Current Exhibitions

Exhibition organized by Quinnipiac University and the Ireland's Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield

This exhibition presents highlights from the collection of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, which explores the impact of the Irish Famine of 1845-1852 through artwork produced by eminent Irish and Irish-American artists of the past 170 years. The works on view in the exhibition will include paintings by late 19th- and early 20th‐century artists like James Brenan, Daniel Macdonald, James Arthur O'Connor and Jack B. Yeats, as well as sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by contemporary artists including John Behan, Rowan Gillespie, Brian Maguire, and Hughie O'Donoghue.

James Arthur O’Connor, Scene in Connemara, 1828, oil on canvas. Courtesy of Quinnipiac University and the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield

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.