Exhibition Schedule: Fall 2024–Summer 2025

Artful Collaboration: Eric Carle & Ann Beneduce

September 7, 2024 - March 9, 2025
Curated by Isabel Ruiz Cano

The author-editor relationship is a collaborative partnership built on mutual respect, trust, and a shared commitment to creating the best possible work. It can also be a highly personal alliance. This exhibition explores the 50-year professional relationship between the beloved picture book artist, Eric Carle, and a legendary picture book editor, Anne Beneduce. It includes never-before-exhibited art, correspondence, and photographs from their work together on The Very Hungry Caterpillar in 1969 to The Nonsense Show in 2015.

Free to Be…You and Me: 50 Years of Stories and Songs

November 16, 2024 - April 6, 2025
Curated by Margi Hofer

Free to Be…You and Me: 50 Years of Stories and Songs exhibition celebrates the profound societal impact and continued positivity of the groundbreaking 1972 record and its subsequent picture books and TV specials. The exhibition features the only known extant art from the 1974 publication, by Barbara Bascove, along with original illustrations by John Steptoe, Susan Jeffers, Jerry Pinkney, and Leo and Diane Dillon from Free to Be…A Family, published in 1987. The exhibition will also display art from the 35th anniversary edition, including pieces by Peter Reynolds, Tony DiTerlizzi, LeUyen Pham, and Peter Sís. The exhibition will showcase approximately 50 works, including first edition books, the classic album cover, period photographs, audio recordings, newspaper articles, and other ephemera.

Created in Color: The Picture Book Art of Raúl Colón

January 18 - June 1, 2025
Organized by the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature

Raúl Colón has built a celebrated career in children’s picture book illustration. His instantly recognizable style of textured watercolor-and-colored-pencil paintings appear in over 50 books. He creates stories inspired by his Puerto Rican heritage, like Sugar Cane: A Caribbean Rapunzel, and biographies of Latin American heroes such as baseball legend Roberto Clemente, dancer José Limón, and novelist Gabriel García Márquez. In Child of the Civil Rights Movement and As Good as Anybody, Colón depicts the powerful work of activists who fought for justice in the 1960s. But he also makes books of poetry, books about creativity, and even books about books. Visitors can cheerfully follow characters through more than 84 artworks, as they journey from the African savanna to a magical library, the North Pole, and a museum where art leaps off the walls.

Making Music with Eric Carle

March 22 - August 24, 2025
Curated by Isabel Ruiz Cano

Eric Carle loved music. He listened to jazz and classical music while painting tissue papers in his Northampton studio. He illustrated Today is Monday and created I See a Song, a wordless book that equates the sounds and rhythms of music to nature. Carle’s characters, both human and animal, play instruments and dance joyfully across the pages of his books. Of special interest are Carle’s costume and stage set designs for The Magic Flute featured at the Springfield Symphony Orchestra in 2001. He recalled, “It was a very exciting project to be involved in and one of the most memorable things I have ever done.”

Open + Shut: Celebrating the Art of Endpapers  

April 19 - November 9, 2025
Curated by Bruce Handy

Endpapers are the unsung glory of contemporary children’s publishing. Once a purely functional form—sturdy pages glued to the inside of a book’s cardboard covers—endpapers today are often full of wit, surprise, and even deep emotion. As one of the first (and last!) visual elements readers encounter when interacting with a book, endpapers set the mood for the story inside. More than 30 works by artists including Yas Immamura, Eliza Kinkz, and Paloma Valdivia will show how endpapers can extend the main story, offer a conceptual take on a theme or action, or provide additional visual and narrative information.

The Art of Grace Lin: Meeting a Friend in an Unexpected Place

June 14, 2025 - January 4, 2026

Grace Lin’s first picture book, The Ugly Vegetables, was published in 1999 to glowing praise. Twenty-five years later, she has created over 30 titles, including board books, early readers, and middle grade novels, garnering Caldecott, Newbury, and Geisel honors along the way. Lin is a dedicated advocate for diversity in children’s book publishing, with a popular TEDx talk, “The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf” and created the video essay, “What to do when you realize classic books from your childhood are racist?” for PBS News Hour and New England Public Radio. This career retrospective of more than 80 works will celebrate all aspects of Lin’s creativity with original art, sketches, manuscripts, and videos.

About The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

Founded in 2002, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is the international champion of picture book art. Situated on 7.5 acres in Amherst, Massachusetts, The Carle houses a rich and deep collection of art of more than 300 picture book artists, including Eric Carle (author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar), and illuminates its collection through exhibitions, education, programming, and art-making—making it a critical resource for picture book artists and authors, and art-loving communities locally, nationally, and abroad. The Carle’s mission is to elevate picture book art and inspire a love of art, art creation, and reading. Since opening its doors more than 20 years ago, The Carle has welcomed more than one million visitors—plus more than four million additional museumgoers who have enjoyed its touring exhibitions around the world.  

Visit The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

125 West Bay Road

Amherst, MA 01002

Hours

Wednesday – Friday, 10 am to 4 pm

Saturdays, 10 am- 5 pm

Sundays, 12 pm- 5 pm

Admission

Adults: $15

Youth, student, teacher, senior: $8

Members: free

Press Information

Amanda Domizio, Amanda Domizio Communications

347-229-2877 / amanda@domiziopr.com