night of memorable student performances. Gathering a sizable crowd in the museum’s glass atrium, the all-male step group stunned visitors with their set and finished their performance to loud applause. Acapella performances by The Dynamics, The Common Tones, and The Acoustics followed, creating a joyful and energetic atmosphere. BC’s Music Guild wrapped up the night, showcasing a variety of talented individual performers and bands.
The Daley Family galleries on the second floor, the temporary home to Italian Medieval and Renaissance art and Belgian landscape paintings from the Tervuren artist colony, were transformed into crafting spaces where students crowded around tables to make framed mosaics and felt figures. With ceramic pieces and small gemstones spilled onto tables, students spent time laying their designs, applying grout, and sealing their creations.
In the 3rd floor gallery, next to the collection of post-war photographs by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Martin Karplus, was a space dedicated to making gold-leaf motifs. A nod to the ornate use of gold embellishment in works of the Medieval | Renaissance, student ambassadors showed visitors how to prime, adhere, and apply gold leafing to their stationary item of choice.
A beloved tradition of Art After Dark, indoor and outdoor games remained popular throughout the night. Inspired by the featured collections, participants tried their hand at Italian board games like Scope, Briscola, and Tressette, as well as Renaissance classics such as Tuscany, Citadels, and Trade and Triumph. The fun continued outdoors where visitors enjoyed the summer evening with lawn games like Axe Throwing, Giant Yahtzee, Giant Connect Four, Giant Jenga, and Lawn Bowling. Offering a break from all the entertainment, Moby Dick and other movies played continuously in the 1st floor galleries to offer students a place to enjoy food, drinks, and good company.
However, one of the most popular activities of the night was the Art After Dark Scavenger Hunt, affording winners the opportunity to pick their choice of a McMullen t-shirt or hoodie. Visitors dashed between floors, through galleries, and raced to find an ambassador to claim their prize. A favored tradition of Art After Dark, the scavenger hunt offers visitors a way to engage and explore the museum in a more meaningful way–-rewarding lucky winners with signature McMullen merch.
The McMullen Museum’s exhibitions showcase a diverse spectrum of artistic vision across centuries. Medieval | Renaissance presents nineteen rarely seen works from Florence’s Frascione Collection, tracing the evolution of Italian painting from the late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries and exploring the transition between medieval and Renaissance art. A Fresh Vision highlights a transformative gift of thirty-six nineteenth-century Belgian landscapes from the School of Tervuren, celebrating artists who turned to nature for truth and renewal amid modernity’s rise. Complementing these historical collections, Martin Karplus: Photographic Journeys features fifty-five vibrant digital prints from the 1950s and 1960s, revealing the Nobel laureate’s humanistic lens on a changing postwar world. See all of these exhibits, as well as our featured first floor permanent collection, until December 7, 2025.
