On October 8, the Addison Gallery of American Art, affiliated with Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass, will once again welcome the public after an extended summer closure for the restoration of its historic glass roof. In celebration of the reopening and of the museum's 80th birthday, the Addison is inviting the public to attend a festive evening, free of charge, on Friday, October 14, 6:30--8:30 pm. For additional information, please visit addisongallery.org or call 978-749-4015.

"There is a wonderful array of distinctive exhibitions debuting this fall at the Addison. Paintings by Christopher C. Cook and works by Lorna Bieber will kick off the fall on October 8, followed by an additional three exhibitions on October 14," said Brian Allen, the Mary Stripp & R. Crosby Kemper Director of the Addison. "Of particular note among these exhibitions, in keeping with our celebration this year of the museum's 80th birthday, 80 @ 80 features works in all media pulled from the Addison's permanent collection, from the eighteenth century to the present. It's an opportunity for our visitors to see works they love and hopefully to discover new favorites."

Opening October 14, 80 @ 80 presents objects by about eighty artists and celebrates the range and depth of the Addison's permanent collection. These artists range from well-loved favorites by artists such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and John Singer Sargent whose work first graces the Addison's walls upon its 1931 opening, to twentieth-century treasures by Edward Hopper, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frank Stella, and Robert Mangold, to exciting recent acquisitions of works by colonial silversmith Jacob Hurd and contemporary artists Jennifer Bartlett and Mark Bradford, to name a few.

Exhibitions in addition to 80 @ 80 opening this month include:

Opening October 8:

-- Clearstory Squares and Unitych Variations: Paintings by Christopher C. Cook --Clearstory Squares, a dynamic modular work that synthesized aspects of the artist's earlier painting with issues raised in his conceptual work will be complemented by a selection of single and multi-panel paintings that continue exploration of the conceptual and formal elements first examined in this pivotal piece. Every three weeks during the course of the exhibition works will move, regroup, and even scatter into other parts of the museum.

-- Fractured Narratives: Works by Lorna Bieber --Using found images and stock photographs as the raw material for her art, Bieber creates monumental photographs and wall-sized montages. Her reinterpretation and manipulation of appropriated images push the boundaries of traditional photography to suggest parallel worlds in which vestiges of reality exist in mysteriously transformed fractured states.

Opening October 14:

-- The Civil War: Unfolding Dialogues -- Featuring historical and contemporary paintings, prints, photographs and video drawn from the Addison's collection, this exhibition explores the ways that artists across time have understood and contributed to the ongoing and evolving narrative of the Civil War. From Alexander Gardner's and Winslow Homer's eyewitness accounts to works by living artists such as Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker, Unfolding Dialogues reexamines the realities and fictions of this war, its haunting memories, and its lasting effect on American culture.

-- RFK Funeral Train Rediscovered: Photographs by Paul Fusco -- Following his assassination, the body of Robert F. Kennedy was carried by train from his memorial service in New York City to Washington, D.C. for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Hundreds of thousands of mourners lined the railway tracks to pay their final respects. Photographer Paul Fusco, on assignment for Look Magazine, took some 2,000 photographs from inside the train. Heralded as one of the most powerful and affecting bodies of work in photographic reportage, Fusco's RFK series is an incomparable document of this tragic moment in United States history.

Beginning October 8, 2011, the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., is open to the public from Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. -- 5:00 p.m., Sunday 1:00 -- 5:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on Monday. Admission to all exhibitions and events is free. The Addison Gallery also offers free education programs for teachers and groups. For more information, call 978-749-4015, or visit the website at www.addisongallery.org