Tag: Yale Art Gallery

Making a day of it: Visit Transformations in May, See More Art on the Way

April 22, 2026 0 Comment

Our Spring exhibition, Transformations: dialogues in art and materials (May 9 – 17) opens at browngrotta arts, Wilton, Connecticut, in less than a month. For those of you coming by car, there are interesting art stops you might want to make on your way. Below are exhibition suggestions in Westport, Bantam, Greenwich, and New Haven, Connecticut. See you next month!

Rina Banerjee: Take me, take me, take me … to the Palace of love
Through September 13th
Yale Center for British Art
1080 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT
https://britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/rina-banerjee-take-me-take-me-take-me-palace-love

Rina Banerjee installation
Rina Banerjee, born in Kolkata, India, 1963; lived in England; lives and works in New York (Yale M.F.A. 1995). © The Artist. Image © Yale Center for British Art. Photo: Richard Caspole

In an art journey that include Transformations’ exploration of materials at browngrotta arts, in Wilton, CT, Rina Banerjee’s Take me, take me, take me … to the Palace of love at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, CT would be an appropriate add on. It’s an amalgam of materials. Banerjee’s structure reimagines the Taj Mahal, a grand 17th century Mughal mausoleum, in ephemeral industrial materials: a frame of copper and steel is encased in vibrant pink plastic, creating a translucent ghost of the opulent marble façade of the original. The interior of the sculpture reveals an antique Anglo-Indian Bombay chair hovering above a globe, and a chandelier composed of expendable goods—pink foam balls, plastic beads, and artificial birds. As the gallery notes: “These objects challenge our ideas of value, pointing to a global system that produces things to be alternately fetishized or quickly thrown away.” The piece tells two stories, like the Taj does, as a somber tomb and a monument to love. 

WRIT and WEFTED:
Sally Van Doren, paintings and drawings; Nancy Koenigsberg, woven wire sculptures 
Through June 21st. 
Daphne:art Gallery and Advisory
55 West Morris Road
Bantam, Connecticut 

By appointment: daphneadeeds@gmail.com

Writ and Wefted installation
Writ and Wefted installation. photo courtesy Daphne:art Gallery and Advisory

In reviewer Julie Durkin’s words, the exhibition pairs, “two artists who both work at the boundary between language and material.” Sally Van Doren is a poet who works with illegible handwriting. Nancy Koenigsberg “draws” with wire — nets and mats, cubes and chains — that suggest fascinating interior and shadow lives.

extraORDINARY things
through June 17th
Flinn Gallery 
Greenwich Library
101 West Putnam Avenue
Second Floor
Greenwich, CT https://flinngallery.org/events/extraordinary-things/

Carole Kunstadt
PRESSING ON No. 157, Carole Kunstadt, antique sad iron, scorched linen thread and paper: pages by Hannah More dated 1795, 6.75 x 3.75 x 18 in., 2026 . photo courtesy of the artist

Four artists — Qingjun Huang, Carole Kunstadt, Cheryl R. Riley, and Rob Strati —reimagine domestic items into vessels of memory, metaphor, and identity through photo essays, altered appliances, heirlooms, and keepsakes.

Art, Jazz + The Blues
through June 7th
Museum of Contemporary Art
19 Newtown Turnpike
Westport, CT

Delta Dawn
Delta Dawn by Eric von Schmidt, oil on canvas, 2002

Art, Jazz + The Blues,  at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Westport, CT explores the intersections between visual art, jazz, and the blues, musical forms deeply rooted in African American traditions,  drawing from the rich holdings of the Westport Public Art Collections (WestPAC). The exhibition centers on Giants of the Blues, a sweeping series of seven group portraits by Westport native Eric von Schmidt (1931–2007) honoring blues, jazz, and folk musicians from the 1920s to the 1960s. Complementing von Schmidt’s paintings are over fifty artworks from the WestPAC collection depicting musicians, inspired by musical themes, or exploring the resonances between musical and visual forms. A selection of important loans from ACA Galleries, The Brubeck Collection at Wilton Library, Eric Chiang, Michael Cummings, Fairfield University Art Museum, Housatonic Museum of Art, Tudor Maier, Mark & Ellen Naftalin, Larry Silver, the Westport Library Collection, and private collections deepen the conversation. As the jazz great Charlie Parker once said, the show invites visitors to “hear with your eyes and see with your ears.”

Last but certainly, not least: Transformations: dialogues in art and materials (May 9 – 17). Schedule your visit here: https://browngrotta.com/exhibitions/transformations-dialogues-in-art-and-material

Make a Day of It: Events to Visit on Your Way to Allies for Art at browngrotta arts

September 29, 2022 0 Comment


On your way to see Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries at browngrotta arts (October 8-16, 2022)? Here are some other venues of interest in browngrotta arts’ neighborhood or nearby.

1. Aldrich: 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone
Through January 8, 2023.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street
Ridgefield, CT 06877
Tel 203.438.4519
6.2 Miles

South Gallery: Aldrich
South Gallery, left to right: Grace Bakst Wapner, Calving, 2020; Stella Zhong, Every Other Chopped, 2021; Merrill Wagner, Inlet, 2010. Photo by Tom Grotta

Aldrich: 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone (https://thealdrich.org/exhibitions/52-artists-revisiting-a-feminist-milestone) celebrates the fifty-first anniversary of the historic exhibition Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists, curated by Lucy R. Lippard and presented at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 1971. 52 Artists showcases work by the artists included in the original 1971 exhibition, alongside a new roster of 26 female identifying or nonbinary emerging artists, tracking the evolution of feminist art practices over the past five decades. 52 Artists encompasses the entirety of the Museum (approx. 8,000 sq. ft)—the first exhibition to do so in The Aldrich’s new building which was inaugurated in 2004.

2. From the Pen to the Knife
From October 15 – November 27, 2022
Westport MoCA
19 Newtown Turnpike
Westport, CT 06880
Tel. 203-222-7070

Marion Christy, Untitled
Marion Christy, Untitled. Photo courtesy of the artist

From The Pen To The Knife features the watercolor paintings of Marian Christy. Christy was a pioneer of the Knifed Watercolors® style, a process that creates original watercolors using only palette knives and puddles of paint.  

3. Grace Farms
365 Lukes Wood Rd.
New Canaan, CT 06840
Tel. 203-970-1702

Grace Farms. Photos by Tom Grotta

Always a rejuvenating place to visit,  Grace Farms is a scenic 80-acre cultural and humanitarian center in New Canaan, Connecticut. Schedule a tour or make a reservation for one of Grace Farms’ unique events. Visitors must schedule a visit in advance. Admission is free. (https://gracefarms.org/visit/) 

4. Leaves: The Endangered Species of New England
Through December 1, 2022.
Fairfield University Art Museum, Bellarmine Lawn
1073 North Benson Road
Fairfield, Connecticut 06824
(203) 254-4000
(https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/leaves/) 

Alan Sonfist, Leaves
Alan Sonfist, Leaves: The Endangered Species of New England (Installation view), 2011, aluminum, on loan from the artist.

The leaves installed on the Bellarmine lawn are on loan to the Fairfield University Art Museum for the next year from the American artist Alan Sonfist (b. 1946), best known as a pioneer of the Land or Earth Art movement. These four larger-than-life aluminum sculptures of leaves were created in 2011 and represent several of New England’s most beloved native trees: the American Beech, the American Chestnut, the Burr Oak, and the Sugar Maple. The sculpted leaves act as reminders to honor and protect the trees, and as a warning that failure to do so could result in their extinction. 

The museum is working with the Biology Department, the Environmental Studies Program and the artist, around a series of programs to be presented in the spring of 2022 to highlight these sculptures, along with climate change and endangered species.

5. Yale Art Gallery: Three New Thematic Displays of Asian Art
1111 Chapel Street (at York Street) 
New Haven, Connecticut
(203) 432-0600
(https://artgallery.yale.edu/news/three-new-thematic-displays-asian-art) 

Detail: Sultan Tughril III
Detail: Sultan Tughril III, from a Manuscript of Hafiz-i Abru’s Majma’ al-tawarikh. Photo: Yale University Art Gallery.

Yale Art Gallery’s collection of Asian art comprises nearly 8,000 works from East Asia, South Asia, continental Southeast Asia, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey and spans the Neolithic period to the 21st century. Highlights of the collection include Chinese ceramics and paintings, Japanese paintings and prints, and Indian and Persian textiles and miniature paintings. Due to the sensitivity of these artworks to light and climate, they are rotated out roughly every six months. 

On view through November are three new thematic displays of Asian Art including: Understanding an Eighteenth-Century Indian Album which brings together several manuscript pages featuring exquisite paintings of musical modes, given to Yale in 1939 and 1940. Second, Chinese Painting between War and Revolution, 1830–1950 highlights the vibrancy and experimentation with Western and Japanese visual traditions that characterized Chinese painting during the tumultuous period between the Opium War (1839–42) and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Finally, celebrating the varied rendering of cherries in paintings, woodblock prints, lacquer, and metalwork, Sakura: Cherry Blossoms explores the longstanding Japanese fascination with the beauty of this delicate blossom as a symbol for the ephemeral nature of life and its pleasures.

Have great trip! We look forward to seeing you at browngrotta arts:

Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries
Saturday October 8, 11 -6
Sunday, October 9, 11-5
Monday, October 10 to Saturday October 15, 10 – 5
Sunday, October 16, 11 to 6
276 Ridgefield Road

Wilton, CT 06897

203-834-0623

Art Out and About: Exhibits Across the US, Eastern Edition

February 15, 2017 0 Comment

Norma Minkowitz Goodbye Goddess

Norma Minkowitz Goodbye Goddess, 2003, permanent collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum

Here’s a list of exhibitions, podcasts and lectures well worth seeking out in February, March and April. In Connecticut, at the Wadsworth Athenuem in Hartford SHE: Images of Female Power from the Permanent Collection is on exhibit through April 2, 2017. The exhibition considers: What does female power look like? The intimate installation takes that question as a starting point to consider works from across the Wadsworth Atheneum’s collections, from Egyptian sculpture to Pre-Columbian ceramics to photography and textiles by contemporary artists. Included are images of goddesses, queens and protectresses. The exhibition features works by Ana Mendieta, Elizabeth Catlett, Lorraine O’Grady, Norma Minkowitz and Mario Carreño, among others. Norma Minkowitz will speak at the museum on March 30th @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm followed by a guided visit to her groundbreaking sculpture Goodbye Goddess. Also in Connecticut, at the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, Small-Great Objects: Anni and Josef Albers in the Americas examines intersections between the art-making and art-collecting strategies of the Alberses, two of the most influential figures of 20th-century modernism. As the Gallery notes explain, “Between 1935 and 1967, the couple made numerous trips to Latin America, namely Mexico and Peru, and amassed a large collection of ancient artworks from the region. The exhibition looks at these objects in depth and considers how Anni and Josef’s collection supported their aesthetic sensibilities and teaching practice. In addition to objects from the ancient Americas, the show gathers together dozens of works that the couple made, including textiles, paintings, works on paper, and rarely studied photographs that Josef took at archaeological sites and museums.” Demonstrating the Alberses’ deep and sustained engagement with ancient American art, Small-Great Objects explores a fascinating dimension of the couple’s creative vision. This exhibition is accompanied by a free podcast, available in the gallery space and online at http://soundcloud.com/yaleartgallery/sets/small-great-objects. In Massachusetts, 31 works by international artists are included in Excellence in Fibers at the New Bedford Museum of Art. Organized by Fiber Art Now magazine, submissions from around the world were reviewed by jurors Emily Zilber, Curator, MFA Boston; artists Gerhardt Knodel and Norma Minkowitz and Melissa Leventon, former curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Rachel Max Basket

After Haeckel II by
Rachel Max, 2015 Photo by Tom Grotta

Rachel Max is among the artists selected for Excellence in Fibers. You can read more about her work in the Winter double edition of Fiber Art Now in an article by John Hopper: http://fiberartnow.net/. In New York at the Museum of Arts and Design,

Françoise Grossen sculpture

Embryo by Françoise Grossen. Photo by Tom Grotta

Françoise Grossen Selects remains on exhibit through March 15th. “Grossen has mined the Museum’s permanent collection,” the Museum writes, “and brought her own rope sculptures together with a selection of work from MAD’s unusual collection of baskets, as well as other work in fiber, wood, and metal….Grossen’s selections highlight an approach to contemporary sculpture that focuses on the artist’s direct transformation of material and links it to a wider discussion about ways of making in culture at large.”

On Sunday, February 19th at 2 p.m., MAD’s Windgate Research and Collections Curator, Elissa Auther, will discuss the historical context of Grossen’s work. Auther will also discuss the advance of thread, rope, string, felt and fabric from the “low” world of craft to the “high” world of art in the 1960s and ’70s, as well as the prominence of fiber in art today. For more information visit: http://madmuseum.org/exhibition/françoise-grossen-selects.