Finding Alice: Artists Exploring Wonderland
Finding Alice: Artists Exploring Wonderland, featuring Abelardo Morell will be on display from March 21-May 24, 2026. This exhibition is toured by Exhibits USA, the national touring exhibition program of Mid-America Arts Alliance. Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published in 1865, the exhibition explores the enduring influence of this classic story on artists across generations through photography, illustration, and book art.
Finding Alice contains works from two photographic series by acclaimed artist Abelardo Morell, alongside multiple illustrated editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland featuring work by Andrea D’Aquino, Salvador Dalí, Camille Rose Garcia, Yayoi Kusama, Oleg Lipchenko, Peter Newell, Evgeny Alexandrovich Shukaev, among others.
Reflecting on his initial Alice in Wonderland series, Morell explains that he designed the images to exist within landscapes made of books, inspired by Carroll’s connection between Wonderland and the discovery of imagination through reading. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Morell began a second body of work, Through the Looking Glass, shaped by the experience of sheltering in place. Morell found parallels between Carroll’s story and the uncertainties of contemporary life. In both series, Alice’s resilience—her ability to confront the irrational without ignoring it—emerges as a guiding theme, offering an instructive model for navigating turbulent times.
About the Artist: Abelardo Morell
Abelardo Morell and his family fled Cuba in 1962 and settled in New York City. He is widely recognized for his camera obscura photographs created in locations around the world. His major retrospectives include Abelardo Morell and the Camera Eye at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door at the Art Institute of Chicago, which later traveled to the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Morell has received numerous honors, including fellowships from the CINTAS Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award, and a Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art. His work is held in major public and private collections worldwide. He lives and works in Boston and is exclusively represented by the Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.