Menagerie of Marvels, a new exhibition by Eleanor Hubbard at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, is fueled by compassion.
The show depicts 12 different animals that were rescued, a cause the artist has long embraced. Ms. Hubbard lives year-round on the Vineyard, and in 2018 established Hubbard’s Cupboard, a community fund administered through the Animal Shelter of Martha’s Vineyard that helps Islanders afford veterinary care for their pets.
“The world turns in many directions and right now the era of compassion is rolling in and it’s not a bad time to get on board,” Ms. Hubbard said. “This is the era of companionship that I am introducing.”
Ms. Hubbard said her whole life has been one of chance encounters with supportive individuals who encouraged her to make art.
“Art is my life and I grew up with it.” she said. “My parents were very patient, extraordinarily patient, and I was lucky enough to be an only child of older parents who did have the patience and the time, and gave me what was called then a playroom. That was my studio.”
But not everyone on her journey has been so helpful. She recalled when she was freshman taking an art class at the University of Pennsylvania and the head of the art department ripped up one of her pieces and told her to find a different calling.
“Get a different major, you’re not an artist,” Ms. Hubbard remembered being told.
For the next six years, Ms. Hubbard didn’t create anything. But this opened other doors.
“The great thing about that is, serendipitously, he sent me on a different track,” Ms. Hubbard said.
She became an English major, graduated, spent some time in Oslo, Norway, then enrolled at Cornell University working towards a doctorate in medieval English. While there, she was introduced to John Cage, an avant-garde musician who was teaching at the university.
“He said to me, ‘Ms. Hubbard, get out of the Middle Ages, get back to who you are, which is an artist…go somewhere where there are other artists,’” Ms. Hubbard recalled.
Ms. Hubbard took his advice and enjoyed a long career as an artist. She lived and worked in various countries throughout Europe, including a residence at the American Academy in Rome where she worked in the same studio that Swedish-American sculptor Carl Milles once worked. In Rome, she created a large art piece consisting of pyramid of oxen made up of 5,987 paper oxen all painted in different ways, representative of the extra days of life a young calf was given after it was saved from the slaughter.
Her show at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum continues this merging of art and animal rescue. At the center of the exhibition is a piece depicting José, a legendary West Tisbury ox who weighed nearly 2,500 pound. The piece is a pyramid composed of more than 100 miniature watercolor cutouts of José.
The exhibition also includes many of the sketch notebooks she has filled over the years. Visitors to the museum will be able to flip through the pages of these books and see the artist’s process from sketch to final piece.
“I thought it would be wonderful to see the hand of the artist,” said Donna Hassler, a long-time friend of Ms. Hubbard who helped curate the show. “It’s wonderful to be able to work with an artist to organize an exhibition of her work with a very wonderful humanitarian subject that I think everyone will appreciate.”
Menagerie of Marvels will have an opening reception on Friday, August 21 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The exhibition continues through January 17, 2027.
This article appears in August 21, 2026.