Here it is, the last weekend of September 2025, and we haven’t seen all of the art yet. There’s always too much inspiration to soak in, too much beauty to behold, and not enough time to see it all. But Misstropolis is here to point you to the best of the best. These don’t-miss shows will have you ending the month on a creative high note written in indelible ink.

To encounter art that introduces a different way to look at the world, that shakes up your assumptions, and moves you to feel - that’s how to tattoo your soul.

Makoto Chi, “Sweet Surrender” (2024), watercolor and gouache on paper.

Human Marks: Tattooing in Contemporary Art

University of Hartford Art Galleries - Joseloff Gallery
200 Bloomfield Ave., West Hartford, CT
Through December 13, 2025

“Human Marks: Tattooing in Contemporary Art explores convergences between tattoo culture and global contemporary art. The exhibition, book (Hirmer Publishers), and related programming present the full creative spectrum of artists who maintain both tattoo and studio practices to ask what the world of fine art can learn from today’s tattoo community. With a range of surprising media—from paintings made with human blood to wearable works in silicone and even perfumery—themes of ritual, ethics, and identity tie together the materially dynamic, unexpected, and challenging artwork featured in Human Marks.” (Hartford Art School Galleries).

Joe Wardwell: Kind of Lose My Mind

Joe Wardwell, *Just Chill*, 2025. Photo: James Hull.

LaMontagne Gallery
450 Harrison Ave. #1, Boston, MA
Through October 17, 2025

“In his fifth solo show with LaMontagne Gallery, Joe Wardwell mixes language, landscape, and abstraction to grapple with the state of the nation. Clipped text from poetry, lyrics, and public discourse reveal the landscapes of the American collective consciousness. An American painter, with work oscillating between passion and ambivalence, Wardwell has created new paintings that are perpetually, purposefully unresolved.

As he says of the text of Just Chill (2025):

‘The words that Snoop Dogg repeats in Nuthing but a G Thang, could be interpreted as a flippant dismissal of the chaos of a world spiraling beyond our control, or a plea for the chaotic world to slow down and allow us to relax even just for a moment. This ambiguity of intent is precisely what I want us to contemplate. As we follow the painter’s lead, the paintings get louder to compete with the deafening and deadening cynicism, violence, and absurdity that is political discourse today. In these paintings, life and art combine to hold the dissonance of the world, but also the quiet moments that consider the elegance of a line, a combination of colors, or the sorrow and joy of living with uncertainty.’’ (Joe Wardwell and LaMontagne Gallery)

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been concealed by the answers.
”

— James Baldwin

Exhibition View of *Leon Polk Smith: Circle and Square*. Image courtesy Krakow Witkin Gallery.

Three Current Exhibitions at Krakow Witkin Gallery

Leon Polk Smith: Circle and Square, 1948-1987
Liliana Porter and Douglas Huebler
One Wall, One Work: William Kentridge

Krakow Witkin Gallery
10 Newbury Street, Boston MA
Through October 18, 2025

Leon Polk Smith: Circle and Square, 1948-1987: “Krakow Witkin Gallery has presented the work of Leon Polk Smith (1906–1996) in several contexts over the past thirty years, but the current show is his first solo exhibition at the gallery. In addition, it is the first presentation of his work to place his editioned prints in the context of his paintings, drawings, and collages.” (Krakow Witkin Gallery).

Liliana Porter and Douglas Huebler - “The current exhibition features works by Douglas Huebler and Liliana Porter. Both artists use reduced visual means to explore ideas of assumption, connection, extrapolation, and imagination, and, for each artist, humor plays a key role in beckoning viewers to explore, participate, question, and wander.” (Krakow Witkin Gallery).

William Kentridge, *How to Explain Who I Was*, 2023/4. Photogravure, photopoylmer, drypoint, hand-painted chine collé, and collaged papers in 52 parts with Hahnemühle, Kitakata, Tosa Washi, Gampi, Nishinouchi Seiki B Nakaban, Okawara, and sheets from the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1910, with 67 aluminum pins. Image courtesy Krakow Witkin Gallery.

One Wall, One Work: William Kentridge - ”The work currently on view at Krakow Witkin Gallery, “How to Explain Who I Was,” is the latest of the artist’s large-scale works to challenge notions of veracity, completeness, and comprehension. By employing numerous different methods of reproduction (photography, photogravure, photopolymer, and drypoint etching) onto 52 sheets of seven different types of paper collaged and pinned together, Kentridge has created a scenario where various types of distinct marks, imagery, size, image source, and paper are considered equally. Photos of pins holding a piece of paper in the studio have the same relevance as actual pins holding the exhibited piece together. A photogravure of a photograph of a charcoal and India ink drawing is overlayed with direct drypoint marks. Like in much of Kentridge’s work, “reality” is subjective, incomplete, reformulated, and expanded in poetic ways where parts, parts left out, and the sum of the parts are equally significant.” (Krakow Witkin Gallery).

Hugh Hayden, “The End.” Photo by Thomas Clark.

Ground/work 2025

The Clark
225 South Street Williamstown, MA 01267
Through October 12, 2026

“Ground/work 2025 is an outdoor exhibition of six monumental sculptures positioned across the Clark’s campus. Each participating artist reimagines a global craft tradition in contemporary form: Mexican tile mosaic (Javier Senosiain), West African indigo dyeing (Aboubakar Fofana), British willow weaving (Laura Ellen Bacon), American woodworking (Hugh Hayden), Japanese ceramics (Yō Akiyama), and European marble carving (Milena Naef). Craft is a crucial variable in the equation of art; it takes many forms across the world, not only in terms of materials and processes, but also in terms of cultural and spiritual associations. No matter where or how craft is practiced, though, it always comes down to skilled human hands—what they bring to our shared environment.” (The Clark Institute).

Glass pumpkins from the MIT Glass Lab. Photo: Peter Houk.

The MIT Great Glass Pumpkin Patch

Kresge Oval, MIT Campus
Friday, September 26th 5-8PM - Preview opening (no sales!)
Saturday, September 27th 10AM to 3PM - benefit sale

For something a little more active and a little less gallery, the MIT Glass Pumpkin Patch Fundraiser to benefit the MIT Glass Lab is a great option for the whole family. It’s all for a great cause: nearly 100% of the annual operating budget for the Glass Lab comes from revenue from the MIT Great Glass Pumpkin Patch.

“Over 2000 glass pumpkins of all colors, shapes and sizes cover the lawn at Kresge Oval and are sold to benefit the MIT Glass Lab. The Glass Lab, sponsored by Course 3, teaches classes in glass blowing open to all members of the MIT community. This event is open to the general public and entry is free.” (MIT Glass Lab).

Learn more about the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch and the MIT Glass Lab here.