Explore the Exhibition
Virtual Tour
Audio Guide
Browse Selected Images
Norma Minkowitz: Body to Soul is a solo exhibition surveying the artist’s four-decade engagement with the physical and symbolic properties of thread. Minkowitz reinvents traditional needlework by crocheting fantastical forms, coating them in resin and shellac to create rigid sculptures and hangings. The delicate, mesh-like surfaces of her artworks break down oppositions between soft and hard, inside and outside, body and soul.
The poetic title Body to Soul is borrowed from just one of the sculptures that will be on view, but it is a broader theme that reverberates across the exhibition’s selection of over thirty vessels, sculptures, wall hangings, wearables, and works on paper – including never-before-seen examples coming from the artist’s studio.
About the Artist
Norma Minkowitz lives and works in Connecticut. Her work is represented in private and public collections across the United States and internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; The Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York; the De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. The James Renwick Alliance named her a Master of the Medium, and she has also been recognized by the American Craft Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is unique among fiber artists creating hard sculptures from soft materials, and for using thread to invoke universal themes of mortality, memory, nature, and writing.
About the Curator
Sarah Parrish holds a PhD from Boston University and is currently Assistant Professor of Art History at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire. Specializing in contemporary American fiber art, she served as the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Curatorial Research Fellow and catalog author for the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s landmark textile exhibition Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present. Her writing on twentieth-century craft also appears in Art Papers magazine, The Burlington Magazine, Phaidon’s Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art, and the peer-reviewed Journal of Design and Culture. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities’ Humanities Connections grant, and was named the American Craft Council’s Emerging Voices Scholar in 2017.
Image: Norma Minkowitz, Body to Soul, 2003, fiber, metal, resin, paint, mirror, crocheted. Museum of Arts and Design, New York; purchased with funds by the Windgate Charitable Foundation, 2004. Photography © Tom Grotta, Courtesy browngrotta arts
Virtual Tour
Audio Guide
Browse Selected Images
Events listed below with a location are live, in-person programs. When possible, those events will also be streamed on thequicklive.com and the recordings posted to our YouTube channel.
Opening Lecture: Body to Soul
Thursday, January 26, 5 p.m.
Sarah Parrish, PhD, Assistant Professor of Art History, Plymouth State University, and Curator of the Exhibition
Part of the Edwin L. Weisl, Jr. Lectureships in Art History, funded by the Robert Lehman Foundation
Bellarmine Hall, Diffley Board Room and streaming (registration required)
Opening Reception: Body to Soul
Thursday, January 26, 6-8 p.m.
Bellarmine Hall Galleries and Great Hall
Gallery Talk: Norma Minkowitz
Wednesday, February 1, 12 noon
Bellarmine Hall Galleries
This event is in-person only and will not be recorded
Lecture: A Cut at the Heart of Womanhood
Tuesday, February 7, 5 p.m.
Stephanie Welsh DNP, CNM, FACNM, Assistant Professor of the Practice, Clinical Faculty Specialist in Midwifery and winner of 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography
Kelley Theatre and streaming on thequicklive.com
Pop-up Shop: Woven Community
Saturday, February 11, 2-4 p.m.
Bellarmine Hall, Museum Classroom
Workshop: Unusual Materials: Interweaving and Interleaving
Wednesday, February 15, 11 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Jo Yarrington, Professor of Studio Art
Bellarmine Hall Galleries and Museum Classroom
Space is limited and registration is required
Family Day: Fantastical Fibers
Saturday, February 18, 12:30-2 p.m. and 2:30-4 p.m.
Bellarmine Hall Galleries and Museum Classroom
Art in Focus: Norma Minkowitz, Goodbye Goddess, 2003, paint and resin on fiber
Thursday, March 2, 11 a.m. (in person) and 12 noon (streaming)
Bellarmine Hall Galleries
Knit Night
Thursday, March 2, 7 –9 p.m.
Kate Wellen, Museum Educator
Museum Classroom
Meditation and Mindfulness with Jackie DeLise
Wednesday, March 22, 5 p.m.
Special session focusing on the “body and soul”
Drawing Party
Wednesday, May 3, 7 –9 p.m.
Kate Wellen, Museum Educator
Museum Classroom
Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. We are closed for national and university holidays and during inclement weather.
Location:
The FUAM's main galleries are located on the lower level of Bellarmine Hall. For GPS please use the following address: 200 Barlow Road, Fairfield, CT 06824 (or click the map at right for directions).
Parking:
Free parking is available in front of Bellarmine Hall. Handicap parking is available next to the museum’s service and classroom entrance on the lower level of Bellarmine Hall.
Admission:
The museum is open to the public and admission is free.
Tours:
Private tours with a curator are available for a fee; please contact museum@fairfield.edu or 203-254-4046.
Reach Us By train:
Take Metro-North, New Haven Line, to Fairfield Station (approximately 70 minutes from Grand Central Station).
www.mta.info/mnr
800-638-7646
For further information or to schedule a visit or tour, please contact
Fairfield University Art Museum
1073 North Benson Road
Fairfield, CT 06824
(203) 254-4046
museum@fairfield.edu
