Admission to the Open Door Gallery is always free.
The Open Door Gallery at the Worcester Art Museum (ODG@WAM) is a gallery space for artists with disabilities, created in partnership with Open Door Arts, an affiliate of the Seven Hills Foundation. This bright area, overlooking the Stoddard Garden Courtyard from the Higgins Education Wing, provides a platform for artists with disabilities to share their artistry, stories, and cultures, while creating a space for the community to come together through a common artistic experience that inspires reflection and dialogue. One exhibit at a time, ODG@WAM seeks to expand our collective understanding of disability and to create a model for equitable and accessible cultural spaces.
As part of this partnership, aspiring artists with disabilities also visit the Museum galleries, where they find inspiration and connect further with the ideas and images from over 50 centuries of creative expression and take classes with WAM faculty to continue to build their artistic skills. One of the most important priorities at the Worcester Art Museum, increasing accessibility for people with disabilities increases accessibility and understanding for everyone.
On view
Dominic Quagliozzi: Home Body
March 21–June 21, 2024
“In this exhibition, I trace the lineage of my art practice back to this space, the places around Worcester where I was supported, cared for, and challenged. Places such as the Worcester Art Museum and UMass hospital, and other institutions created familiar spaces for me to find comfort and community, as well as an opportunity to grow as an artist. While growing up with a chronic illness, Cystic Fibrosis, making art was one of the few constants in my life available to me during times of health and decline; creating in itself a comfort measure as important as complying with treatments and taking medications.”
Through various media, with a focus on drawing, painting, and performance, Dominic Quagliozzi makes work that deconstructs his lived experience with chronic illness and disability to explore personal histories and the domestication of illness. Using medicalized materials such as hospital gowns and clinic table tissue paper, Quagliozzi references his de- and re-constructed body, often present through its absence. His work aims to highlight the interdependence needed for healing and notions of longevity within personal and shared experience.
Past exhibitions
Press
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Creating opportunities: Open Door Gallery at Worcester Art Museum boosts artists with disabilities
By Stephanie Jarvis Campbell, March 19, 2020
