Audra McDonald, Hank Willis Thomas stand out; new Iron Horse partnership launches
AMHERST, Mass. — The UMass Fine Arts Center announces programming for its spectacular 2026-2027 season. Audra McDonald, winner of a record six Tony Awards, will anchor the performing arts schedule, while visual arts highlights include an exhibition of acclaimed conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas’s work at the University Museum of Contemporary Art.
Tickets for all performances in the Fine Arts Center’s 52nd season go on sale Tuesday, August 11 at 10 a.m. A seven-day subscriber presale period, August 4 through 10, will precede the start of single-event ticket sales. Pre-registration for fall visual arts openings and talks also will commence August 11.
The 2026-2027 Fine Arts Center season comprises 23 public performances in five venues and 15 exhibitions in the center’s three visual arts spaces, as well as artist residencies, workshops, master classes, and campus and community engagement events. The season also will include four weekday performances for kindergarten through grade 12 students presented via the Global Arts: Performances for Schools program. And the University Museum of Contemporary Art will once again host its popular interactive Vote for Art event, through which it invites the public, in person and online, to participate in selecting new acquisitions from a group of pieces identified by undergraduate students enrolled in the museum’s introduction to art curation class, Collecting 101.
The coming season will see the launch of a new Connecticut River-spanning partnership between the Fine Arts Center and Northampton’s venerated club venue, the Iron Horse. The Fine Arts Center, which opened in 1975, and the Iron Horse, which opened in 1979, are the Pioneer Valley’s oldest performing arts venues. The new partnership reflects an ongoing collaboration between the Fine Arts Center and downtown Amherst club venue The Drake, which is entering its third season. These partnerships enable the Fine Arts Center to present emerging performers in intimate settings and to extend audience engagement into area communities. At the Iron Horse, the Fine Arts Center will present a pair of performances by virtuosic stringed instrument players, Ukrainian singer-songwriter Maryna Krut and American roots music artist Yasmin Williams. This season’s Drake series will include South Korean trad-punk experimentalists Insun Park & Generals, Italian folk-meets-post-rock innovator Maria Mazzotta, and visionary Thai American interdisciplinary artist Mary Prescott.
Audra McDonald, star of Broadway, film and television, whom The New York Times called “a defining voice of our time,” will close the performing arts season with Audra Goes to Hollywood, a program of the Juilliard-trained soprano’s favorite songs from the silver screen. The season will open with The Carpenters Songbook: A Live Celebration, a new theatrical performance featuring faithful renditions of songs by the beloved soft rock hitmakers of the 1970s and ’80s. In between will come stellar jazz, classical, world, and popular music; a trio of outstanding dance performances; and a pair of Sunday matinee events featuring family entertainment.
The 2026-2027 jazz series will include two performances by longtime collaborators of the late, legendary, Massachusetts native pianist Chick Corea. Bassist Christian McBride, who played with Corea in a variety of ensembles from 2008 until Corea’s death in 2021, will bring his jazz-funk-R&B fusion ensemble, Ursa Major, to Bowker Auditorium in October. And in April, bassist Stanley Clarke, who was Corea’s friend and collaborator of nearly 50 years, and pianist Hiromi, who worked with Corea over the last 15 years of his life, will team up with the innovative string ensemble PUBLIQuartet to present a celebration of Corea’s life and music in the Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall.
Classical performances include a solo recital by cellist Seth Parker Woods, presented in conjunction with the UMass Department of Music and Dance’s biennial Bach Festival and Symposium; and a solo performance by acclaimed pianist Jeremy Denk co-presented with Amherst College’s Music at Amherst program. Leading South African a cappella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Japanese taiko standouts Yamato will anchor the season’s world music schedule. Filipino American rapper Ruby Ibarra, who turned heads with her set at the 2026 Green River Festival, will take the Bowker Auditorium stage in November backed by a band that includes pioneering Filipino American rock guitarist and western Massachusetts resident June Millington. The dance series will feature two Philadelphia-based companies BalletX and Philadanco! as well as Mythili Prakash, a Los Angeles native who is internationally acclaimed as a leading performer and choreographer in the Indian classical dance form bharatanatyam. Family matinees include Sugar Skull! A Día de Muertos Musical Adventure and enduring favorites The Peking Acrobats. And Global Arts will offer Sugar Skull!, Yamato, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and The Peking Acrobats as weekday morning events for school groups.
The 2026-2027 visual arts season will feature 15 exhibitions at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, Augusta Savage Gallery, and Hampden Gallery, showcasing internationally recognized artists alongside emerging and midcareer voices working across painting, sculpture, photography, sound installation, and interdisciplinary practice. Receptions, artist talks, workshops, and other public programs will invite audiences to engage directly with artists and their work.
The University Museum of Contemporary Art’s season is anchored by Hank Willis Thomas: LOVERULES, drawn from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, featuring a small-scale replica of Boston’s renowned bronze sculpture The Embrace alongside other iconic works from Thomas’ career. The museum will also present Native artist Athena LaTocha’s Buried Heat, with gestural sculptural compositions responding to the land; Between Earth and Sky, drawn from the museum’s permanent collection and exploring artists’ relationships to the land; and Raw Material: The Art and Life of Susan Kleckner, the first comprehensive survey of pioneering feminist artist Susan Kleckner’s work.
Augusta Savage Gallery will emphasize works examining identity and lived experience with The Souls of Black Folk by Desmond Beach, whose quilted portraits transform the brutalities embedded in Black life into beauty; Luz Harmon’s Personal Hell (Don’t Look At Me), featuring visceral, anatomical paintings; and Jeffrey Meris’ When I’m Not Strong, an examination of the systemic disparities faced by Black men in the carceral system.
Hampden Gallery furthers its mission to advance the careers of artists at all levels with Anita S. Hunt’s printmaking engagement with the local environment in Ghosts, Echoes, and Other Wonders; Álvaro Alejandro López’s digital photographs of books in De Natura Libris; and Thai American artist Toby Barnes’ immersive textile works in Wax & Resist (2027).
Full performance and exhibition schedules follow.
View the Fine Arts Center’s 2026-2027 season highlight reel.
Public Performing Arts Events
Fall 2026
September 25 — The Carpenters Songbook: A Live Celebration
October 1 — Insun Park & Generals
October 7 — Craig Taborn Trio
October 17 — Jeremy Denk (co-presented with Music at Amherst)
October 22 — Christian McBride and Ursa Major
November 5 — Ruby Ibarra
November 8 — Sugar Skull! A Día de Muertos Musical Adventure!
November 10 — Maryna Krut
November 19 — BalletX
November 21 — ¡Guitarra! João Luiz Rezende Lopes
December 3 — Maria Mazzotta
Spring 2027
February 10 — Yamato, the Drummers of Japan
February 18 — Mary Prescott
February 25 — Philadanco!
March 4 — Michael Mayo
March 10 — Ladysmith Black Mambazo
March 13 — ¡Guitarra! Virgile Barthe
March 25 — Mythili Prakash
April 1 — Yasmin Williams
April 4 — The Peking Acrobats
April 10 — Stanley Clarke and Hiromi along with the PUBLIQuartet
April 25 — Seth Parker Woods
April 29 — Audra McDonald
Global Arts Performances
November 9 — Sugar Skull! A Día de Muertos Musical Adventure!
February 11 — Yamato, the Drummers of Japan
March 11 — Ladysmith Black Mambazo
April 5 — The Peking Acrobats
Visual Arts Exhibitions
University Museum of Contemporary Art
September 15 – December 13, 2026
Athena LaTocha: Buried Heat
Dianne Smith: Sonic Futures, Radiant Bodies
Between Earth and Sky: Artists in Dialogue with the Land
February 9 – May 12, 2027
Raw Material: The Art and Life of Susan Kleckner
Hank Willis Thomas: LOVERULES, from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family
Foundation
Augusta Savage Gallery
September 4–25, 2026
Surveying Gravity: A Mirror for Growing Contradictions by Justin Randolph Thompson
October 2 – November 13, 2026
The Souls of Black Folk by Desmond Beach
November 20 – December 9, 2026
Land of Water and Sugar Cane by Farihah Aliyah Shah
February 5 – March 12, 2027
Personal Hell (Don’t Look At Me) by Luz Harmon
March 26 – May 10, 2027
When I’m Not Strong by Jeffrey Meris
Hampden Gallery
September 8 – December 15, 2026
Ghosts, Echoes, and Other Wonders by Anita S. Hunt
De Natura Libris by Álvaro Alejandro López
February 2 – March 12, 2027
Borderlines: Plants, Memory, and Distant Blue by Madge Evers
February 2 – May 12, 2027
-scape by Mikaël Petraccia
March 29 – May 12, 2027
Wax & Resist (2027) by Toby Barnes