‘Worcester is its own deal’
Denholm Building exhibit highlights city’s history, vitality
Color, movement and creativity are once again filling the big display windows of the Denholm Building. h Coming on the heels of the popular “The Heart of Art & Fashion” exhibition in the same space, a new public art installation focusing on Worcester’s long history now fills the spots where the department store that once occupied the building used to show off new styles. h “When we had to take last year’s installation down, it was so missed. People were walking by asking, ‘Where’s the art?’ We’re so excited to get it back in there,” exhibit project manager Melissa Mattson said. h Throughout 2026, anyone walking past Main and Franklin streets will be able to stop and take in the “Uniquely Worcester: Celebrating Worcester’s Past & Present” art exhibition, which Mattson said fits perfectly in the windows of what was once an old-fashioned department store. h “The old-school imagined New York City Christmastime shopping experience from all the movies we grew up watching, with huge store windows, we don’t see that,” Mattson said. “The department store as we know it is dying. They basically don’t exist anymore because everybody is shopping online, and the huge bay windows where we’re doing the installation are such a rare gem.” h The Denholm Building’s eight front windows contain work from 10 artists that celebrates all aspects of the city’s history, from sports to the arts to influential figures such as Robert Goddard, who gave the world its first liquid fuel rocket launch; Valentine’s card popularizer Esther Howland and smiley face creator and graphic artist Harvey Ball.
Sound and color
One window is filled with Abu Mwenye’s vibrant paintings of musicians and dancers, inspired by both his family’s Kenyan and Tanzanian heritage and the interaction between cultures he saw when he first moved to Worcester.
“When I moved here, I was not painting like this. These paintings are born here, especially the music series. I used to paint mostly portraits, fine art, but when I moved to Worcester, I decided to come with a new style,” Mwenye said. “We make Worcester very colorful.”
Another window features a line of musical instruments and artifacts from the past 250 years, ranging from an American Revolutionstyle rope drum to an early drum kit made by the Worcester-based Walberg & Auge Co. to a guitar made this year in a Worcester Polytechnic Institute lab.
Artist Anneliese Place, who once owned the Compound rock club in Fitchburg, put together the exhibit with the United States’ 250th anniversary in mind, but with a focus on Worcester’s past as experienced through sound.
The rope drum is on loan from an American Revolution reenactor who recently played it to mark the anniversary of Massachusetts’ first reading of the Declaration of Independence, which took place across the street from the Denholm Building on the Worcester Common on July 14, 1776.
A banner from the Worcester Music Festival,
founded in 1858 and now operating as Music Worcester, appears next to the hi-hat, a pair of cymbals that first became part of almost every drum kit in the 1930s and have been ever since. When early jazz drummers first began to use them, the most popular manufacturer was the local Walberg & Auge.
The future of sound as Place sees it is also featured in the exhibit through artifacts from the WPI lab, which, when she visited, was researching medical applications of sound as a tool for pain management.
“It’s the first drumbeat from across the street, all the way into pain management. People don’t realize saxophones were manufactured here. Every piece I have in the display tells a story of what Worcester has done,” Place said. “The history of sound comes through Worcester.”
Place said she loved the 2024 “Heart of Fashion & Art” exhibit, so when she learned the Denholm windows were going to be home to another public art display, she leaped at the chance to take part.
“It was a super opportunity for me to share with people this story that has been in my head, to get it out into the window,” Place said. “Hopefully people will see that Worcester doesn’t have to be Boston. Worcester is its own deal, it’s such a cool place, and it has such a unique history that other places don’t have.”
Puerto Rico, Polar Park and pachyderms
Some of the window exhibits showcase quirkier Worcester stories. One, by performing clowns Caitlin Papa and Samantha “Goose” Marcone, is full of brightly colored circus memorabilia, props from Papa and Marcone’s current Woo Clown Alley meetups and shows, and photos from the old circus parades down Main Street, where trained circus elephants were the center of attention.
Another, by northern Worcester County artist Bridie Wolejko, centers on the bizarre tale of Elijah Dix, a prominent Worcester doctor during the American Revolution whose reputation took a major hit when neighbors found out he was studying anatomy by using a real skeleton. (Dix’s granddaughter Dorothea would later become famous in the mid-1800s for her activism on behalf of social reform.)
Holy Cross graduate Christian Bachez’s graffiti-style mural celebrates sports in the city, from Boston Celtics legend Bob Cousy to today’s street skateboarders and WooSox fans. Mother-and-son
duo Maria Calderon and Elis Ortiz mix the arts of clothing and photography (and a cute, tiny sculpture of a coqui) into an ode to Puerto Rico and the island’s strong influence on Worcester culture.
Sammi Bosque’s unconventional statues of Goddard, Howland, Ball and others, plus Cybill Reese’s display featuring the Worcester Memorial Auditorium, The Hanover Theatre and a blank space to be filled by the city’s future performers, round out the exhibition.
‘We want to honor the history’
For the previous exhibit, “The Heart of Art & Fashion,” which focused on clothing as art, Mattson both served as project manager and contributed her own display of pieces from her brand, Cosmic Unicornz.
Mattson said when that exhibit closed in 2025, the City of Worcester and its partner organizations knew they wanted to bring public art back to the Denholm windows as soon as possible.
“’The Walking Dead’ was filming in the building in December (2025), which was really exciting, but we had to wait for them to finish filming. Shortly after that, we were able to put the applications out. I had over two dozen applications come in for only eight windows, so it was quite a process to pick the eight,” Mattson said. “All the artists sent me mood boards and I was absolutely blown away by their creativity and ideas. I learned so much.”
The long-empty Denholm Building’s future is up in the air at the moment.
In 2023, the Worcester Redevelopment Authority gave Washington, D.C.based construction company the Menkiti Group the go-ahead to raze the building and put up two apartment buildings. However, negotiations have been long and complicated.
In April, the WRA and the Menkiti Group agreed on a timeline where demolition would begin late this year and finish in mid-2027.
Mattson said no matter what happens to the building and its expansive front windows, though, public art will continue to appear in downtown Worcester, anywhere that will have it.
“We think that this could be the last
time we are able to do this installation in the building, so we want to honor the history of Worcester with it, something iconic,” Mattson said. “At the end of the day, we want to showcase public art. Any place we can get our hands on that
would work, we would do it.”
The Denholm Building is located at 484 Main St. Worcester. No closing date has been announced for the “Uniquely Worcester: Celebrating Worcester’s Past & Present” art installation.