This retrospective is a survey of work by St. John based visual artist Janet Cook-Rutnik made between 1978 - 2023 that provides a deeply personal visual record of the changes that have evolved in the Virgin Islands’ physical and cultural landscape over the past 45 years.

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Janet has been involved with CMCArts from the beginning and was integral to the founding concepts and implementation of the organization in the early 1990's. Janet and founder Candia Atwater-Shields were close friends and Janet has provided a deep knowledge of the art world and museum structures to CMCArts. 

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There will be a comprehensive catalog published documenting the exhibition with essays by curator Marianne de Tolentino, Pricilla Hintz Rivera Knight and David Knight and an earlier published survey of Janet's work available in our museum store.

With this exhibition, CMCArts honors founder Candia Atwater-Shields to celebrate her legacy not only in the creation of CMCArts as a community art center focused on serving the youth but also as a premier art museum preserving and promoting the art and artist of the USVI and the Caribbean.  The growing permanent collection is on view to share the vision and commitment of both Atwater-Shields and the legacy that CMCArts is committed to carrying into the future. 

Candia Atwater-Shields' vision transformed CMCArts into a vital community art center. Her dedication to preserving and promoting USVI and Caribbean art lives on through our growing permanent collection. 

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Join us in celebrating our newest acquisitions!

MUVAHOOD The Exhibit by KayraJay and curated by Dejá Aaliyah Belardo explores the journey of becoming a mother through bold multi-media immersive installations that reveal video diaries and honest expressions of how becoming a mother is filled with both tremendous joy and deep trauma.

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Kayra J. Clouden, also known as KAYRAJAY, is an Artist from St. Croix, USVI where she is currently based. Kayra serves as Creator and Executive Producer of the award-winning digital series ADULTIN’ on YouTube, a TEDx Talk speaker and curator of the emerging non-profit: 4 DA BMS - A Safe Space To Be A Baby Mama in Peace.

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Curator Dejá Aaliyah Belardo, is based in New York City and was born and raised in St.Croix, USVI. Dejá's includes major arts institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Pace Gallery and they have completed the Museum Professionals Seminar with The Studio Museum in Harlem. Dejá is currently co-curator at The Shed, an innovative cultural institution breaking barriers through the arts.​

Bamboula Journeys: Retrospective Indigenous Caribbean Afrakan Arts (RICAA) invites you on a creative immersive journey into the dynamic realm of contemporary and futurist art collections, meticulously curated by QM Dr. ChenziRa Davis Kahina. Featuring paintings, photographs, sculptures, textiles, and other mixed media artwork from the Caribbean, Central and South Americas, Afraka and beyond, Bamboula Journeys pays homage to the resilience and ingenuity of Caribbean and Afrakan artists whose visionary works transcend temporal and geographical boundaries creating opportunities for inspiring intergenerational and transcultural creative arts and technology. 

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United in Pride exhibition features a collaboration of artists from Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican and Virgin Island backgrounds. This exhibition explores diverse cultural perspectives and reflects on various impactful topics such as mental health, ancestral heritage, and the symbolism of pride colors, which represent life, healing, sunlight, nature, art, harmony, and spirit.

The exhibition celebrates the diversity within the LGBTTQ+ community, showcasing artworks that embody unity, love, and the shared language of Pride. Curated by Wilfred W. Labiosa, PhD, this collection highlights the power of art to provoke thought, educate, and unite people from different walks of life.

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VI Artists Celebrate the Spring Equinox in this curatorial extravaganza brought to us by artist Lucien Downes. This exhibition is based on themes of the seasonal spring equinox in the realms of rebirth, renewal, new beginnings and enlightenment. This time of year is marked as a time to embrace movement and growth. Join artists from throughout the VI in this seasonal exploration

On view thru May 25th

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Since 2018, Danish anthropologist and artist Christian Vium has been working with residents of St. Croix, investigating the relationship between oral histories and vernacular archives. In dialogue about the continued effects of the Danish colonial era in everyday life, various registers of the histories unfold throughout different formats.

Juxtaposing multiple perspectives and voices, the exhibition evokes St. Croix as a cultural nodal point, and identifies ephemerality as a central theme in relation to remembrance, belonging, and identity, as it manifests in the physical reconfiguration of archives over time. Acknowledging that history is fundamentally plural and fragmented, this exhibition presents an iterative palimpsest of momentarily assembled elements. It is an invitation to reflect upon our shared past, present, and future in the hope that it will generate spaces for dialogue and companionship.

Learn more about the artist

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This exhibition is generously supported by NY Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish Art Foundation

The Artist Guild of St Croix’s annual show “The Art Show 2024” will showcase paintings, sculpture, photography and mixed media art by 20 local artists.  The Artist Guild of St Croix supports the visual fine arts and artists on the island of St Croix. 

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View this exhibition in our new Online Collection & Cultural Resource by clicking the flyer or show title above then clicking the tab "Exhibitions>Current" Enjoy!

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Curated by the  esteemed Dr. Erica Moiah James, PhD, art historian, curator and assistant professor at The University of Miami and was the founding Director and Chief Curator of The National Gallery of the Bahamas.

Artist La Vaughn Belle explores the relationship between history, memory and myth while centering Black female subjectivity through  multidisciplinary artwork as she expands on Black feminist writer Audre Lorde’s concept of biomythography, in which myth and fiction function to frame past, present and future selves.

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Belle has exhibited in the Caribbean, the USA and Europe and is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies.

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Read more about the artist

Read more about the curator

This retrospective exhibition of collage artist Elisa McKay is the most comprehensive survey of McKay's artistic endeavors to date presenting the evolution of her creative making process and artwork over the last 50 years.

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Elisa McKay is a celebrated artist from St. Croix. Her creative investigations are constant and her message is as clean cut as her silhouette collage cutouts as she explores themes of family, community,  movement,  spirituality and joy. The spirit of her artwork uplifts the soul and reminds us of the basics of our humanity.​

Centering the cultural aesthetic of African descendants of the Spanish speaking Caribbean with the English speaking Caribbean seeks to frame our creative perspectives through the eyes of artists focused on sharing the contemporary vision that continues to honor our African legacy.  The process of De-Colonizing Eurocentricity as the criteria of artistic excellence insists upon framing exhibitions, curriculums, public forums that center truth telling African descendents' creativity at all levels of our society. This is the objective of Absolutamente Negro/a/x

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Curated by Creative Justice Initiative, Corredor Afro, Ori Gallery and Wilfred Labiosa

Because Freedom isn't always free:

Emerging artists in dialogue with freedom.

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Artists:

Olessia Popova, Khyra Thomas, Isobelle Yousef, Madelin Yousef, Vitaly Lopez Recio,  Eliana Schuster-Brown, Kia Griffith, Emily Braswell, Kiing George, Blue Tarp Productions, Soundstage VI, TeamFaKtornize 

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Also showing in conjunction with the Freedom exhibition is a film screening of new films by three local filmmaker groups. Join us!

August 24th, 7pm - 9 pm

The series of images in the Emancipation Exhibit are from the Archives at the Royal Danish Library. There are over a thousand images and text documents, pertaining to the Danish West Indies, that have been scanned and uploaded to the Library’s’ website.

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There is so much information to be gathered from these images and there are many questions to be asked. Who were these men, women, and children? Where were they from? What did St. Croix mean to them? 

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Curated by Juliana Berry for TSK's Folklife Festival 2023

Pride Prism is an exhibition inspired by the LGBT+ community and its diversity. Works by artists from various Caribbean islands reflect some of this diversity.

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Just as the light hits a glass to reflect the white light into multiple rainbow colors, it is my hope that this exhibit reflects the diverse artistry of more than eighteen artists from five Caribbean islands including, St. Croix, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and Bahamas. LGBTTQ+ artists and allies celebrate Pride through their art – Orgullo! Curated by Wilfred Labiosa, PhD

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Pride Prism is Sponsored by AARP, STX Pride, VICA, and CFVI

Curated by Lucien Downes this exhibition showcases over 20 local artists working in many art forms.

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Brenda L. Coto, Therese Trudeau, Ki-Ana Tonge, Elwin Joseph, Kim Sanchez, Brianna Castle Cox, Barbara Gelardi, El'roy Simmonds, Matt Jarvis, Isabelle Picard, Tralice Bracy, Lucien Downes, Kimba Kabaka, Chalana Brown, Erica Joy, Chevron Miles, Eric Paxton, Maya Hoover, Sara Lee Hayes, Suenita Banwaree, Tamara Michael, Josie Widjaja Kozloff, Mida Rivera, Kedisha Charles Alexis Carmena, Joyce Hickok, Eliana Schuster-Brown, Christa Ann Molloy, Lauren Davis, Lynn Voytershark, Elisa McKay, Joyce Hickok, Lekisha Rantan, Jade Aurelia Bryan, Stefan Carty

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Intentionally launching in the year 2023, the 175 Year of Emancipation in the USVI, this exhibition is a continuation of anti-oppression, pro-healing and Afro-Caribbean emancipation work presented in the form of a photo exhibition inspired by Chalana Brown's "Claiming Spaces: The African Story of the Sugar Mill" that lanched on V.I. Emancipation Day of 2021 at CMCArts and hosted by H.O.P.E. Inc. a project of the St. Croix Foundation that serves as the philanthropic branch of Girlfriendism International that stands for Helping Ordinary People Everyday through the arts and creative expresssion.

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Presented by Dr. Khnuma Simmonds

MasterClass celebrates the accomplished, master artists of St. Croix in this lavish exhibition of career artists exemplifying the skill, dedication and passion behind a long career of art making.

CMCArts is proud to bring our master artists together for this exhibition;

La Vaughn Belle, Johanna Bermudez-Ruiz, Lucien Downes, Sara Hayes, Tina Henle, Maria Henle, Fritz Henle, John Obafemi Jones, Yemaya Jones, Elwin Joseph, Toni Lance, Lee Lashley, Elisa McKay, Mark Feijão Milligan II, Marjorie Robbins, El'roy Simmonds, Edwin Thomas, Niarus Walker, Michael Walsh, Tony Vanderperk

The Artist Guild of St Croix’s annual show “The Art Show 2023” will showcase paintings, sculpture, photography and mixed media art by 20 local artists.  The Artist Guild of St Croix supports the visual fine arts and artists on the island of St Croix. 

Six Caribbean artists examine traditional spiritual practices of the

African Descendants of the Caribbean Diaspora, and their attendant rituals, in the context of such practices in our contemporary Western society. The exhibition is curated by Anderson M.

Pilgrim of Barbados and New York City.

Artists in the Exhibition

Bernard Stanley Hoyes of Jamaica

Ademola Olugebefola of USVI/NY

Diogenes Ballester of Puerto Rico

Earl D. Etienne of Dominica

Patricia Brintle of Haiti

Arlette St. Hill of Barbados

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   Paul Cezanne stated, “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” Throughout this exhibition, I hope that you can explore and feel the emotions, which I have taken the liberty to translate to “energies”, that exude from the art of Cuban and Puerto Rican artists.  The artwork presented here reflect a diversity of energies. Some of the energies are defined by our faith and spirituality, while others are created by political views, gender, everyday life, and culture.  I invite you to take time to explore the energies that characterize Cuba and Puerto Rico. Live and experience the energies expressed in each piece of work.

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Sea Walls St Croix Artists for Oceans was brought to St. Croix by the PangeaSeed Foundation in partnership with

Clean Sweep Frederiksted to empower our community to create meaningful environmental change for our Oceans through ARTivism, education and science. The public artworks serve as educational tools and conversation-starters addressing marine environmental issues relevant to the local community. The goal is to ignite ownership for the sustainability of natural resources.

CMCArts Permanent Collection is made possible through generous donations by our Members and Artists. Our collection is very diverse and reflects many artists from or living in the Virgin Islands as well as from around the world. 

Visit our past exhibitions