WESTPORT, CONN.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Connecticut (MoCA\CT) announces its 2026 summer exhibition season, Looking for History: Rick Shaefer, Ellen Harvey, and Michael Borders, a trio of solo presentations that examine how histories—personal, local, and national—are pictured, preserved, and contested. As the United States marks its 250th anniversary in 2026, the exhibitions invite visitors into distinct yet interconnected conversations about the narratives and forces that have shaped the nation.
On view from June 25 through November 15, 2026, Looking for History unfolds across MoCA\CT’s galleries, with each artist presented in a dedicated space. Rick Shaefer’s Colossi anchors the full season, while Ellen Harvey’s The Disappointed Tourist is featured from June 25 to August 2, followed by Michael Borders’ Connecticut Industry from August 13 through November 15.
“Looking for History is a timely exhibition as our nation’s 250th anniversary presents a moment for celebration, commemoration, and reflection," says MoCA\CT’s Executive Director Robin Jaffee Frank, PhD. “By bringing these artists together, we invite visitors to consider the distance between our founding ideals and our current reality—and how the choices we make today will shape the future of our democracy. MoCA\CT offers a contemplative space where we can safely engage with historical memory, the topics of our time, and one another.”
Rick Shaefer: Colossi
In Colossi, Connecticut-based artist Rick Shaefer imagines a monumental structure that grows as nations add their own segments, eventually encircling the globe. The work poses a central question: does the structure wall in or wall out? It casts the wall as a symbol of human ambition, legacy, and contradiction—a colossal monument to achievement that may endure long after humanity itself has vanished.
Shaefer’s practice consistently returns to line as a foundational element, from the single assured stroke to dense accumulations of marks that build atmosphere and form. He is drawn to the integrity of the mark, believing that an intentional, confident gesture creates a resonance that gives a work its vitality and is sensed intuitively by viewers. His work has been noted for its philosophical scope, extending a lineage that reaches back to nineteenth-century landscape painting while engaging the dilemmas of the present. The MoCA\CT installation includes Shaefer’s Water Crossing from the Refugee Trilogy and the series Liberty Dismantled. The esteemed artist, whose work blends technical precision with emotional resonance, has had solo exhibitions at the Fairfield University Art Museum, the National Academy of Design, and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.
Ellen Harvey: The Disappointed Tourist
The Disappointed Tourist is an ongoing participatory project in which Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Ellen Harvey paints places that no longer exist, based on public submissions. Each work—reminiscent of a vintage postcard—is rendered in monochrome acrylic with oil glazes on wood panels, evoking both nostalgia and loss.
Harvey asks a deceptively simple question: “Is there some place that you would like to visit or revisit that no longer exists?” Since 2019, people from more than 40 countries have contributed, and she has selected hundreds of “lost sites” from around the world, painting each at postcard scale and including the name of the site and, when known, the date of its destruction. The unfinished panels within the installation make visible that the project remains forever incomplete, reflecting the ongoing nature of loss. For the presentation at MoCA\CT, the Museum has invited its community to contribute local submissions, bringing regional stories into dialogue with global histories.
An internationally recognized artist, Harvey has exhibited at major museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg. Frieze selected The Disappointed Tourist at Turner Contemporary, Margate as one of the five best institutional shows in the UK in 2021.
Michael Borders: Connecticut Industry
In Connecticut Industry, Michael Borders transforms MoCA\CT’s entrance gallery into an immersive environment of large-scale paintings that explore the people, places, and labor that have shaped the Hartford region and the state beyond. Spanning more than fifty years, his practice encompasses murals, illustrations, portraiture, and commissioned works for institutions and individuals.
Borders draws from a wide range of influences—from Henri Fantin-Latour and Diego Rivera to Hudson River School painters Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt, as well as modern and contemporary artists such as Aaron Douglas and David Driskell. Grounded in the history and cultural life of Hartford, his paintings emphasize meaning, history, and human presence, affirming art’s capacity to engage with community experience rather than aesthetics alone. In the context of the nation’s 250th anniversary, Borders’ work highlights the industrial, social, and artistic contributions of Connecticut’s communities to the broader American story. The Bloomfield, CT-based artist has exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and the New Britain Museum of American Art and is known for large-scale public commissions throughout the region.
