The Art of Observation:
A Retrospective of David Campbell’s Work
November 2020 – extended through May 22, 2021 | Curated by Debra Olin (Community Curator)
Curated by Community Curator, Debra Olin, “The Art of Observation” was a major retrospective of the work of David Campbell, one of Somerville’s most beloved artists. This exhibition explored Campbell’s long-standing fascination with the streets and buildings of Somerville itself. Programming for this exciting exhibition will also introduce a number of other artists for whom Somerville has been a primary inspiration. Originally planned to open in November 2020, the opening was pushed to April 8, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic with limited capacity and safety measures in place.
Related Programming
Somerville Streets Trivia: Weekly Online Event
Draw What You Know: Virtual Exhibit
This program has evolved into a collaboration with Emily Alcott’s 6th grade art class at the East Somerville Community School. These students have been invited to draw everyday scenes and objects of interests to them in and around their home. This will be a virtual exhibit on our website.
Curator Talk + Studio Tour: December 2020
The video features a conversation between Community Curator, Debra Olin and beloved Somerville Artist David Campbell.
Recorded in collaboration with the Somerville Media Center.
Home is Where the Art is: January 2021
This program invites Jessica Howard’s Somerville High School’s portfolio class to draw what is visually interesting or meaningful to them in their immediate environment. Their creations will be showcased at the Museum and on our website as a virtual exhibit.
Somerville As Muse: May 2021
Much like Campbell, many Somerville artists use the City as muse. This event will highlight those artists in a virtual and hopefully, live event.
New TV Interview
Jay Sugarman from New TV talks with David Campbell, Debra Olin, and Alison Drasner about the current retrospective exhibition entitled The Art of Observation, featuring David’s fifty-plus years of paintings capturing different landscape and cityscape views Somerville.
Somerville as Muse
Hear from artists that are inspired by the city of Somerville in their studio practice. The city’s architecture, history, or construction show up in artwork’s colors, textures, and content.
This video series is part of a series, “Somerville as Muse” — scripted and produced by Debra Olin, past Community Curator for “The Art of Observation.”
Cara Foster Karim
Gary Duehr
Mark Luiggi
Pier Gustafson
About the Community Curators
Debra Olin and David Campbell pose with Campbell’s artwork; image credit: Bill Kipp
David Campbell, Artist
David Campbell is a painter living and working in the Brickbottom Artists Building in Somerville, MA. He studied at the Art Students League of New York in the 1950s. He lived and worked as a plein air landscape painter in Italy for 7 years. Then he returned to the US for his native landscape, painting in Gloucester, Somerville (30 years) and Maine. His work is in many private and public collections: Metropolitan Museum of New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Public Library. He has received grants from the Somerville Arts Council, the Pollack-Krasner Foundation and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation. He had a 2-month residence at the McDowell Colony in NH and at the Delaware River Watergap with the Artists for the Environment Foundation.
Debra Olin, Community Curator
Debra Olin is a printmaker, living and working in Somerville, MA. She received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 1980. Olin has shown in exhibitions across the U.S., Canada, France, Poland, Serbia, South Africa, and Cuba. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Boston Public Library, Temple Israel, Brookline, MA, YIVO Institute, NYC, The DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA and the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. In 2004 Debra was awarded the Rappaport Prize, the largest public annual award to an individual artist in New England. In 2018 Olin received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist Award and a grant from the Berkshire Taconic Artist Resource Trust. Olin is a founding member of the Brickbottom Artist Building and the Gallery Coordinator of the Brickbottom Gallery.