Donna Dodson: Match of the Matriarchs

November 6, 2026 – January 24, 2027

Match of the Matriarchs centers on a monumental, interactive chessboard featuring 32 life-size, movable chess pieces hand-carved from salvaged wood. Modeled on female archetypes and marine beings—cephalopods, cetaceans, and mermaids—Dodson’s sculptures transform the traditionally hierarchical game into a speculative arena of matriarchal power and ecological symbolism. Long coded as a test of masculine intellect and mastery, chess in this match becomes a site of reversal: the queen’s latent authority resurfaces, and new strategies come into view. Working with reclaimed wood—its ranging tones and scars visible to all—Dodson aligns chess with material memory, presenting the game as a dynamic system of multi-generational wisdom, stratagem, and transformation over domination.

Complementing Dodson’s installation are wood chess sets made by other artists alongside video works by Philadelphia-based chess champion and historian Jen Shahade, whose wry, incisive lens reclaims visibility for women in chess culture. Previously exhibited at the World Chess Hall of Fame, St. Louis, MO, and the Boston Sculptors Gallery, the project evolves at the Museum for Art in Wood through expanded programming and performance. 

Donna Dodson is an American sculptor internationally recognized for her monumental figurative works carved from wood. Working primarily with salvaged and reclaimed timber, she transforms the material’s grain, scale, and physical presence into expressive female archetypes, mythic beings, and hybrid forms that challenge traditional hierarchies of power. A 2022 Fulbright U.S. Scholar at Q21/MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Dodson has completed residencies in Switzerland, Peru, Taiwan, and Denmark. She is currently a Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center and a Visual Art Fellow at the St. Botolph Club in Boston.

Her work is held in the permanent collections of the World Chess Hall of Fame, the Fuller Craft Museum, the Provincetown Art Museum, the Art Complex Museum, the Noyes Art Museum, and the Davistown Museum, and her work has been reviewed in The Boston Globe, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, Artnet, and The Daily Beast. Dodson is represented by Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Los Angeles and is a graduate of Wellesley College.