In Monson Art Gallery’s current exhibition, The Art of Monson: A Bicentennial Celebration, curated by Carl Little, there is a sense of time looping and compressing through encounters with paintings, photographs, sculpture, and fine craft created over almost 200 years. In happy contrast with “COVID time”— that wearying collapse of years into a fog—this opportunity to time travel feels fresh and resilient.

While there are a few pieces that speak to the town’s latest renaissance—two oil paintings by Sarah Faragher as well as Monson Polyhedron (2022), a laser-cut slate sculpture by Celeste Roberge, both recent Monson Arts residents—most of the works in the exhibition affirm Monson as a vital place for artists long before a transformative gift from the Libra Foundation established residency and workshop programs there. The painter Alan Bray grew up in Monson, and three of his casein paintings represent his decades-long visual interest in the town and surrounding landscape. In fact Bray, along with Monson Historical Society president Glenn Poole and Todd Watts—a photographer and long-time Monson-area resident who also printed for the renowned photographer Berenice Abbott—helped envision The Art of Monson.

Along with showing his own work, for the exhibition Watts also restored and printed historic photographs from their original plate negatives, including a dizzying 1920s view of the Monson Pond Slate Quarry by Monson photographer Leon “Cy” Elliott Wilkins. Watts also restored and printed an 1889 lithograph by George E. Norris for the exhibition. The print depicts a bird’s-eye view of Monson and functions as a gateway for viewing the gallery, not unlike a beautifully detailed map that Appalachian Trail through-hikers might linger over at a trailhead just outside of town.