June 6 – October 18, 2020

In this playful exhibition, viewers will be amazed by Peter Anton’s oversized hyper-realistic sculptures of food. Giant chocolates, melting ice cream confections, and other treats will tempt the eye and stimulate thoughts (and appetites!). The Connecticut-based Anton, who has been reproducing large-scale sweets in art since the 1990s, is interested in the range of meanings and emotions held by food, and its appeal to the senses. As the artist states, he uses humor, scale, irony, and intensity to “lure, charm, tease, disarm, and surprise.” Focusing here on temperature, fire, and ice, Anton considers climate change and the effects on food.

 

February 14 – April 11, 2020

This engaging exhibit highlights the lives of five exceptional residents of New London County, past and present—attorney Lonnie Braxton, Rev. Florence Clarke, Sonalysts Board member Donetta Hodge, Coast Guard Commander (Ret.) Merle Smith, and 19^th century freed slave and teacher Ichabod Pease. Stories of Resilience showcases their determination, bravery and strength in the face of personal and systemic racism. Developed from the Jewish Federation of Eastern CT’s Encountering Differences Program, the exhibit paints a picture of remarkable successes in the face of daunting obstacles through personal photographs, artifacts, and video testimonies.

This exhibition is generously supported in part by the Frank Loomis Palmer Fund, Bank of America, Trustee.

January 31 – May 10, 2020

The New Haven Paint & Clay Club, established in 1900, is the oldest continuously active art club in Connecticut. With a history and impact extending far beyond New Haven, the club draws members and exhibitors from across Connecticut, New York and New England.

The art in this exhibition explores place and regional identity. Traditional landscapes depict the land, water, people and locales that help shape our conception of the Northeast. Other works by Connecticut artists portray abstracted landscapes and imaginative or distant places. Drawn from the collection of the New Haven Paint & Clay Club and augmented with works by Club members from the Lyman Allyn and the New Haven Museum, this retrospective celebrates the history and continuing legacy of the Club in its efforts to support and encourage the visual arts.

Beginnings of the New Haven Paint & Clay Club

The New Haven Paint & Clay Club was founded in 1900 to support the visual arts in New Haven and beyond. Many arts organizations existed in New York and Boston, but artists sought something between these metropolitan centers. Other regional art associations soon emerged, including the Greenwich Society of Artists, founded in 1912, the Mystic Art Association (1913), and the Lyme Art Association (1914), among others. There has long been overlap and exchange between these and other art groups, and numerous artists connected to the New Haven Paint & Clay Club have been influential figures painting in Cos Cob, Old Lyme, Mystic, and elsewhere.

The New Haven Paint & Clay Club’s founders were artists seeking a local venue to exhibit their work, as well as a social and professional network. Many were faculty or students at the Yale School of the Fine Arts, the first professional university art school in the United States, opened in 1869. The first school within Yale to admit women, the Yale School of the Fine Arts was remarkably progressive. From its beginning, the New Haven Paint & Clay Club was open to women at a time when some established art and social clubs were not. The Club emerged when a variety of clubs were being established to improve communities by promoting education and opportunities in the arts, culture, and in other arenas.

Landscapes of Connecticut and the Northeast

Art in this section explores the beautiful, varied landscapes of Connecticut and the region, with views of the shoreline, water, forests, fields, and other natural elements. Many of the Club’s early artists are represented, including John Ferguson Weir, the first dean of the Yale School of the Fine Arts and a founding member of the New Haven Paint & Clay Club, as well as George Albert Thompson, the Club’s first President and a founder of the Mystic Art Association.

Urban Spaces and the Built Environment

Exploring the built environment, a section of the exhibition focuses on architecture, industry, transportation and people in urban spaces. Artists have long been attracted to the energy and formal beauty of cities, sometimes championing and sometimes critiquing notions of progress. Given the coastal geography of this region, it is not surprising that maritime industry, with its developed waterways and scenes of docks and boats, has also long been a favorite subject for artists.

Rethinking Landscape: Dreamscapes and Alternate Visions of Place

How have recent artists in Connecticut and the region rendered the world around us amidst vast changes in society, politics, economics and the environment? Some have explored space, place, and identity by approaching landscape in different ways, challenging and expanding the genre through abstraction and collage. Other artists explore the realm of the imagination with landscapes that are dreamlike and personal.