I was raised on an art history saturated with religious and historical storytelling. Museum educators could still vividly and excitedly recount these narratives, and I found them endlessly captivating. Learning that a prince was a usurper or that a saint had been flayed alive felt thrilling rather than grim. What fascinated me most was the assumption that early viewers already knew these stories—knowledge that has since slipped away. Only a chosen few could still unlock their meanings. I wanted to hold that key, which led me to pursue a life in museums for decades.

As film and literature evolved to embrace unreliable narrators and multiple viewpoints, visual art gradually followed. For a long time, much of visual art treated narrative as an impurity, something to be avoided. Yet a small group of artists could never quite abandon art’s oldest function: telling through showing. The storytelling that survived did so by welcoming ambiguity—not as a flaw, but as a source of vitality.

The artists in Ambiguous Storytellers—from New York, the Hudson Valley, the Berkshires, Miami, Houston, and Dallas—work in this tradition. They weave elliptical anecdotes, myths, confessions, and dreams into their picture-making. A simple strategy often used by museum educators to engage children—asking, What do you think is happening here?—works just as well for adults. I encourage viewers to try it. Approached with openness and curiosity, these works are difficult to resist and richly rewarding to spend time with for open-hearted art mavens.

– Bill Arning