Anita Groener solo exhibition at the Academy Art Museum

Sat, Aug 16 - Sun, Oct 26  2025

Academy Art Museum, 106 South Street, Easton, MD

Using humble and ephemeral materials such as twigs, twine, cardboard, and cut paper to speak of the fragility of existence, Groener’s sculptural installations speak of the interconnectedness of individual and universal experience.

The Academy Art Museum is proud to present To the Edge of Your World, an exhibition of recent work by internationally recognized Dutch Irish artist Anita Groener that contemplates loss, displacement, exile, and war. Using humble and ephemeral materials such as twigs, twine, cardboard, and cut paper to speak of the fragility of existence, Groener’s sculptural installations speak of the interconnectedness of individual and universal experience. To the Edge of Your World confronts the bloody conflicts, forced migrations, and enduring injustices of current history, yet holds out the possibilities of resilience and renewal.

In 2022, Groener, accompanied by John Relman, one of the United States’ most prominent civil rights lawyers, traveled across the American South. With Relman as her guide, she visited historic sites important to the Civil Rights Movement: museums, trails, and memorials in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama. America’s unfinished struggle for equality and justice made starkly tangible on this journey profoundly informed Groener’s most recent sculpture and drawings, adding a new aspect to her ongoing engagement with the world’s past decade of war and upheaval in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, and elsewhere.

To the Edge of Your World also includes the premiere of Shelter, a new animated video made in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Matt Kresling and the Talbot Interfaith Shelter in Easton. Based on interviews relating individual stories of people facing hardship and their determination to rebuild their lives, Shelter addresses the urgent social and political realities of homelessness and celebrates the transformative work of TIS. The video resonates with the exhibition’s themes, displacement, belonging, and the fragile architecture of memory.

Groener’s practice frames remembrance as an ethical and political resistance against oblivion, asking a quiet yet urgent question: What does it mean to be human in an age shaped by rupture, precarity, and migration?

One of Ireland’s most distinguished artists, Anita Groener has recently shown her work at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, France; the Museum Rijswijk in The Hague, Netherlands; and Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda, Ireland. In 2005, she was elected a member of Aosdána, the official association of Ireland’s preeminent artists and cultural producers.

This major exhibition will be on view from August 16 to October 26, 2025.

About Anita Groener

Dutch-Irish artist Anita Groener creates sculptural works, drawings, films, and paintings that chart the fragile architectures of memory, home, displacement, and belonging. Through ephemeral materials and intricate forms, she traces emotional landscapes shaped by exile and resilience. Her practice frames remembrance as both a moral act and a form of political resistance against forgetting. With quiet urgency, Groener asks: What does it mean to be human in an age marked by rupture, precarity, and migration?

In 1982, she moved to Ireland, which has become her adopted home. She received her BA from the Möller Institute, Tilburg, in 1980 and her MA from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Arnhem, in 1982.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, 21c Museum Hotels in Durham, Cincinnati and Bentonville, Jane Lombard Gallery in New York, Museum Rijswijk, The Hague, Netherlands, Columbia Circle in Shanghai, Riverside Art Museum in Beijing, and Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Groener’s work is part of the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Arts Council of Ireland, the Irish State Art Collection, VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, and 21c Museum Hotels, along with various public, corporate, and private collections in the US and Europe. From 1983 to 2014, she taught at Technological University (TU) Dublin, where she was Head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006. In 2005, Groener was elected a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s national academy of artists. The artist acknowledges the support from The Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, and Mondriaan Fonds, Netherlands for several of her exhibitions.

To the Edge of Your World is her most recent exhibition, which travelled to Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and Museum Rijswijk in The Hague during 2023–24. Following the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD, it will travel to the Bader & Simon Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

About the Academy Art Museum

As the premiere art museum on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the Academy Art Museum presents high-quality exhibitions and a full range of art classes for visitors of all ages. Past exhibitions have featured artists such as James Turrell, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, Pat Steir and Richard Diebenkorn. The permanent collection focuses on works on paper by American and European artists from four centuries including recent acquisitions by Graciela Iturbide and Zanele Muholi. Arts educational programs range from life drawing lessons to digital art instruction, and include lunchtime and cocktail hour concerts, lectures and special art events, as well as a Fall Craft Show, now in its 27th year. AAM also provides arts education to school children from the region and is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. To continue the institutional movement of offering free public programming and to give barrier-free access to art, AAM eliminated admission fees in 2023.

Hours: Tuesday 10:00 am to 7:00 pm, Wednesday 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Thursday 10:00 am to 7:00 pm, and Friday-Sunday 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Closed Mondays and Federal holidays.
Admission: Free