The Bellarmine Museum Director
Dear Friends,
We are delighted to announce that Fairfield University will inaugurate its new Bellarmine Museum in October 2010. This opening will mark the culmination of an extensive period of careful thinking and considered planning about how best to enhance the teaching of the humanities, above all art and art history, at Fairfield University. It represents a targeted response to the increased need to provide the University's growing art collections with a permanent, fitting home while simultaneously furthering Fairfield's broader pedagogical goals.
A small but dedicated team of art history faculty and staff, together with senior administrators, has worked diligently to respond to these mandates with a program that will enhance learning and enrichment opportunities for Fairfield University's many constituencies - a program that is the guiding force behind the Bellarmine Museum.
The objects currently slated for display represent the depth and the breadth of the University art collections, and will include:
- 10 Italian paintings by minor masters of the Renaissance and Baroque from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation's "Gift to the Nation" (gifted to the University by Bridgeport's Discovery Museum in 2002)
- Some 3 dozen casts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Historic Cast Collection at Fairfield University
- Approximately 21 non-Western art objects from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, spanning from the pre-Columbian to the modern eras
Fairfield University is also fortunate enough to have a commitment from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) to lend the Bellarmine Museum 20 objects from the Medieval and Celtic periods. This loan - the largest of its type that the MMA has made in the past decade - will round out the encyclopedic nature of this rich study collection.
My colleagues and I have already begun planning select temporary exhibitions for the Bellarmine Museum, the evocative main gallery of which resembles an early Christian basilica in plan. These shows, set to begin as early as spring 2011, will not only leverage the museum's potential to serve as a laboratory for learning, they will also complement the museum's permanent collection as well as the exhibition schedule of the Thomas J. Walsh Gallery (Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts), which regularly hosts loan shows of modern and contemporary work.
Until the Bellarmine Museum opens its doors, I invite you to explore this site, view photos of Fairfield's art collections, and join our growing Arts & Minds community at Fairfield University. Be sure to check back regularly, as we will be updating our site as this exciting project progresses.
I look forward to seeing you at the Bellarmine Museum and, in the meantime, invite you to e-mail me your questions or comments.
With best wishes,
Jill J. Deupi J.D., Ph.D.
Director and Assistant Professor of Art History