For years, the Bellwater Museum of Art's permanent collection has leaned heavily on donated industrial-era artifacts and touring exhibitions. That balance shifted slightly Wednesday, when the museum announced it had acquired works from three Bellwater artists, including muralist Ines Carrizo, for permanent display.
The museum acquired a studio canvas by muralist Ines Carrizo, shown originally at her recent solo gallery debut on Vale Avenue, alongside a large-scale steel sculpture by Tobias Marchand and a series of three abstract paintings by Naomi Petrucci. Museum director Dr. Felix Ohanian said the combined purchase price, funded through the museum’s acquisitions endowment rather than the city’s arts fund, totaled $86,000.
“None of that money came from the council, and none of it required a public vote,” Ohanian said. “That matters because it means we can make these decisions on artistic merit alone, without the same funding fight that’s followed almost everything else this museum has done in public art over the past two years.”
Three very different bodies of work
Curator Priscilla Adeyemi said the three acquisitions were chosen partly for how differently they approach the city’s ongoing transformation. Carrizo’s canvas is a preparatory study for a section of her greenway mural depicting industrial and biotech imagery layered together; Marchand’s sculpture, welded from salvaged fastener-plant scrap, forms an abstract human figure standing roughly nine feet tall; and Petrucci’s three paintings use satellite imagery of the city’s changing land use, rendered in washes of color, to trace Foundry Row’s shift from factory floor to lab space over two decades.
“I wanted three artists who were all looking at the same city and seeing three completely different things,” Adeyemi said. “That range is exactly what I think a permanent collection is supposed to hold onto, not just one version of the story.”
I’ve sold work out of my garage for fifteen years. Having a piece in a museum’s permanent collection isn’t just an honor, it’s proof that this city’s own artists don’t have to leave to be taken seriously.
Tobias Marchand, sculptor
A shift in collecting priorities
Ohanian said the acquisitions reflect a broader strategic shift the museum’s board adopted quietly last year, committing to direct a growing share of the acquisitions endowment toward living, Bellwater-based artists rather than historical pieces or touring collections. He said the policy grew partly out of feedback from the museum’s new Ironworks Wing, where visitors responded strongly to objects with direct local provenance.
“People care more about a piece when they know the artist shops at the same grocery store they do,” Ohanian said. “We learned that lesson from the industrial history wing, and I think it applies just as much to contemporary work as it does to a punch-press log book.”
Naomi Petrucci, whose satellite-imagery paintings are the least established of the three artists’ work in terms of prior public exposure, said the acquisition came as a genuine surprise after years of showing primarily in small pop-up exhibits. “I make work about a city that mostly doesn’t know my name yet,” Petrucci said. “Having that work hang somewhere permanent changes the terms of that relationship completely.”
Adeyemi said the museum considered acquisitions from several other local artists before settling on the final three, including work from a Foundry Row ceramicist and a Lowertown photographer whose portraits of longtime residents she called “strong candidates for a future purchase.” She declined to name them publicly, saying the museum did not want to suggest a decision had already been made before its board formally reviews next year’s acquisitions budget.
“There’s more talent in this city than this one endowment can buy in a single year,” Adeyemi said. “That’s actually the reassuring part. I’m not worried about running out of local artists worth collecting. I’m worried about the museum having enough money to keep up with how much is out there.”
- The museum acquired works from Ines Carrizo, Tobias Marchand and Naomi Petrucci for a combined $86,000.
- The purchase was funded through the museum’s acquisitions endowment, not city arts funding.
- All three works are expected to go on permanent public display within the next several months.
Adeyemi said the museum plans to rotate the newly acquired pieces into public view alongside the industrial history wing’s existing collection within the next several months, and that she hopes the acquisitions signal an ongoing commitment rather than a one-time gesture. “I don’t want this to be the year we bought three local artists and called it done,” she said. “I want it to be the year we started, and then kept going.”
Ohanian said the museum has not set a formal annual target for local acquisitions but expects the endowment to fund at least one similar purchase each year going forward, funding permitting. “We’re not going to overpromise on a number,” he said. “But the intention behind this one wasn’t a coincidence, and it isn’t going to be a coincidence next year either.”