WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.- The Norton Museum of Art presents Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast and Shara Hughes: Inside Outside, two solo exhibitions on view concurrently this fall that reframe and reimagine the landscape of the United States. They will be on view from November 15, 2025, through March 1, 2026.

“The exhibitions by Anastasia Samoylova and Shara Hughes exemplify the Norton’s commitment to presenting artists who challenge how we see and understand the world around us. Both artists are pushing the boundaries of their mediums to engage with identity, place, and belonging. These powerful new bodies of work will resonate deeply with our Collection and our community,” said Ghislain d’Humières, the Norton’s Kenneth C. Griffin Director and CEO.

Both Samoylova and Hughes are among the Norton’s 2025 Artists-in-Residence. The program, which features two to four artists annually, emphasizes the Norton’s commitment to fostering creative and intellectual growth for mid- to late-career artists whose work warrants greater attention.

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast presents new work by the Russian-born American artist (born 1984) that explores the national landscape as a site of both mythmaking and fracture, using the historic U.S. Route 1 as a pivotal point of departure. Through a combination of color and black-and-white documentary photography, Samoylova invites viewers to reflect upon the cyclical nature of time and history through complex environmental and human stories.

Samoylova was inspired by American photographer Berenice Abbott’s largely overlooked 1954 project documenting U.S. Route 1 from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida, anticipating the impact of the growing Interstate Highway System and consequential homogenization of American culture across state lines. Revisiting the route 70 years later, Samoylova documents the layered interplay between the natural environment, human intervention, and the pervasive forces of political ideology, capitalism, and mass consumerism. Samoylova’s mastery of light, color, form, and composition grounds these themes in striking visual terms. At its heart, the project reflects her belief that art can foster connection across geographic, generational, and political divides.

“The Norton is proud to debut Atlantic Coast, a series that examines the American landscape not just as a backdrop, but as a mirror — one that reflects the contradictions, aspirations, and tensions embedded in the national psyche,” said Lauren Richman, Ph.D., the Norton’s William and Sarah Ross Soter Senior Curator of Photography. “Samoylova’s photographs prompt us to reconsider our own assumptions, revealing how a sense of place is both constructed and emotionally charged, and fundamental to understanding American identity.”

As 2026 will mark the United States’ 250th anniversary, Atlantic Coast offers a timely reflection on how the United States forms a sense of nationhood. Rather than orienting the viewer geographically, the artist constructs a visual narrative shaped by recurring phenomena and shared symbols, revealing how nostalgia operates as a tool in the ongoing negotiation between the present and an idealized memory.

Located on the historic U.S. Route 1 — known locally as Dixie Highway — the Norton Museum of Art offers a fitting gateway to Samoylova’s journey along the same stretch of road, as it participates in the legacy and ongoing story of the iconic American road.

“The open road has long been a place of inquiry — both personal and collective. As a woman and first-generation American, traveling Route 1 draws me into conversation with a particular strain of American mythmaking,” Samoylova said. “My work builds on the legacy of photographers like Robert Frank and William Eggleston, who approached the roadside landscape as both subject and silent witness. In documenting this shifting terrain, I trace the fault lines between memory and invention, where nostalgia operates not just as recollection but as a framing device — loaded, strategic, and deeply alive in our present.”

The exhibition will be complemented by a fully illustrated publication titled Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast, co-published by the Norton and Aperture Foundation, featuring texts by writer and art critic Aruna D’Souza and Lauren Richman, Ph.D., the Norton’s William and Sarah Ross Soter Senior Curator of Photography. The exhibition is organized by the Norton Museum of Art and curated by Lauren Richman, with Curatorial Research Associate Sarah Bass.

Shara Hughes: Inside Outside

Shara Hughes: Inside Outside marks the first mid-career survey of American artist Shara Hughes (born 1981), bringing together over 30 works that chart the evolution of her vibrant and psychologically charged practice, including large-scale paintings from the last 15 years and ceramic sculptures exemplifying her newfound interest in three-dimensional artmaking. This exhibition marks the first time her work has been on view at the Norton, and highlights Hughes’ intuitive approach to image-making, through which she creates imagined worlds that blur the line between figuration and abstraction.

Inspired by art historical movements like color field painting and Post-Impressionism, Hughes uses vibrant colors, dynamic compositions, and shifting perspectives to create paintings that defy the existing conventions associated with the landscape genre. Her paintings are built without direct reference, observation, or prior planning. “I truly have to be in front of the painting to make decisions and even then, my plan can change the minute I turn from the palette back to the canvas,” said Hughes of her process. Instead, she transposes the psychological complexity of her inner world onto the surface. Hughes mixes pigment directly on the canvas, producing one-of-a-kind, expressive color palettes as she seeks to paint the internal human experience.

Organized both thematically and chronologically, Inside Outside takes on a conceptual framework centered on the idea of the “window.” Hughes has long been reflecting on windows and portals — looking in, looking out — and how emotions can be translated into tangible forms. “It’s a reflection of something I can't see in myself so much of the time,” Hughes said. The artist often frames her compositions with edges and boundaries, echoing the way emotions and thoughts are contained within human bodies. Her earlier body of work features windows within interior spaces, opening portals to other realms, while in her more recent landscapes, elements like trees, bushes, and bodies of water act as portals, framing perspective and distance.

“I hope these larger-than-life dynamic paintings will move and captivate Norton audiences,” said Arden Sherman, the Norton’s Glenn W. and Cornelia T. Bailey Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. “Hughes’ work offers a space for contemplation and opportunities to discover elements of her work that resonate emotionally with the viewer’s lived experience.”

The exhibition also includes a series of new ceramic sculptures produced by Hughes during her artist residency at the Norton Museum of Art in collaboration with the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach. Hughes’ ceramic works, signifying the future of her artistic practice, translate her signature style into three-dimensional forms.

Shara Hughes: Inside Outside will be accompanied by a publication of the same title, featuring images of the artworks in the exhibition, a written contribution from Arden Sherman, exhibition curator, an essay by art historian Craig Burnett, and an interview with the artist by Alex A. Jones. The catalogue is designed and co-published with Pacific, NYC.

The exhibition is organized by the Norton Museum of Art and curated by Arden Sherman, the Norton’s Glenn W. and Cornelia T. Bailey Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.