Upcoming Exhibitions

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

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

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.

Tonalism is a transitional movement that grew out of and reacted to the Hudson River School of painting and laid the groundwork for modernism. Evocative landscapes, often painted from memory, are the primary genre. This exhibition explores Tonalism from the 1880s to the early 20^th century through artists from the Northeast, including a number who painted in Connecticut. The forty paintings in this exhibition are drawn from private and institutional collections.

Image: Bruce Crane, Sunset, n.d., oil on canvas. Private Collection, Connecticut

Environmental threats and climate change are urgent matters of concern at Jesuit universities, where conversations on this topic often take place in reference to two documents by Pope Francis: Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (2015) and the 2023 update Laudate Deum. Artists play an indispensable role in our collective response to climate change. To See This Place, curated by Al Miner and David Brinker, will present work by Athena LaTocha, Mary Mattingly, and Tyler Rai, three contemporary artists whose outlook resonates with the themes of Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum. Embodying a breadth of personal, geographic, and cultural backgrounds, the three artists create works strongly associated with a sense of place, whether specific or imaginary. They employ media as diverse as photography, sculpture, video, and painting, and often incorporate materials sourced from particular locales. Yet the artists draw forth broader themes from this particularity, critiquing political and economic systems that perpetuate destructive self-interest and drawing attention to people who have been marginalized and historically excluded or harmed. The works are artistically compelling yet can inspire us to creativity and boldness in our efforts to address climate change. 

This exhibition will open at Saint Louis University's Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, Fall 2024.

Image: Mary Mattingly, Saltwater, 2022, chromogenic dye coupler print. Courtesy of the artist © Mary Mattingly

This exhibition will present some of the highlights of the collection of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum. This remarkable collection investigates the Irish Famine of 1845-1852 and its impact through art, by some of the most eminent Irish and Irish-American artists of the past 170 years.

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