April 12-May 8, 2011

 

Since the First World War, the American Red Cross has been using posters to educate the general public about its disaster relief efforts overseas and on the home front and to generate support for services like nursing, health and safety training, and fundraising. Posters were circulated and displayed nationwide, and sought to rally volunteers into action with the use of such cultural icons as the Red Cross Nurse, the Greatest Mother, and even Uncle Sam, figures that became synonymous with the Red Cross’s humanitarian activities.

Posters such as those in this exhibition were typically reproduced from a single original work done in oil, pastel, or charcoal. Leading artists and illustrators of this medium include Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, Norman Rockwell, and N.C. Wyeth.

The exhibition includes newspaper and magazine illustrations after Thomas Nast (1863), Charles Dana Gibson (1903), and Stevan Dohanos (1949) that emphasize the nurturing role of the nursing profession and posters from the First and Second World Wars that seek to recruit women into nursing to aid the war efforts or appeal to the patriotic role of the nurse. Among them are works designed by Albert Sterner (1918) and James Montgomery Flagg (ca. 1943).

This exhibition honors Josephine Dolan, the first professor of the School of Nursing at the University of Connecticut and the collector of these works. The exhibition coincides with the April 13th groundbreaking for the new 15,800 square-foot Widmer Wing of the UConn School of Nursing on the Storrs campus.

April 9-May 8, 2011

The Benton is proud to present this year’s MFA Exhibition, showcasing sculptures by Lani Asuncion, photographs and videos by Siobhan Landry, photographs by Rita Lombardi, paintings by Benjamin Piwowar, and sculptures and videos by Jamie Uretsky.

March 26-May 8, 2011

n the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, investigations of identity emerged as a prevalent artistic mode. Further fueled by cultural movements and critical discourse such as feminism and queer theory, artists working in the 1980s and 90s frequently took on various disputed identitiesgender, sexuality, racein their work. Explorations of identity continue to occupy the creative practice of artists working today.

Photo Identities is a selection from the Benton Museum’s permanent collection of photo-based works from the last four decades on the subject of human identity. Working in photographic methods ranging from elaborately staged photography to photography in the documentary tradition, artists represented here disrupt preconceived ideas of types by picturing complex identities both observed and invented. Participating artists include Tseng Kwong Chi, Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons, Dawoud Bey, Shirin Neshat, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew and Collier Schorr.

January 25-March 20, 2011

Views and Re-Views is an exhibition of Soviet-era political posters and cartoons dating from 1919 through the 1980s. Within the broader scope of visual propaganda administered by Soviet Union officials, these works were selected to emphasize the theme of friends and enemies, a concept that pervaded Soviet society. Rendered in bold blacks, yellows and reds, the works feature heroic workers, Bolshevik leaders and soldiers towering robustly while caricatured capitalists, monarchists and clerics wickedly strut and skulk. More than an opportunity to condemn extremism of a bygone era, Views and Re-Views invites viewers to contemplate the works with a mind to past and current political climates in which rigid ideologies are formulated and disseminated.

This exhibition was curated by Jo-Ann Conklin, director of the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, and Abbott Gleason, a member of the administration and faculty of Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and professor emeritus at Brown University.

January 25 – December 18, 2011

This eclectic and evolving compilation of video works was chosen by 35 international curators to celebrate the global reach that video has achieved as a contemporary art medium today. In recognition of their 35th anniversary in 2010, Independent Curators International (ICI) invited 35 curators from around the worldEgypt, Australia, Japan, US, China, Nigeria, South Africato each select one video that they think is important and should be seen by audiences across the globe.

Project 35 will show a diversity of approaches to making video, as well as the issues artists are addressing in their practice. Eight to nine works in each of four sets will be shown at various points in the year to provide new and engaging programming throughout 2011. Among the artists represented are Guy Ben-Ner, Daniela Paes Leao, Mami Kataoka, Constance Lewallan and Sammy Baloji.

April 1 – May 9, 2010

This celebration of the creative talents of the Class of 2010 in the Master of Fine Arts program in Studio Art showcases the works of Lauren Laudano (sculpture), Kasey Lindley (painting and multi-media installation), Katie Mansfield (photography, sculpture), Owen McKenzie (drawing) and Frank Travers (printmaking).

 

March 25-May 9, 2010

Poem & Picture features the collaborative visions of twentieth-century artists and poets, works that combine the disciplines of art and poetry in a way that each is complimented and enhanced by the other. They are poems and pictures intended to be experienced together, whether they are bound side-by-side in a limited edition book or as image and script integrated into a single work. Included in the exhibition are pages from the Russian literary avant-garde book Igra v adu (A Game in Hell) (1914) by Olga Rozanova and Kazimir Malevich. Selections from 21 Etchings and Poems (1960) present collaborations by Willem De Kooning and Harold Rosenberg, Peter Grippe and Dylan Thomas, and Franz Klein and Frank O’Hara. The Ariel Poems (1927-1954), a collection of limited edition illustrated poems, is represented by T.S. Eliot and E. McKnight Kauffer, and D.H. Lawrence and Althea Willoughby, among others.

March 25-May 9, 2010

In CounterMart, artist Abby Manock utilizes juvenile color schemes and rudimentary forms in her installation of a convenience store counter in the style of a children’s television show set. It is a scene from the artist’s video Counters brought to life and available for visitor interaction. In Counters, on view within the installation, the artist repeatedly performs brief vignettes centered on production, transportation and exchange in a crayon-color world littered with hand-drawn smiley faces. Despite the cheerful veneer, a slightly sinister element pervades the environment as a voiceover counts to five again and again in a mantra-like fashion. Abby Manock’s work combines drawing, sculpture, installation, performance and video in order to explore the tension between idealized childhood visions of the world and adult angst concerning social and political realities. She has exhibited her work in as varied venues as The Deitch Projects Art Parade in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Manock is based in Brooklyn, New York.

October 29-December 18, 2009

In traditional Afghani carpet-weaving, patterns tended to be geometric or floral, reflecting the Islamic rejection of anthropomorphic depictions. However, by the mid-1980s, in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion, Afghani weavers, principally women, were creating carpets that showed Russian tanks, helicopters and guns. The subtle geometric borders often contained rows of bullets and grenades. Most recently, these war carpets have included references to the American conflict and even to 9/11. Although many of the carpets have Arabic or Persian woven into their designs, the Afghani who created them found a market for these rugs in the West. In part this may be for their presumed anti-war sentiments but also, while the rugs are generally traditional in design and relatively inexpensive, they are nonetheless a contemporary artistic expression of a centuries-old craft.

In this exhibition of over fifty contemporary Afghan carpets showing both war and traditional designs, the rugs offer a commentary on modern Afghanistan history and, in their maintenance of a vibrant tradition, a measure of hope for the future.

This exhibition is funded in part by the University of Connecticut Human Rights Initiative.

September 24-December 18, 2009

“Work and dreamsthe two have long gone hand-in-hand for Swedish women artists as well as for women and men artists throughout the world,” Ann Charters writes in the introduction to Women’s Work, Women’s Dreams, the catalogue that accompanies the Benton’s exhibition of the same title.

But what were the dreams of the Swedish woman whose place was considered to be in the home or whose work was necessary to create a home for her family?

The works in this exhibition reflect the visions of Swedish women who broke from their traditional roles of women, mothers and homemakers to explore their creativity as textile designers, weavers, painters, sculptors and glass artists.

Their art resonates with dream-like images of free-flying birds evoking flight and escape from domestic confinement, year-round idyllic visions of midsummer blossoms, and spare Nordic landscapes filled with greenery, water, space and light.

Women’s Work, Women’s Dreams celebrates a remarkable legacy from a country whose art and artists are little known to American viewers. The Benton Museum is grateful to Samuel and Ann Charters for sharing their extraordinary collection of Swedish Art and Art Glass and for curating this exhibition.