As part of its 2025 Fall Puppet Forum Series and in conjunction with the William Benton Museum of Art’s current exhibition Fate and Magic: The Art of Maureen McCabe, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut is pleased to host “Image, Magic, and Objects: The Art of Maureen McCabe” on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT.

In this Puppet Forum event McCabe and Ballard Institute Director John Bell will discuss connections between art, puppetry, and magic, especially as they appear in McCabe’s use of game boards, toy theater proscenia, tarot cards, dice, birds, ouija boards, and other uncanny objects. 

Maureen McCabe is a celebrated collage artist whose playful yet carefully composed assemblages weave imagery from ancient and current cultures, together with aspects of folklore, magic, myth, and the unexplained. In a career that spans six decades, this Connecticut-based artist has exhibited her work in museums in the United States and Mexico, and was the subject of a major retrospective at Washington’s Bellevue Arts Museum in 2006. In her assemblages and installations McCabe creates poetic images charged with humor and wit, inspired by the world around her and fascinated by its mysteries. Her current exhibition at the Benton—on display through December 14, 2025—presents rarely seen works from the artist’s studio and private collections alongside the objects that have inspired her.  

This forum will also be broadcast via Ballard Institute Facebook Live, and is co-sponsored by the William Benton Museum of Art.

Admission to this event is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. For more information or if you require accommodation to attend a forum, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860.486.8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.

---