Special Exhibit: Dodge Macknight

Dodge Macknight: A Life in Color 

Nov 14 2025 - March 30 2026

Step into the colorful world of Dodge Macknight (1860–1950), the prominent artist who made Cape Cod his home. For more than half of his long life, Macknight lived in East Sandwich’s historic Spring Hill neighborhood, transforming a former Quaker boarding school into his beloved residence, The Hedges.

Postcard of ‘The Hedges,’ approximately 1920. Collection of the Sandwich Glass Museum and Historical Society

 
This exhibition presents a reappraisal of Macknight’s work and offers the most comprehensive look yet at his art, life, and legacy. Visitors will encounter rarely seen works—including four watercolors returning to Sandwich after more than a century, and five sketches from the New Bedford Free Public Library, on public display for the very first time. Archival photographs, personal objects, and materials documenting his career and community enrich the story, along with works from his Cape artistic circle of friends.

Garden at Sandwich, Massachusetts, undated, Portland Museum of Art, Maine. Gift of the Estate of Grace Nichols Strong 

A sense of place was integral to Macknight's life and art. Popular and successful in his day, his art endures with his intensely colored watercolors, displaying confident, fluid brushstrokes, for his vivid portrayal of nature. An accomplished horticulturist, Macknight created gardens that fed both the household and his art, providing another palette for creative expression that astounded guests to The Hedges. This landscape will be recreated through his art, archival photographs, and contemporary accounts. Gardening was only one of the passions he shared with his friend and patron, Isabella Stewart Gardner, one of the many Bostonians and others, including John Singer Sargent, who journeyed to East Sandwich for Macknight and his art. 

East Sandwich Marshes, before 1922, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Zoe Oliver Sherman Collection with the Glass Factory in the distant background 

Join us in rediscovering an artist whose life was full of color. And of the Cape of the first half of the 20th century, which served as Macknight’s important base and that he portrayed in his landscapes with saturated hues and luminosity.  

Portrait of Dodge Macknight by George E. Tingley, undated photograph but likely 1897-1898; Courtesy of the Mystic Museum of Art 

Exhibit Opening Event & Talk - Nov. 14th 5:30pm

Join us on November 14th from 5:30 - 7:30 pm for a celebratory evening event in which we not only open the Dodge Macknight exhibition, we also unveil the Glassblowers Christmas trees in the Gift Shop! The event will feature a talk by Special Exhibition Curator Julia Blakely. Light refreshments will be served.

November 14th 5:30-7:30pm

 

The Dodge Macknight exhibition is supported by a generous grant from the Fund for Sandwich - Cape Cod Foundation.