A LIFE CONJURING ART + MAGIC
AN ILLUSTRATED TALK BY MAUREEN MCCABE
Thursday, January 15, 2026 at 4pm
Charbrook Grange
71 Gates Road Princeton, MA 01541
STIMSON is excited to welcome artist, Maureen McCabe, into the Grange Hall at Charbrook Farm as the first talk of the year 2026. It is an honor to share space with an artist whose process feels so connected to our own. At a time when our profession remains so deeply grounded in art and science, we embrace the magic.
This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP below by December 24th 2025 as seating is limited.
Maureen McCabe (b. 1947, Quincy, MA) is a Connecticut-based assemblage artist, whose playful yet carefully composed artworks weave imagery from ancient and current cultures, together with aspects of folklore, literature, magic, and myth.
McCabe’s art consists predominantly of drawn or inscribed images, often upon chalkboard slates, that are juxtaposed with artifacts, relics, jewels, feathers, and bits of popular culture. Despite their many elements, the assemblages are not random, but rather highly researched fragments of experience curated around a focused theme. With a nod toward Joseph Cornell and the Surrealists, McCabe creates artworks charged with wit and humor, inspired by the world around her and fascinated by its mysteries. Game boards, tarot cards, dice, birds, fortune tellers, and constellations populate her work. This combination of the material evidence of the past with the mystery of the otherworldly has long been admired by followers of her oeuvre. Examples of her art can be seen at www.maureenmccabeartist.com.
IN HER OWN WORDS,
MAUREEN MCCABE IS
“AN ARTIST DRAWN TO THE MYSTERIOUS CONNECTIONS BETWEEN WORLDS.”
The William Benton Museum of Art at The University of Connecticut is currently featuring a major retrospective entitled Fate and Magic: The Art of Maureen McCabe, on view through December 14, 2025. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. McCabe has an extensive exhibition record over the past fifty years, with over 30 individual exhibitions in New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago galleries. She has shown in museum exhibitions throughout the United States and Mexico. McCabe received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art before teaching for four decades at Connecticut College, where she retired as the Cummings Endowed Chair in 2011. In addition to receiving numerous grants, she has had artist residencies at the American Academy of Rome; the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, Italy; the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; as well as at Yaddo and MacDowell.
I’ve never been to a séance; however, walking into Maureen McCabe’s exhibition Fate and Magic at the William Benton Museum of Art invokes strong séance vibes. Artworks on black slate whisper, engravings of shooting stars, goddesses, brew potions, and long-forgotten stage magicians appear at the Benton like reliquaries of the past. For over six decades, Maureen McCabe has been an overlooked alchemist of memory, transmuting her personal experiences and arcane cultural references into this intimate magical retrospective.
—Jac Lahav, for Art Spiel, December 2, 2025
Maureen McCabe’s collages and assemblages pull from ancient and contemporary cultures, blending folklore, magic, myth, and the everyday into compositions that feel both playful and deeply intentional. We are especially inspired by the way Maureen works: slowly, intuitively, and with a profound respect for the backstory of every project. She spends time in the places that shape her materials—collecting objects, learning their histories, and letting the character of each context guide what the piece becomes. Her process is part archaeology, part storytelling, part magic.
xx STIMSON