The William Benton Museum of Art

Janet L. Pritchard will introduce her book "More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story", with a reception to follow. Through captivating photographs and insightful text, the artist surveys how generations of visitors have invested Yellowstone—the world’s first national park—with ideas, beliefs, and values reflecting their historical moment.

Janet L. Pritchard is a landscape photographer and Professor of Photography at the University of Connecticut. Her photographs have appeared in FlakPhoto Projects, Fine Art Photography Daily, Fraction Magazine, LensCulture, Lenscratch, The Photo Review, and View Camera Magazine, among others. Her awards and fellowships include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography, a Jay and Deborah Last Fellowships at the American Antiquarian Society, and a National Endowment for the Arts Summer Institute Fellowship at the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Her Artist-in-Residence awards include the Institute for Electronic Arts, Jentel Foundation, Millay Colony for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, and Vindolanda Trust, UK. Her artist Website is http://www.janetpritchard.com.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition, "Seeing Truth: Art, Science, Museums, and Making Knowledge", which features work by Janet L. Pritchard. The exhibition and related public programs are generously supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.

UConn faculty Alexis L. Boylan (Africana Studies and Art and Art History), guest curator of Seeing Truth, and Sandy Grande (Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Studies), will discuss the Night at the Museum franchise and representations of Indigeneity, art, and museums. Positioned as a light, family-friendly comedy, the films use the American Museum of Natural History as the backdrop for antics about a night guard and objects and people that come to life in the museum after dark. Yet amidst the humor are in fact some very complicated and dark suggestions about the authority of museums, historical memory, and the role of Indigenous peoples and their participation in contemporary culture. The discussion will suggest how we as audiences might resist and reimagine traditional thinking about museums and knowledge making.

The exhibition, Seeing Truth: Art, Science, Museums, and Making Knowledge, and related public programs are generously supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.

Speaker bios:

Alexis L. Boylan is the director of academic affairs of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) and a professor with a joint appointment in the Art and Art History Department and the Africana Studies Institute. She is the author of Visual Culture (MIT Press, 2020) and Ashcan Art, Whiteness, and the Unspectacular Man (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). Her next book focuses on the visual culture of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in the 20th century and how art and science antagonize and inspire cultural dialogues about truth, knowledge, race, and authority.

Sandy Grande is a Professor of Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Connecticut with affiliations in American Studies, Philosophy, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Across her work, she aims to produce more nuanced analyses of the colonial present. She was recently awarded a Fellowship through the UConn Humanities Institute for a project on Indigenous Elders and aging. She was also a recipient of the Ford Foundation, Senior Fellowship. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought was published in a 10th anniversary edition and a Portuguese translation is anticipated to be published in Brazil in 2023. In addition to publishing numerous articles and book chapters, she is a founding member of New York Stands for Standing Rock. As one of their projects, they published the Standing Rock Syllabus. In addition to her academic and organizing work, she has provided eldercare for her parents for over ten years and remains the primary caregiver for her 94-yr. old father.

Join assistant curator/academic liaison Amanda Douberley for a closer look at the exhibition, Encounters with the Collection: Celebrating Art by Women. The exhibition is the second in a series of permanent collection gallery rotations that bring fresh perspectives to the interpretation of the Benton’s holdings. This installation is mounted in support of two 50th anniversary celebrations at UConn: that of the Women’s Center and the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center. The exhibition features work in a variety of media such as paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, posters, ceramics, textiles, and mixed media collages. Spanning the 17th century to the present, the show highlights the work of more than 45 women-identified artists, designers, and collectives.

Co-sponsored by the UConn Women’s Center.

Speaker bio: Amanda Douberley, Assistant Curator/Academic Liaison, is responsible for connecting the Benton’s collections and exhibitions with teaching in departments across the university. She has curated numerous exhibitions at the museum, often in collaboration with faculty and other campus partners. Amanda holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus on 20th-century American sculpture and public art. Before coming to UConn in 2018, she taught in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Register in advance for this Zoom webinar: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yzXHHUSWR0C5kz8nQVvziw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Roll up your sleeves and get ready for hands-on art adventures this winter! Designed for children ages 7-11, the Benton’s Saturday Afternoon Studio sessions feature guided tours of current exhibitions and hands-on art making fun.

Register early to secure your preferred dates; please contact Curator of Education, Mollie Sixsmith: mollie.sixsmith@uconn.edu.

Dinosaur Terrariums
$15 per student

Students will step into the role of a paleontologist as they explore fossils and dinosaur artwork in the special exhibition Seeing Truth: Art, Science, Museums and Making Knowledge. Afterwards, students will sculpt dinosaurs out of clay and construct their own terrarium habitat for their creatures.