Sept 3 – Oct 13, 2013

This year’s exhibition features works by faculty artists Kathryn Myers and Judith Thorpe who have recently returned from sabbatical.

Sept 3 – Oct 13, 2013

The term mola refers to the type of shirt worn by Kuna Indian women. Mola is also the word for the decorative panel that adorns either the front or back of a shirt. This exhibition highlights molas of a political nature from the Elisabeth Hans Collection and considers the cultural history of Panama.

April 6-May 12, 2013

The MFA program in Studio Art at the University of Connecticut features an intense, multidisciplinary approach to the developments of work in a wide range of art media. Graduation requirements include a thesis, an oral exam, and a collective exhibition of their recent artwork. The Benton is pleased to be presenting this year’s degree candidates: painters Daniel Bohman and Russell Shoemaker, photographer Kathleen Deep, printmaker Christina Goncalves, and photographer/videographer Allison Hale.

March 26-May 12, 2013

Early 20th-century Paris was the setting for one of the great periods of innovation in photography. As with painters and sculptors, ambitious young photographers from around the world flocked to interwar Paris, where together they formed a fertile artistic milieu. Among them was Brassaï (1899-1984), whose evocative, inky-black, and extremely rare vintage photographs of nighttime Paris are assembled in this exhibition.

After attending art school in Berlin, Brassaï moved to Paris in 1924 where he spent the remainder of his life. Born Gyula Halsz, he adopted the nom de plume Brassaï, meaning from Brass, an ode to his Hungarian birthplace in the Transylvanian region, Brassaï focused his camera on Paris’s crepuscular demimonde, which he explored compulsively from the first moment of his arrival. Sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by friends including the writers Henry Miller and Jacques Prévert, Brassaï captured aspects of Parisian nightlife never before seen on film. In addition to Brassaï’s photographs of Paris, a selection of his experimental prints or transmutations, which he produced by using the cliché-verre technique combining photography and etching, is on display. Photographs the Brassaï Estate. All works are from the collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg. This exhibition was organized by art2art Circulating Exhibitions.

Brassaï, Fille de Montmartre playing Russian billiards,Blvd Rochechouart, 1932-33, Gelatin silver print.

Brassaï, At Suzy’s, fille de joie in mirror, 1932, Gelatin silver print

Brassaï, Fog, avenue de l’Observatoire, 1934, Gelatin silver print.

February 2-April 28, 2013

Garth Evans, Little Dancer No. 48, 2008, ceramic.

Garth Evans’ studio view, 2012.

Garth Evans: Selections from the Studio highlights the artist’s sculptures from the 1990s to the present day, a period during which he turned to using clay as his primary material. Also on exhibition are watercolors by the artist that carry forth a sculptural exploration of line and shape in a contained, two-dimensional picture plane. Evans’ attenuated Little Dancers and hollow, biomorphic forms, whether rendered tangible or on paper, inspire a multitude of associations. Yet, full understanding of the work results when one no longer attempts to pin the forms down, but lets them run free in the space between generalization and specification.

Garth Evans began his career as a sculptor and instructor in London in 1960 following completion of his studies at Slade School of Fine Art. He relocated to the United States in 1979 for an artist’s fellowship and eventually settled in New York City. He currently lives in Woodstock, Connecticut where, when not commuting to the City to teach at The New York Studio School, he spends his time in his home studio.

January 22-March 17, 2013

This exhibition of works with a Classical theme is drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection and has been curated to coincide with the Classical Association of New England Annual Meeting being held at the University of Connecticut in March. These Groves Were Once the Home of Fauns and Nymphs takes its title from the description of Arcadia by Evander, King of the Tuscans, to Aeneas in Book 8 of Virgil’s Aeneid. The selected paintings, drawings, and prints depict not only Classical gods, goddesses, and heroes but also the settings of Classical myths and epic poetry. Reginald Marsh, Pietro Testa, Angelica Kauffmann, and Frederick Garrison Hall are among the featured artists.

January 22 – March 17, 2013

“The Roaring Twenties” as represented in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby, the book selected for the second annual UConn Reads program, was a gilded age marked by overt displays of wealth, widespread urbanization, and dizzying modernity. This exhibition of early 20th-century paintings and works on paper from the Museum’s permanent collection gives visual form to the era in which Fitzgerald’s story of Jay Gatsby and his dark secret unfolds. Featured works include paintings by Reginald Marsh and Everett Shinn, photographs by Paul Stand, and prints by Peggy Bacon and Edward Hopper.

January 22-March 17, 2013

Over the past thirty plus years that I have been at the Benton, many works of art have entered its collections, and the nature of these works has significantly changed. Geographically, the once predominantly European and American emphasis had by the mid-1990s broadened to include Asian, Latin American, and African art. Chronologically, the collections that once spanned only the period from the 15th to mid-20th centuries today extend to the present. The only media represented in the 1970s in significant numbers were painting, sculpture, prints, and drawings; today a fifth major area of collecting is photography. Many of these works have come in as gifts, but the growth since 1980s in the number of endowments specifically designated for purchasing art has been a major factor.

The selection of works for this exhibition is my choice. They represent my eye, which is biased towards European and 19th-century American art. There are prints, drawings, and photographs with only an occasional painting, a preference that reflects my own scholarly and collecting interests. Some names are familiarRembrandt, Drer, Homer, and Boucher; others like Nanteuil, Vernet, Roth, and Zingg perhaps not so. However, each work is a part of the collections for a reason, and invariably that reason is pedagogical. Nonetheless, each work of art also has a role to play as visual pleasure, intellectual stimulation, historical artifact, and perhaps moral and ethical enlightenment. For me, each work represents a specific moment because I bought it or because I knew the collector from whom it came. But institutional collecting is not about the individual, and what I would ultimately hope is that each work might not only play a role in future exhibitions, but always be there to excite a student’s interest in things historical, social, cultural, and artistic. After all, isn’t that the best of reasons for working in a university art museum?Thomas P. Bruhn, Interim Director and Curator.