Past Exhibits
Exhibit History
Exhibit Archive
Art Educator Showcase
Celebrate the creativity of those who inspire it every day! Explore artwork by Portsmouth Public Schools teachers in the Art Educator Showcase, on display upstairs at the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center. Visit the showcase through November 8.
Art Lab at PACC
From classic paper dolls to designing your own Lego mini figure, classic princesses, and many other design templates join us for a fun day of character crafting.
Art on the Square
We’re bringing art outside this summer with large-format prints of original artwork displayed around the square. Meet this year’s artist lineup below and click any name to explore more of their work—then vote for your favorite. The artist with the most votes will receive their own exhibition!
Sound Bites
Your midweek music break is back 🎶 Join us for Sound Bites every Wednesday in September from 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM in the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center Courtyard. Enjoy live music in a relaxed outdoor setting. Free admission to the courtyard and the museum during performances. Bring your lunch, a friend, or your whole office and enjoy the rhythm of Olde Towne!
First Weekends: Discover Olde Towne Portsmouth
Make your first weekend a tradition in Olde Towne. Join us in Olde Towne as we bring the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center (PACC) courtyard and surrounding streets to life with live music, local art, markets and hands-on activities – all along the High Street corridor.
Color Craze: Black Lights and Bright Colors
Join us Saturdays in October from 11am-2pm at the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center for Color Craze: Black Lights and Bright Colors! Free & open to the public.
A Seat Of Justice: The Courthouse That Shaped Portsmouth
This compelling exhibition explores the history of the Norfolk County Courthouse (now the Portsmouth Art & Cultural center) and its powerful role in shaping law, justice and memory in the region.
STEEL SEAS & SKY MACHINES: THE DIESELPUNK ART OF TONY SNIPES
What if history and scientific breakthroughs unfolded .. differently? What if Abe Lincoln survived to lead a more powerful Reconstruction, and scientific innovation lifted ships and “Aerocycles” into the sky? The powerful new exhibition invites you to reconsider history as a space for possibility, redefining what progress can look like, as new minds push the boundaries of electricity, magnetism and gravity. It’s history and science, reimagined. Don’t miss it!
FREEMAN VINES: Hanging Tree Guitars
Hanging Tree Guitars introduces the work of Freeman Vines, a luthier and material artist born in Greene County, North Carolina. The Vines family is deeply rooted in the flatlands of the North Carolina plain where their family sharecropped on plantations that once enslaved them.