Throughout history, human beings have moved from one place to another—whether for a season or a lifetime, whether alone or in groups, whether forced by hardship or drawn by opportunity. What is gained, or lost, in such a journey? How does it affect a person’s identity? Who decides where someone belongs, or if, and why?

This year, Mystic Museum of Art (MMoA)’s curatorial theme is Migration, exploring the complex experience of people and ideas moving across cultural, lingual, geographical, and temporal borders. We have seen how stories evolve and transform over time and distance in One World Project: Art, Culture, and Children’s Literature from Around the World; how the physical act of the journey affects an artist and their work in Stories, Dreams, Desires: The Artists of Expressiones and Lars Thorsen: From Norway to Noank; and how the Pequot people resiliently held onto their cultural identity in the face of forced migration off their ancestral lands in Gifts of the Ocean (Kutah Makooôkanash). Inspired by these artists, MMoA’s year of Migration culminates in a juried exhibition: GOING PLACES.

Artists were invited to explore their own experiences with migration and going places in their art. By the sheer act of moving through life, each of us is a product of the paths we have embarked upon, as well as the journeys of those who came before us. From family recipes and traditions passed down from the “old country,” to souvenirs picked up from vacations abroad, to plants growing in New England gardens which are native to countries on the other side of the world, this call to artists was open to myriad interpretations of what “Going Places” means to them.