Shakespeare Theatre to Present AMERICA AT 250: BORDERS & BOUNDARIES Exhibition

As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (STNJ) will present America at 250: Borders & Boundaries, an exhibition of eleven works by award-winning visual artist Heather Stivison.

Opening concurrently with the Theatre's production of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the exhibition invites audiences to consider questions of home, identity, belonging, and the boundaries—both literal and imagined—that shape our lives. The exhibition will be on view and available for purchase at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in Madison during the run of Hamlet, October 10 through November 15.

A tapestry of drawings, found objects, textiles, and paintings, America at 250: Borders & Boundaries emerges from Stivison's perspective as a woman and mother. Across the twelve works, personal experience intersects with broader questions about American life: What does it mean to belong? What happens when home is lost or threatened? What do we inherit from those who came before us, and what will we leave behind?

At the center of the exhibition is Stivison's 48” x 97” oil painting Oil Sketch: Her Inheritance, which the artist describes as the key to the series. Intent faces, partially obscured by bars and barriers, fill more than half the canvas. Above them, ominous drones move through the sky, while a central figure—an infant girl sitting atop coils of razor wire—reaches upward as if attempting to catch a drone in her hand. The infant is based on Stivison's own daughters, bringing a deeply personal dimension to the work. The painting ultimately poses a question that reaches beyond the individual and toward the responsibility of a generation: What kind of world are we leaving to our children?

These poignant questions reverberate throughout the exhibition. In one work, a Montclair, New Jersey real estate survey becomes the background for a drawing of the artist's own white picket fence, stamped with tiny red letters reading “not my problem.” Elsewhere, Stivison examines the complicated emotional terrain surrounding displacement, memory, privilege, and the desire for a place to call home.

Presented alongside Hamlet, an enduring story of power, betrayal, and the consequences passed from one generation to the next, America at 250: Borders & Boundaries offers audiences an opportunity to extend the conversation beyond the stage. Together, the theatrical and visual works ask audiences to look closely at the forces that shape us.