PAST EXHIBITIONS

March 8 – June 9, 2012

Inspired by New London's local treasures—the 1938 Post Office murals by Thomas La Farge—America @ Work: New Deal Murals in New London and Beyond features mural studies by La Farge (from the museum's permanent collection) and other artists working on Roosevelt's New Deal art projects across the country. Countering the stark realities of life during the Great Depression, the artists express pride in American ingenuity and a belief that economic woes could be overcome through hard work. These works resonate with today's economic climate as Americans face comparable challenges.

Guest Curated by Barbara Zabel, Professor Emeritus of Art History at Conn College.

Doris Lee Cornfield (Preparatory drawing for mural Georgia Countryside, Summerville, Georgia, 1939) 1938 Pencil on Paper 15 ¼ x 18 ½ inches Courtesy D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. and the Estate of Doris Lee	Charles Ward Story of Cotton (Mural Study for Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina Post Office) 1937 Oil on Canvas 16 ½ x 24 ½ inches Courtesy D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. and the Estate of Charles Ward
Thomas Sergeant LaFarge Aloft (Preparatory drawing for mural on East wall in New London Post Office) 20th Century Charcoal on Paper 15 x 71 inches Gift of Mrs. Thomas LaFarge

October 15, 2011 – March 17, 2012

Since the 1980's, Japanese comics (i.e. manga) have been capturing the attention of the American public and inspiring artists and fans. This exhibition celebrates the art of manga and explores its popularity with American audiences. Both longtime fans and those new to manga will enjoy the illustrations, collectibles, and manga-inspired wall murals, all of which highlight manga's impact on American reading habits, fan culture, and artwork. A special section of the exhibition will include step-by-step drawings to help visitors understand the process of creating manga. The exhibition also showcases nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese prints and textiles that are an early example of how Americans developed a taste for Japanese culture and spurred a market suited to their preferences.

Image copyrighted © Alex Mamo. All rights reserved.

© Copyright Hiro Mashima/Kodansha Ltd. All rights reserved.

September 17, 2011 – February 4, 2012

explores the question "Can a skateboard be art?" Skateboard enthusiasts, students, art lovers, and visitors of all ages will consider this question as they view skateboards designed by contemporary artists, sculptures made from skateboards, and classic decks from the past. While skateboards may seem like an unexpected topic for a museum, there is a growing acceptance of skateboard art in the fine art community. Contemporary artists now regularly team up with skateboard companies to produce limited edition designs coveted by art lovers and skateboarders alike. Additionally, many museums across the country are lining their walls with skateboards, creating a new appreciation for this often-overlooked art. This exhibition builds on this trend, exploring the line where skateboard art meets fine art.

+blackriver-ramps+ Courtesy FlatFace Fingerboards

Damien Hirst/ Supreme Red #7 Skateboard Deck, 2009, © the artist & other criteria. All rights reserved, DACS, 2011

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, the picturesque hamlet of Matunuck, Rhode Island, emerged as an art colony, rooted more in its location than in a unified style of painting. Artists ranging from the marine painter William Trost Richards to the impressionist Philip Leslie Hale were introduced to Matunuck by family members and were inspired by the unique beauty of their surroundings.

Landscape painters Philip, Ellen and Susan Hale, Caroline Atkinson, William Trost Richards, Anna Brewster, Eleanor Price and Frank Mathewson – whose work you will see in this exhibition - span generations, artistic styles and schools of painting. What binds them is the inspiration they found in Matunuck and the landscape they were drawn to. Each of these painters interpreted the Matunuck landscape in a personal way, yet among them they encompass most of the major trends defining American painting of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—Barbizon School, impressionism, post-impressionism, tonalism and plein-air painting—as well as the creation of the era’s predominant artistic institution: a summer school. Play/Things: Toys and the Invention of Modern Childhood will highlight toys, dolls and dollhouses from the museum’s permanent collection as well as important objects on loan from collectors. While the objects themselves will appeal to visitors of all ages, the interpretation will encourage adult viewers to reflect on the larger cultural role toys have played in perpetuating modern notions of a good and happy childhood that emerged in the late 19th century.

By pairing toys with book illustrations, advertisements, period photographs and other images of children at play, the exhibition will present toys as the props used by youngsters in performances of childhood as stage-managed by adults. It is the adults, however, whose concerns ultimately informed the design, manufacture, marketing, distribution and purchase of toys.

Play/Things: Toys and the Invention of Modern Childhood will present toys, dolls and other objects which are rarely seen. One exceptional work that will be on view is a dollhouse built in 1916 for Neva Palmer, the daughter of New London textile manufacturer George S. Palmer. The dollhouse was modeled on Palmer’s Georgian Revival house, designed by Charles Platt, architect of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum. One gallery will feature a remarkable range of 20th century wind-up toys—everything from a Ferris wheel to a motorcycle, from Roy Rogers riding Trigger to a clown walking on his hands. Adults interested in political history will be amused by the Tammany Bank. Patented in 1873, it features a seated figure—most likely Boss Tweed—who deposits each coin in his jacket pocket.

The exhibition is co-curated by Abigail A. Van Slyck and Robert Skingle. Van Slyck is the Dayton Professor of Art History and Director of the Architectural Studies Program and Chair of the Art History Department at Connecticut College. Antique toy expert Robert Skingle graduated from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. He turned a hobby of collecting lead military figures into a career and became an antique toy dealer, specializing in toys from the turn of the century.

Play/Things: Toys and the Invention of Modern Childhood will include a full schedule of coordinating programs including a gallery talk by the curator; children’s workshops on topics such as doll-making, kite-making and flying; a special “Meet the Astronaut” Day; a children’s 19th c. style tea party; a Saturday Afternoon Film program geared to children and a gallery tour with an antique collector and dealer.

The Hand of the Artist: Selected European Drawings from the 16th through the 18th Centuries presents drawings amassed by a local collector who has made a promised gift of the collection. These works represent examples from Italy, France and Northern Europe by artists such as Annibale Carracci, Bibiena, Lebrun, Greuze, and Moses Ter Borch. Drawings have long fascinated scholars and collectors because the interplay of lines and colors allow the viewer to contemplate the artist’s intention. Regardless of the locale, drawing was an essential tool for artists as a preliminary step in their creative expression. The study of the human figure, a view of nature, or the interior of an architectural space in pen, ink, or chalk provided a method to formulate elements that might be used in a later work of art. In the process, the immediacy of the artist’s hand remains on the page and can be appreciated by the outlines on the paper. This exhibition is curated by Barbara Laux, former Registrar of the museum and generously funded by Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. and Prudential Connecticut Realty.

September 12, 2009 through February 21, 2010
This exhibition is sponsored by the Hispanic Alliance.
Guest Curator Gail Gelburd, Ph.D., Professor of Art History at Eastern Connecticut State University

In 1939, the anthropologist Fernando Ortiz characterized Cuban culture as an ajiaco: a rich stew consisting of an array of ingredients cooked until a thick broth is formed. It is this synthesis that is the essence of Cuban art and the subject of the exhibition Ajiaco: Stirrings of the Cuban Soul.

Ajiaco seeks to interpret the diverse social dimensions of Cuban art in a global context through the exploration of its relationship with African, Asian, European, and Indigenous influences and belief systems. The art incorporates the tales of the Orisha of Africa, the calligraphy of Chinese Tao Te Ching, and the rituals of indigenous peoples. The formats change, the materials vary, but the mix remains constant in both Cuban and Cuban American art. Ajiaco: Stirrings of the Cuban Soul is not necessarily about one group however; it explores diaspora, embracing those aspects of Latin American culture that are sympathetic to all. In broader terms, this project addresses both the immigrant experience and the expression of cultural identity in a new place.

The curator, Dr. Gail Gelburd, writes, “Isolated and yet educated, restricted and yet heralded, the Cuban artist embodies the angst of their situation and yet embraces the loftiest of goals. Their syncretist tradition and heritage allows them to go beyond the monotheistic traditions in order to find the origins of their soul, the geist or inner spirit of their art.” Gelburd has been conducting research on Cuban art and artists for over fifteen years. She has regularly traveled to Cuba and has lectured there for the Havana Biennale, Havana University, and Casa Africa. Gelburd’s article "Cuba: The Art of Trading with the Enemy" appears in Art Journal in the Spring 2009 issue.

This exhibition consists of more than fifty objects, including paintings, works on paper, photographs, sculpture, installations, and audio works by 22 artists. Ajiaco: Stirrings of the Cuban Soul will feature such major figures in Cuban art as Wifredo Lam, Manuel Mendive, Jose Bedia and Sandra Ramos. The exhibition is tentatively scheduled to travel to two additional venues: the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City and the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Also on view, and coordinating with Ajiaco, is an exhibition of work by Imna Arroyo, titled Ancestors of the Passage, which will explore the socio-cultural beliefs of Caribbean culture. Raised in Puerto Rico but educated in the United States, Arroyo has been on a quest to visualize her heritage. Like so many other Puerto Ricans, she is of African and Taino descent. Knowing little of those cultures, she journeyed to Cuba where she found a strong acceptance and recognition of that heritage. Arroyo’s work visualizes the Diaspora, the African Orishas, and the spirits of her marginalized ancestors. Her work serves as the catalyst for others of Latin American heritage to find the connections to their heritage in Cuba, which has preserved that culture and visualizes it in Ajiaco.

Flora Fong (b. 1949) Syncretism Oil on canvas, 44 x 36 x 3”	Tomas Sanchez (b. 1948) Paisaje con Orilla, 1986 Oil on canvas, 70 ½ x 89 1/2”	Manuel Mendive Se Alimenta mi Espiritu, 2007, Acrylic on canvas 64 ¾” x 95”

For more information about Ajiaco, visit www.cubanartexhibition.com

Through November 30, 2009

Guest Curator Zina Davis, Joseloff Gallery at the University of Hartford

Language is incorporated into works of art in ways that encourage us to consider the meaning of words and symbols in relation to the visual experience. Sometimes the viewer must look closely to find the words and symbols: in some artworks, the symbols are hidden, scattered throughout the patterns on the paper, while in others text plays a prominent role.

Words and symbols are frequently found in contemporary art; however, there is a strong precedent for works of art that integrate text with image before the 20th and 21st centuries. Language plays a dominant role, for example, in early American samplers; medieval illuminated manuscripts and Farsi marriage documents. All were intended to be read.

Other examples of the early inclusion of text and symbols are a 19th century Chinese bronze ritual vessel and an ancient Egyptian falcon mummy sarcophagus which, along with two ushabti figures, are painted with hieroglyphic inscriptions. Antique Greek red-figure pottery features abstract symbols and as well as symbolic mythological figures relating stories and relaying information that would have been easily “readable” by the people who used these objects. Language is seamlessly integrated into these art objects and the result is a unity of aesthetic and purpose.

March 7 through August 23, 2009

Elizabeth Enders builds microcosms of her very own making. Brilliantly fusing principles of realism with those of lyrical abstraction, the artist brings these formal opposites into a purposeful harmony. In her series of landscapes, with an emphasis on seascapes painted over past several decades, Enders displays a unique balance of the descriptive and of the imaginary. The essential parts of the particular site in nature, such as the horizon line or a color hue characteristic of a certain area of the coast, are always fully acknowledged. It is through the elimination of all nonessential details that the artist transforms these locales into universal statements about the mysterious beauty of the coastal areas.

Enders’ art is very much about communicating a message – about the spirit of the place, about the beauty of flora that is celebrated in a sublime series of botanical drawings, but also about the silence and isolation that can be a painful part of the human experience. To overcome this isolation, to establish a potential discourse with others, Enders began marking sheets of paper or canvas with mysterious marks and fictional alphabets. Our propensity, not only to view these as visual statements but often the inclination “to read” these works, depends on the experiences and temperament of each viewer.

Lyrical and meditative, the work of Elizabeth Enders heightens our curiosity to learn more about the world around us, to penetrate deeper into the often concealed magic of our everyday experience. The power of Enders’ artistic persuasion energizes our perception, enabling us to participate in the wonder of discovery.

Atlantic 1992 Oil on linen 60 x 60 inches	Fast Food/Bananas 2002 Watercolor on paper 11 ½ x 9 ¼ inches	Yellow Anemone/Purple Veronica II Series I 2003 Watercolor, pencil on paper

Through April 12, 2009

Charles Chi-Jung Chu (1918-2008) was a master painter, calligrapher, scholar and professor emeritus of Chinese at Connecticut College. Chu was a highly respected and beloved member of the Southeastern Connecticut community. He was a professor at Connecticut College for 19 years and was responsible for introducing the study of Mandarin Chinese to the campus in 1965. Charles Chu was as well known for his landscape watercolors as he was for his whimsical painted depictions of the college campus and of the college’s camel mascot.

As a tribute to the life and creativity of Charles Chu, the Museum, along with the Departments of Art History and Architectural Studies and the Charles E. Shain Library, will co-sponsor two special exhibitions of paintings by Charles Chu. The artworks in the exhibitions will be on loan from the private collections of Connecticut College faculty, staff, alumni and members of the New London community.

Remembering Charles Chu: A Special Exhibition of Love and Friendship will be on view in the Chu Reading Room at the Connecticut College Library through April 20, 2009.

Exhibition Guest Curator Professor Qiang Ning is the Chu-Niblack Associate Professor of Asian Art and Curator of the Chu-Griffis Collection of Asian Art at Connecticut College.

The playful, inventive and interactive world of Walter Wick will be the subject of Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic on view from Sept. 7, 2008 – Jan. 26, 2009, including photographs and 3-D displays highlighting his children’s books. A stimulating experience for the eye and mind!

Walter Wick is a Hartford-based photographer whose I Spy and Can You See What I See books for children are long-time best-sellers on the New York Times’ and other literary lists. His large-scale photographs, as well as examples of his sets, set-ups and props will bed on view in the second floor galleries of the museum.

“The works will be enlarged to five or six feet wide with details, colors and tones not possible in book reproductions,” says Wick, noting that the exhibition will present a “playful sense of scale, space and the unexpected.”

Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic has been organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art.
Sponsored by the Mohegan Tribe and Mohegan Sun.
Also supported by Essex Savings Bank and Vanderbrooke Caterers.

Through December 31, 2008

Presenting French art from the permanent collection, with paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Works on view include J.A.D. Ingres’s important pencil study for the portrait of Mme. Moitessier Standing (c.1851), Pierre Auguste Renoir’s bronze Maternite’ (1916), and Auguste Rodin’s sculpture Study of a Crouching Woman. Also on view are 17th century drawings by Nicholas Poussin, Hyacinthe Rigaud, and Francois Boucher; and paintings by Pierre Mignard, Gustave Courbet, and Honore’ Daumier.

May 31 through August 17, 2008

Acclaimed photographer Peter Harron shot these beautiful and evocative black and white photographs in the desert in Morocco. His first trip to Morocco was in 1968 when it became part of a documentary film he was doing on the changing culture of the 1960's. In 2007, almost 40 years later, Harron and his Moroccan- born wife Colette returned to Morocco with still camera, loaded with black and white film only, to photograph the breathtaking landscapes, the ancient adobe architecture, the quietness of the desert, the magic light, and to capture a sense of time.

Ellen Carey Blinks Color photogram 2005 20 x 16 inches	Sam Messer Mr. Coincidence 1999 Oil on canvas	Cleve Gray (American, 1918-2004) Zen Garden Acrylic on canvas

March 1 through April 27, 2008

JED is a three-person collaborative who use the first initial of their birth names to form a fictitious contemporary lens-based, conceptual photographic artist in the early 21st century. JED represents their collective alter egos, whose identity is a secret. Borrowing from the Dada and Surrealist’s art movements, which includes stream-of-consciousness to make art and found objects not traditionally used for art making, championed by Marcel Duchamp for example, JED focuses their attention on a selection of photographic images, such as test strips and “bad” prints that were discarded and thrown out by their original picture makers. These found/abandoned images are re-contextualized and elevated to “high” art with a sense of humor that underscores the absurd, the forgotten, and now serves as documents of the human attempt to make art despite constant failure, what is commonly known as the “artist’s struggle”.

At Home and Abroad:
The Transcendental Landscapes of Christopher Pearse Cranch
October 12, 2007 through February 25, 2008

Listen to Helen Harrison's review of the Cranch exhibition on "Art Waves" which aired on December 6, 2007 on 88.3 FM WLIU's "In the Morning with Bonnie Grice." Despite a fifty-year career as a landscape painter, Christopher Cranch’s paintings are little known. Instead, he is best known for his poetry, his ties to the New England Transcendentalists, and, above all, his playful caricature of Ralph Waldo Emerson as an enormous “transparent” eyeball, perched atop a minuscule body in top hat and tails, optic nerve tied in a pony tail. From his first reading of Emerson’s Nature essay (1836), Cranch was inspired to explore Transcendental concepts through visual means; although ultimately it was painting, not caricature, that provided the ideal vehicle for him. Transcribing nature onto canvas became an act of devotion. Like Thoreau writing of the daily trials of life on Walden Pond, Cranch also attempted, in his landscapes, to express the correspondence between nature and spiritual concepts. His brand of Transcendentalism bypasses the quiet, “transparent” aspect to celebrate a nature that is filled with the flux and continual shifting that Emerson and Thoreau also celebrated in their writings. C. P. Cranch was intimate with some of the most innovative thinkers in America and counted among his friends Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George William Curtis, and James Russell Lowell. This study considers Cranch not only as a Hudson River School artist, but also as a participant in the history of ideas, a multi-faceted individual who merged intellectual and artistic life.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 208-page exhibition catalogue; At Home and Abroad: The Transcendental Landscapes of Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813 – 1892). The Foreword is written by Barbara Novak, Professor Emerita at Columbia University, one of the most influential theorists on American art. Nancy Stula, Curator and Deputy Director of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, and David M. Robinson, Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Oregon State University authored the catalogue essays.

After closing at Lyman Allyn Art Museum, the show will travel to the Newington-Cropsey Foundation in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, where it will be on view March 17 through May 31, 2008.

At Home and Abroad: The Transcendental Landscapes of Christopher Pearse Cranch has been made possible by generous grants from the Connecticut Humanities Council and the Henry Luce Foundation.

This exhibition is also supported in part by the Frank Loomis Palmer Fund, Bank of America, Trustee, and with support from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism. Eli Wilner & Company Period Frames, New York has provided numerous frames.

October 12, 2007 - February 25, 2008

Miles Gallery will present an installation of this environmentally-based artist. Her hermetically- sealed “evidence bags” are actual specimens taken from nature. This unique exhibition is visually intriguing as well as inspirational and is the perfect complement to the Museum’s major fall exhibition At Home and Abroad: The Transcendental Landscapes of Christopher Pearse Cranch, which deals with the glory of Nature as interpreted by the artist.

Guido Garaycochea, a Peruvian painter working in New York, presents a poignant series of three-dimensional painted boxes in this special and personal installation that deals with the political turmoil and personal loss that has plagued his country for many years.  The exhibition includes a video component and encourages audience participation.

Turandot
Silkscreen ¦ Edition of 120 ¦ 2005
42” x 45½"

The relationship between painting and silkscreen prints as seen through the creative eyes of New York artist Larry Dinkin.  He takes the viewer on a visual journey between the two media.  The vividly bold paintings and prints seem familiar and yet distant; perhaps a memory from a dream when one is jarred awake.  Within the brilliant colors and dense brushstrokes, one can almost see a structure, a landform, something recognizable, but not then quite. Dinkin says of his work, “The images depict a personal universe—distilled landscapes bound only by their own reality.  They strive for the flickering ambiguity of paint to dreamy vision, held fast within a structure that is both descriptive and dimensional.”