This fall, the Museum of Northwest Art opens three exhibitions that feel like home — shows that capture the way this region keeps changing, reflecting and finding beauty in the process. From the pulse of paint to the quiet hum of energy, MoNA’s fall season feels both grounded and alive.
“Vitamin P:NW — Recent Painting in the Pacific Northwest”
On view Oct. 11 – Jan. 11
If art had nutrients, this show would be pure sustenance. “Vitamin P:NW” borrows its name from the idea that painting — like vitamin C — stays essential for growth and renewal. The exhibition gathers Northwest painters who are stretching the medium in new directions: reshaping the surface, bending form and blending the natural world with inner life.
There’s a sense of curiosity running through it, a willingness to experiment. “Vitamin P:NW” reminds us that painting is still a living, breathing language. It’s color in conversation, tradition meeting transformation, and its pulse here in the Northwest is unmistakably strong.
“William Turner: Conversations with the Elders”
On view Oct. 11 –Jan. 11
Tacoma-born artist William Turner knew how to talk back to art history — not with words, but with paint. His canvases are full of rhythm and wit, bold color and that looseness that feels a little like jazz. “Conversations with the Elders” follows Turner’s long exchange with El Greco’s 16th-century portrait “Vincenzo Anastagi.”
After seeing the painting at the Frick Collection in New York, Turner began reimagining Anastagi in all kinds of moments — some serious, some playful, all charged with energy. He painted the way a musician might improvise: following rhythm more than rule. A graduate of the University of Puget Sound and the University of Washington, Turner stayed rooted in the Northwest while always keeping one eye on the masters.
“Energy Transitions”
On view Oct. 11–Jan. 11
History hums quietly through “Energy Transitions,” a multimedia look at how humans have harnessed and moved beyond different kinds of power curated by the Skagit Valley Clean Energy Alliance. From fire to fossil fuels to the promise of renewables, it traces a long story of adaptation and reinvention — something the Northwest knows well.
The show reminds us that energy revolutions aren’t new. People were already talking about phasing out coal back in the 1840s. Steam trains, gas lamps and coke furnaces faded into history, just as the electric grid changed everything in the 1880s and the oil crises of the 1970s sparked new ideas.
As one wall text puts it, “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.” The same could be said of oil. Change, this exhibition reminds us, isn’t collapse — it’s evolution.
Together, these exhibitions echo what it means to be from the Northwest: to pay attention, to adapt and to keep creating beauty in the space between continuity and change.
See the exhibit: Museum of Northwest Art
Where: 121 First St., La Conner
On view: Oct. 11–Jan. 11
Details: monamuseum.org
Casey Lynn is the creative director and arts writer for La Conner Community News.
