#arthurszyk

[fairfielduam]

Direct from the Director Late Fall 2023

It has been an exceptionally busy season at the Museum! It has been a privilege for us to present the landmark exhibition In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Artist & Soldier for Human Rights this fall. Since the exhibition opened on September 28, we have:

Offered free admission to over 3,700 visitors

Hosted more than 70 free online and in-person Szyk-related events, including exhibition tours led by the Director, the Exhibition Coordinator, our Educators, and a fantastic corps of community volunteers, which have been attended by over 2,000 people;

Received 20,000+ YouTube views of the Szyk video tour and recorded programs.

The Season of Giving is upon us, and we need your support to continue this good work!

The Museum operates on a modest annual budget, and exhibitions like the Szyk show are very expensive to produce. We depend on the contributions of generous donors like you to keep our museum offerings free and accessible both in person and online, in both English and Spanish.

If you participated in one of our numerous events this fall, enjoyed our virtual programs, or simply believe in the power of the arts in our community, will you please make a gift today to help enhance our exhibitions, ensure our unwavering commitment to excellence, and continue to inspire young minds?

Please take a minute and DONATE now.

Museum Accreditation News: Last week we had the privilege of hosting John Wetenhall, Director of the George Washington University Museum of Art, and The Textile Museum and Megan McAdow, Director of the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum at Saginaw Valley State University. They spent two days with us on campus as our Site Reviewers for the American Alliance of Museums Accreditation process. They met with University students, faculty, staff, alumni, members of our Collections Committee, and of the University Board of Trustees, as well as foundation funders, community collaborators, and other Fairfield County arts and culture professionals. Their primary role was to confirm that all of the information that we had shared in our Self-Study was correct. They will write a report based on their findings which will be submitted to the AAM Accreditation Committee at their February 2024 meeting where they will vote on whether to grant us accreditation. We will certainly let you know!

Upcoming Winter 2024 Exhibitions: We are very excited about the two exhibitions we are opening in late January/early February, both of which focus on environmental and climate-related themes. In the Walsh Gallery, we are presenting Streaming: Sculpture by Christy Rupp. Understood as one of the early pioneers in the field of ecological art activism, the artist, activist and thought-leader Christy Rupp has an international reputation. Streaming will feature a survey of Rupp’s wall installations and free-standing sculpture created with detritus gathered from the waste stream, which chronicle the ongoing tension between natural systems and the environment in transition, and call our attention to our interconnectedness with non-humans and habitat. Informed by science and the historical representation of natural history, the artwork in this exhibition examines the way we frame our opinions of nature, using irony and wit to represent the human impact on our natural habitat.

In the Bellarmine Hall Galleries, we will present Helen Glazer: Walking in Antarctica. This interdisciplinary exhibition includes photography and sculpture made from 3D scans of ice and rock formations, inspired and informed by Glazer’s experiences as a grantee of the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. It also includes an audio tour which takes the visitor on a series of “walks” through the Antarctic landscape, narrated by the artist.

Please come see the Szyk exhibition before it closes if you have not yet had a chance to see it – it truly is a remarkable and timely collection of works. It is only open through December 16th! Keep in mind that thanks to a recent generous grant from the Art Bridges Foundation, we are now open for extended hours on Thursdays until 8pm.

Wishing you and yours a very happy Holiday season.

Artfully yours, Carey

Captions: Christy Rupp, Petroplankton, 2019-2021. Collected single use plastics. Courtesy of the artist. Helen Glazer, Cloudburst, Erebus Ice Tongue Cave, Antarctica, 2015/2017; photograph. Courtesy of the artist.

[askjuliacaesar]

Some observations on the evolution of children’s book illustration and animation...Is it just me or....welcome to the Cybergarten👀:

[yoramkelmer]

#pesachmood #hagada #פסח #הגדה #art #jewishart #arthurszyk (hier: Morbærhaven) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9z4-OMAi9H/?igshid=o41indp57m7e

[docnad]

Arthur Szyk's Haggadah bit.ly/2nVpAX7 #Haggadah #ArthurSzyk https://www.instagram.com/docnad/p/BwNyTC0h5PT/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=11wkznbsuj21u

[swanngalleries]

Arthur Szyk's Haggadah is widely considered the most beautiful modern Haggadah. On offer is a signed first limited edition on vellum, with 14 full-page color played and numerous border decorations in jewel-like colors. At auction June 13 in our sale of Art, Press & Illustrated Books. #arthurszyk #haggadah #bookart #rarebooks http://ift.tt/2sF8jFc

[danisetalbotdesign]

#Arthurszyk

[artfromthefuture]

The Red Bogy by paul.malon on Flickr.

Arthur Szyk, 1943 same as it ever was

[fairfielduam]

Direct from the Director Summer 2023

What a fantastic year of exhibitions and programs it has been - thank you all for being a part of it! I am delighted to share with you a brief recap of our successes - we presented six exhibitions, together with 74 in-person and virtual programs! We had over 8000 in person visitors, and over 60,000 digital engagements with our virtual tours, lectures and other programs. One reason this number is so high is that almost 30,000 people have watched the beautiful video tour we created for the Norma Minkowitz exhibition this past winter. Did you see it? If not, you should check it out.

I have just returned from the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries annual conference and am full of ideas for how to make our museum even stronger! It is always so inspiring to hear what our colleagues in the field of academic art museum are doing at their institutions all over the country. Michelle DiMarzo and I were both able to present some of the innovative and exciting work that we are doing at our museum as well. Michelle lead a round table discussion about student-curated exhibitions, sharing the two that we presented to you this past year, and the one we have coming up in fall 2024 (focusing on Old Master prints). I lead a group discussion about virtual programming, and shared our commitment to continuing to providing this service to our communities, where I was able to boast about our remarkable virtual engagement numbers!

This summer at the Museum we are all very busy getting ready for our major fall exhibition, In Real Times: Arthur Szyk: Artist and Soldier for Human Rights. Please take a look at our Eventbrite site, and register for the events that interest you, because some of them may sell out. We have people joining us from all over the country to attend this exhibition, the symposium, and some of the other programs. As always, we will livestream and record as much as we can, but events like gallery tours are limited to small groups and are in person only. We are the exclusive venue for this exhibition in the northeast, and are very excited to be able to share Szyk's remarkable and important artwork with our community. We look forward to welcoming you to the exhibition opening on September 28th, please sign up now for Philip Eliasoph's opening night lecture and for the opening reception.

We continue to work hard to build our collection through donations, and I would like to share the wonderful news of a recent gift to the Museum by a generous Fairfield alum. Patrick J. Waide, class of '59, had previously lent a collection of works from his collection, by artist Andrew Forge, to an exhibition that the museum presented in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries in fall 2020. Very few of you had the opportunity to see this beautiful and important exhibition because the campus was closed to outside visitors, due to Covid-19, during this time. Happily, these works have all now been gifted to the Museum, to be part of our permanent collection. We look forward to sharing them with you again in the galleries someday soon, but in the meantime please visit the exhibition webpage linked above.

Wishing you all an art-filled, relaxing, and restorative summer. Looking forward to seeing you in September! Carey

Image Captions: Arthur Szyk, ‘My People’, Samson in The Ghetto – (The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto), 1945, watercolor, gouache, ink, and graphite on board. Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley (2017.5.1.129) Arthur Szyk, Thomas Jefferson's Oath, watercolor, gouache, ink and colored pencil on board. Courtesy of Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, UC Berkeley(2017.5.1.224) Andrew Forge, Winter, Kent, 1973, oil on canvas. Collection of Patrick J. Waide Jr. '59

[fairfielduam]

Direct from the Director Spring 2023

Spring has sprung, and we have a new exhibition opening this Thursday in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries to celebrate the new season! In Their Element(s): Women Artists Across Media is a landmark exhibition that is the 1st in the museum's history to have been solo-curated by a student, Phoebe Charpentier '23, the 1st to feature recent acquisitions to the collection, and one that marks our 1st collaboration with the Westport Town Permanent Art Collection (WestPAC) which kindly lent 7 artworks.

I am particularly proud of this exhibition because it reflects some of the work we have accomplished during my tenure as museum director in terms of diversifying the collection (both through donations and through purchases from the Black Art Fund, which we created in 2020). In Their Element(s) is quite truly a show of recent acquisitions, as all of the works in this exhibition were donated or purchased since I became the director in 2019. Our student curator chose to focus on work by women artists, and we now have over 360 works by women in the collection from which she was able to choose. We acquired 42 works by women just in the last year! Work by women artists now makes up about 13% of our collection of over 2600 objects – an improvement from where we started, at less than 10%, but we know we still have a long way to go.

You may wonder how we acquire artworks for the museum, so I thought I would take this opportunity to provide some brief insight into the process. As a young museum, just in our 13th year, we do not yet have an acquisitions budget or fund, except for the small Black Art Fund, which we have used to purchase 34 works to date (of which 15 are by women). All other artworks acquired by the Museum come to us as donations or bequests through planned giving; most are solicited, but some come unsolicited from a variety of sources including University alumni, local collectors, artists and dealers. Solicited gifts are specific artworks that we ask people if they would consider gifting to the museum – these are objects that we know will fit into our collecting goals and plans. Some of these sources include Museum Exchange, artist foundations and estates, living artists, and collectors with whom we have close relationships. All donations (accessions) of artwork to the museum's collection must be approved first by me and then by the Museum's Collections Committee to ensure that they meet all of our Collections Plan criteria. Our Collections Committee is comprised of collectors, artists, and museum and gallery professionals, many of who are alumni.

As a young academic art museum, we are committed to assembling a collection that is broadly diverse and representative of the lived experience of the many communities that use our museum. As we continue to thoughtfully grow our collection, we increase the opportunities for object-centered learning, both in the study of individual artworks, in class-specific sessions for undergraduates and Art in Focus session in the galleries led by our Curator of Education and Academic Engagement, and in exhibitions such as this one. I hope that if you have a museum-quality artwork that would augment our collection you will consider donating it or making a bequest to the museum so that it can become a part of our teaching mission.

I would like to end with a quick preview of our fall 2023 exhibition. Both of our galleries will be dedicated to the work of Polish Jewish artist Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), in a remarkable exhibition created by the Magnes Collection for Jewish Art and Culture, at UC Berkeley, and now on view at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. At Fairfield, Dr. Philip Eliasoph is the exhibition coordinator, and will be presenting the opening night lecture. I know it seems far away, but we are hard at work readying a fantastic experience for you that will open in late September, with lots of exciting programming. Please take the time to read about it on the exhibition website.

The Women's Rights Are Human Rights international poster exhibition was extended through July 1, so also please don't miss the chance to see it in the Walsh Gallery, if you have not already done so.

Wishing you a lovely art-filled spring. I hope to see you in the galleries.

Artfully yours, Carey

Captions: Lucy Sallick, Studio Floor Still Life #4, 1975. Oil on canvas. Lent by Westport Public Art Collections, 530. Bicentennial Trust for Westport Art, 1976-1978. © Lucy Sallick Sonya Clark, Afro Blue Matter, 2017. Offset lithograph on paper. Edition 38/70. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022 (2022.17.10) © Sonya Clark Miriam Schapiro, Shrine, 1962. Oil on canvas. Gift of Charles P. Regensberg, 1991. (2022.36.01) © 2023 Estate of Miriam Schapiro/ Artist's Rights Society (ARS), New York Arthur Szyk, Thomas Jefferson's Oath, watercolor, gouache, ink and colored pencil on board. Courtesy of Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, UC Berkeley Nancy Hom, Catalina’s World, 2011 © Nancy Hom

[docnad]

Arthur Szyk, The Haggadah, Matzoh and Maror (Bitter Herbs), 1939... Arthur Szyk's Haggadah bit.ly/2ofxzRU #Passover #ArthurSzyk

[docnad]

Arthur Szyk's Haggadah bit.ly/2nVpAX7 #Haggadah #ArthurSzyk #Passover #pesach #Szyk

[docnad]

Arthur Szyk, The Haggadah, Matzoh and Maror (Bitter Herbs), 1939... Arthur Szyk's Haggadah bit.ly/2ofxzRU #Passover #ArthurSzyk

[docnad]

Arthur Szyk, from Megillat Esther... Arthur Szyk's Book of Esther bit.ly/2mpO2QC #Purim #ArthurSzyk

[docnad]

Arthur Szyk, from Megillat Esther... Arthur Szyk's Book of Esther bit.ly/2mpO2QC #Purim #ArthurSzyk