#brandywineworkshop

We’ve had a very exciting summer at the museum! As a result of our recent AAM Museum Accreditation, this was the first summer that we had professional guards and were thus able to be open through July. Our first two summer exhibitions proved very popular with our visitors, especially Peter Anton: Just Desserts!

We welcomed 5,732 visitors to our Peter Anton and Suzanne Chamlin exhibitions in the 10 weeks between graduation and the close of the exhibitions.

We broke our one-day attendance record with over 850 visitors (serving free frozen treats at an ice cream social that day probably didn’t hurt)!

Recently we've been busy repainting the walls, planning new programs, preparing our two fall exhibitions, and installing a new group of outdoor sculpture. We can't wait to welcome you all back to campus.

The Museum is all about works on paper this fall! A pair of exhibitions will introduce you and our other visitors to a broad range of works on paper, from Old Master prints in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries to prints by contemporary BIPOC artists in the Walsh Gallery. We hope you will check out both exhibitions and all of the programs on offer.

The first exhibition, opening in the Museum’s Bellarmine Hall Galleries on September 12 and on view through December 21st, is Ink and Time: European Prints from the Wetmore Collection. Curated by Michelle DiMarzo, PhD (Assistant Professor of Art History & Visual Culture), the exhibition presents a group of woodcuts, engravings, and etchings from the late 15th through late 18th centuries, including Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Canaletto. From familiar favorites like Dürer’s Adam and Eve and Rembrandt’s Three Trees to hidden gems like the gold-sprinkled surface of Maria Katharina Prestel’s Virtue Overcoming Vice, the show explores more than three centuries of artistic innovation on paper.

The works are part of a collection formed by Fanny S. Wetmore in the first decades of the 20th century and bequeathed to Connecticut College in 1930. This exhibition is the second in the Museum’s history to have been co-curated with Fairfield University students and has been supported by generous funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

The second exhibition, on view in the Museum’s Walsh Gallery in the Quick Center for the Arts, is Sacred Space: A Brandywine Workshop and Archives Print Exhibition. This exhibition opens on September 20th and also runs through December 21st. 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 2022, the Museum is home to a Brandywine “satellite collection” – the only such collection in Connecticut. This exhibition features works from the Museum’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.

In addition to the works from the Brandywine Collection, the exhibition will also feature local artists whose works are responding to the themes in Sacred Space. Artists invited by curator Juanita Sunday include Aisha Nailah, Iyaba Ibo Mandingo, Arvia Walker, and Rebecca Fowke. This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of corporate sponsor M & T Bank/Wilmington Trust.

A broad slate of programming complements both of these exhibitions, from hands-on workshops to rich public lectures, and can be explored on the museum’s website calendar at www.fairfield.edu/museum.

When you come to visit, or if you can join us for the Ink & Time festivities on September 26th, please make sure to seek out and enjoy Lauren Booth's fantastic bronze Tulip Family which has been installed on the Bellarmine Hall lawn, just below the building, on the slope heading down towards the Dolan School of Business.

Artfully yours, Carey

Captions:

Rembrandt van Rijn, Three Trees, 1643, etching, drypoint, and burin. Lent by Connecticut College.

Maria Katharina Prestel after Jacopo Ligozzi, The Triumph of Truth over Envy, 1780, etching and aquatint in brown and ochre ink, touched with gold leaf. Lent by Connecticut College.

Mikel Elam, Veil, 2019, offset lithograph, screenprint. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022 (2022.17.13) © Mikel Elam

James Phillips, Untitled II, 1994, offset lithograph. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022 (2022.17.33) © James Phillip

Ibrahim Miranda, El Túnel, 1999, offset lithograph. Lent by the Brandywine Workshop & Archives © Ibrahim Miranda

The Fairfield University Art Museum is very pleased to announce the acquisition of 40 artworks from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives. Works by Adger Cowans, Janet Taylor Pickett, Eduardo “Choco” Roca Salazar, and Larry Walker are among those in the new “satellite collection” at FUAM. The collection includes works from the early 1980s to today by primarily BIPOC artists, with more than 50% of the works by women artists.. The acquisition of these prints was partly funded by the museum’s Black Art Fund, created by the museum in early 2021 to address a lack of diversity in its permanent collections. The Black Art Fund is dedicated to the acquisition of contemporary art by Black artists.

Founded in Philadelphia in 1972 by artist Allan Edmunds, the Brandywine Workshop and Archives is a nonprofit cultural institution celebrated for its engagement with the local community and its educational programming. For five decades, the workshop has offered arts programming in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia and sponsored printmaking residencies for both undiscovered and well-known artists. At Brandywine, collaboration and the exchange of ideas feed a culture of experimentation, in which master printers and artists continually challenge conventions of the creative process and push the technical boundaries of printmaking to produce exciting new works.

The Fairfield University Art Museum has acquired 39 works by artists from the Brandywine Workshop as part of the workshop’s initiative to place “satellite collections” in university art museums across the United States. According to Brandywine, the satellite program is intended to “bring the art of diverse cultures to institutions and communities that wish to enrich or diversify existing collections.” FUAM joins prestigious institutions including Harvard Art Museums, RISD Museum and the University of Delaware Museums.

Artists whose works are in the new Fairfield University Art Museum Brandywine Satellite collection include: Rick Bartow, Selma Burke, Adger Cowans, Allan Edmunds, Mikel Elam, Rodney Ewing, Maya Freelon, Curlee Raven Holton, Jacob Landau, Samella Lewis, Tanya Murphy-Dodd, Janet Taylor Pickett, Eduardo “Choco” Roca Salazar, Frank Smith, Larry Walker, and Jo Yarrington. The print by Yarrington, the 40th work in the collection, is a gift of the artist, who is a professor of Studio Art at Fairfield University. She did a residency at Brandywine in 1985, and has donated an impression of the print that she did there to the museum to fill out the collection.

A selection of these prints will be included in an exhibition focusing on the work of contemporary women artists. The exhibition, a curatorial collaboration between museum staff and Fairfield University student Phoebe Charpentier ‘23, will be on view in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries April 20 – July 15, 2023. A larger exhibition focused on the Brandywine Workshop and Archive is planned for Fall 2024. We hope you will explore the prints in this new Satellite Collection in the museum's online Collections Database, where you can view them individually or together in Brandywine Archive and Workshop Satellite Collections folder.

The works in Fairfield’s newly formed satellite collection have tremendously expanded the voices represented in our collection of contemporary prints and we are delighted to have been able to use our recently established Black Art Fund to partially finance this acquisition. However, we have spent almost all of the $30,000 which we have raised to date, so we hope you will help us to continue either through financial contributions or through donations of museum-quality artwork.

We know that this is ongoing work, and we are proud to share this step with you.

Carey Mack Weber Frank and Clara Meditz Executive Director

Captions:

Rodney Ewing (b. 1964), My Country Needs Me, 1996 Offset lithograph on paper. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022.

Mikel Elam (b. 1964), Veil, 2019, Offset lithograph and screenprint on paper. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022.

Frank Smith (b. 1935), Be Bop Vamp, 1986. Offset Lithograph on paper. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022.

Tanya Murphy-Dodd (b. 1965), Men of Color to Arms, 2011. Offset Lithograph on paper. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022.

I know I’ve been gone for a while, so here is something I hope you all find pretty cool!

Animation I made of the print El Túnel, 1999 by the Cuban artist Ibrahim Miranda for Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia. As part of their new Visual Narratives initiative Brandywine will be animating the stories behind select prints in their permanent collection