Current Exhibitions

Sacred Space, organized by guest curator Juanita Sunday, draws on the rich history of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives, founded in Philadelphia in 1972 by artist Allan Edmunds. As of 2023, FUAM is home to a Brandywine “satellite collection,” joining other institutions including Harvard Art Museums, RISD Museum, and the University of Delaware Museums. This exhibition features works from FUAM’s own collection as well as loans from Brandywine itself.

Sacred Space encourages a deep exploration of spiritual connection, inviting viewers to reflect on the ancestral wisdom and memory passed down through generations. The exhibition serves as a portal into the interconnected realms of spirituality, time, space, memory, and culture. The artists pay homage to their forebears, drawing upon cultural traditions, rituals, and sacred practices to honor and preserve, as well as question, the invaluable heritage that shapes our identities.

“My belief is that art is best as the articulation of spiritual ideas or transformative intention. It can be an agent of spiritual inspiration or personal and social transformation.” - Michael D. Harris

Image: Mikel Elam, Veil, 2019, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022.17.13

This exhibition samples the richness of European print culture between the late 15^th and late 18^th centuries through more than fifty woodcuts, engravings, and etchings, including work by Raphael, Dürer, Rembrandt, and Canaletto. The exhibition explores themes including the collaborative nature of printmaking, the continuing demand for technical innovations, and the problem of “reproductive” prints for the modern viewer.

All of the works in the exhibition are on loan from the Wetmore Collection at Connecticut College. This is the second exhibition to have been curated by Fairfield University students in the Museum Exhibition Seminar, working alongside exhibition curator Michelle DiMarzo, PhD (FUAM Curator of Education and Academic Engagement; Assistant Professor of Art History & Visual Culture, VPA)

Image: Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1504, engraving. Courtesy the Wetmore Collection, Connecticut College

The Fairfield University Art Museum is excited to have a model of the Antikythera Mechanism on loan from the Herakleidon Museum in Athens, Greece. The Antikythera Mechanism, often described as the oldest analogue “computer,” was a device dating to the 2nd BCE used for astronomical calculations, including predicting eclipses. Pieces of the bronze device and its wooden case were first discovered in 1901 off the island of Antikythera, from which it takes its name. The pieces are today in the National Archeological Museum of Athens, and scholars continue to study it today to understand its functions.

Fairfield University Art Museum is the first stop for The Tulip Family by artist Lauren Booth. The sculpture is a play on simplicity and the joy of a childhood drawing, juxtaposed with a humble nod to Henry Moore, Niki de Saint Phalle and Barbara Hepworth, all of whom influenced this sculpture.

Image: Lauren Booth, The Tulip Family, 2017-2023, bronze. On loan from the artist

The leaves installed on the Bellarmine lawn are on loan to the Fairfield University Art Museum for the next year from the American artist Alan Sonfist (b. 1946), best known as a pioneer of the Land or Earth Art movement. These four larger-than-life aluminum sculptures of leaves were created in 2011 and represent several of New England’s most beloved native trees: the American Beech, the American Chestnut, the Burr Oak, and the Sugar Maple. The sculpted leaves act as reminders to honor and protect the trees, and as a warning that failure to do so could result in their extinction.

The museum is working with the Biology Department, the Environmental Studies Program and the artist, around a series of programs to be presented in the spring of 2022 to highlight these sculptures, along with climate change and endangered species.