Opening Reception: Thursday, January 21, 4:30–7:00 pm*
While images of the female nude have dominated art exhibitions through the centuries, the male nude has been almost invisible. This exhibition takes a new look at the male body and its various representations over the last four centuries, from depictions in the fine arts to those in the media and popular culture.
Stark Imagery: The Male Nude In Art is a collaboration with the University of Connecticut’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program and the courses on masculinity taught at UCONN every semester.
Are We All Here? is the culminating exhibition of the two-year Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Connecticut. The interdisciplinary program includes intense studio practice and analytical evaluation of contemporary art practice.
The 2016 MFA candidates are Amanda Bulger (Sculpture and Drawing), Don Burton (Video and Installation), Neil Daigle Orians (Printmaking and Sculpture), Kacie Davis (Drawing), and Kamar Thomas (Painting).
In the words of the MFA students, “The question Are We All Here? speaks to living in the present moment, while being as fully aware as possible. Often, we find ourselves absent, yearning for the future or a nostalgic past, working through daily problems, while indifferent to what’s happening in front of us.”
March 24 – May 22, 2016
Opening Reception March 24, 4:30 – 7 pm.
Founded in 1985, a group of female artists joined together to form the Guerrilla Girls, an art activist group devoted to protesting the under-representation of female artists in many of the world’s most prominent art museums. Since then, they have grown into a large organization that continues to fight for gender and racial equality in the arts by exposing and questioning the status quo. Through a mixture of comedy, facts, and shock, they design and put up posters for the sake of art activism and their mission of ‘redefining the F-word: Feminism!’ This exhibition features a collection of works from the museum’s newly acquired Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat (1985 – 2012), and seeks to shed light on the group’s revolutionary and evolving tactics that have allowed them to combat racism and sexism in the arts and to positively affect art her-story.
April 6, 5 – 6:30 pm: Guerrilla Girls Gig – Watch a full recording of this event!
Join the Guerrilla Girls for an exciting and thought provoking evening. For years, the Guerrilla Girls have been stirring up audiences with their presentations and workshops in full jungle drag. They have appeared at schools, museums and organizations of all types, in almost every state in the U.S. and on almost every continent.
Their performance will take the audience through their history and the ideas behind their activism tools. How they came up with some of their many, many posters, books (The Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls’ Guide to Female Stereotypes, The Guerrilla Girls’ Hysterical Herstory of Hysteria and How It Was Cured, From Ancient Times Until No) and actions about discrimination in art, film, politics, etc. Meet the Guerrilla Girls and bring your questions!
April 29, 5 – 7 pm: Salon at the Benton, Art and Conversation
Panel Discussion engaging with the audience on Art, Activism and the “F” word. Is it still relevant today? Panelists: Sharon Butler & Mary Banas. Moderated by Cora Lynn Deibler.
Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum?, 1989, Poster. Benton Museum purchase 2016Guerrilla Girls, The World Needs a New Weapon: The Estrogen Bomb, 2012, Poster. Benton Museum purchase 2016.
June 2 – July 31, 2016
Opening Reception June 2, 4:30–6:30 pm.
This exhibition explores the medium of inflatable art with imagery that is figurative, conceptual, and abstract.
These inflatable sculptures connote fun and whimsy, and challenge our everyday, feet-on-the-ground perspective.
Blow Up was organized by Carrie Lederer, Curator of Exhibitions, Bedford Gallery, Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, CA. This exhibition was made possible by a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts.
Image Credit: Claire Ashley, Thing Two, 2012. Spray paint on PVC coated canvas tarpaulin and fan. Image Credit from home page: Billie G. Lynn, White Elephant 1, 2007, ripstop nylon, chiffon, electric fan.
Guy Overfelt, Untitled (1977 Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am replica), 1999, inflatable nylon and electric blower, 4.5 x 17 x 7 feet. Courtesy of Ever Gold Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Billie Grace Lynn, White Elephant 1, 2007, ripstop nylon, chiffon, electric fan, 10 x 6 x 8 feet.
Sacred Sisters is a collaboration between visual artist Holly Trostle Brigham and award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson. Brigham’s paintings depict eight nuns from 12th-century Germany, 15th-century Italy, 16th-century Spain, 17th-century Mexico, 18th-century Japan, and 19th-century America and Brazil, each of whom was an artist or writer. While Brigham’s portraits imagine the nuns in the midst of their creative work, Nelson gives voice to each figure through a poem phrased as a prayer. Collectively, the works in the show explore issues relating to gender and creativity, religion and history, and the connections between the visual and literary arts.
This yearly exhibition highlights the work of the permanent faculty in the Art and Art History Department of the School of Fine Arts. A variety of media are featured, including painting, sculpture, illustration, graphic design, printmaking, photography, and installation art. Such diverse bodies of work represent the most significant directions in contemporary art, as well as the unique vision of each artist-faculty member.
Dotted Dialogues features contemporary paintings and sculptures from Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. In the early 1980s, new governmental policies encouraged Indigenous communities to partake in various initiatives meant to counteract the erosion of Aboriginal cultural identity. The traditional iconography of these works tells ancestral stories with the hope of reconnecting Indigenous communities with their ancestors, land, and cultural heritage, while simultaneously sharing it all with others. This exhibition was curated in its entirety by the students in the University of Connecticut, Spring 2015 Anthropological Perspectives in Art class, under the direction of Professor Françoise Dussart.
Opening reception at 4:30pm on Thursday, September 3rd.
Speak Up! Speak Out! Bread and Puppet Theater presents puppets ranging in height up to 20 feet, masks, paintings, and other works from Peter Schumann’s Bread & Puppet Theater, which has left an indelible stamp on the world of theater and the American cultural landscape over the past half century.
This exhibition focuses on Bread & Puppet’s activist responses to fundamental political and social issues that have defined American culture over the past 50 years, including the war in Vietnam; Central American turmoil and Liberation Theology; the politics of black liberation as represented by the Attica prison uprising and the M.O.V.E. family in Philadelphia; opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear power; and the war in Iraq.
Since Peter Schumann began his theater on New York City’s Lower East Side in the 1963, Bread & Puppet’s combination of modernist art and performance sensibilities with the desire to address critical social and political issues has created a new form of American puppetry capable of stunning beauty and provocative questioning, in contexts ranging from city streets, town squares, and traditional theater spaces to the expansive landscape of the theater’s home in Glover, Vermont. Writing of Bread & Puppet, the poet Grace Paley asked, “Why not speak the truth directly? Just speak out! Speak up! Speak to! Why not?”
Image Credit from Home Page: Peter Schumann, Yama, the King of Hell, and the Birdcatcher, from The Birdcatcher in Hell. 2013. Photo by Massimo Schuster.
Public Programs: The 2015 National Puppetry Festival of the Puppeteers of America will be celebrated at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT August 10-16, 2015 with more than 26 national and international performances, 30 professional workshops and master classes, 6 exhibitions, a parade, outdoor spectacles and many unanticipated events across the UConn campus and in Storrs Center. Visit online at nationalpuppetryfestival2015.com. Note: Museum is Closed July 3 – 6 & August 16 – 31.
Peter Schumann, Mother Earth puppet. 1990s. Paper maché. Photo by John Bell
Bread & Butter Theater Bus
Bread and Puppet Theater exhibit at the Benton Museum on May 22, 2015. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)
Bread and Puppet Theater exhibit at the Benton Museum on May 22, 2015. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)
Bread and Puppet Theater exhibit at the Benton Museum on May 22, 2015. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)
Bread and Puppet Theater exhibit at the Benton Museum on May 22, 2015. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)
Peter Schumann, Fire. 1968. Celastic masks. Photo by Mark Dannenhauer.
Peter Schumann, Yama, the King of Hell, and the Birdcatcher, from The Birdcatcher in Hell. 2013. Photo by Massimo Schuster.
The Benton marks the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War with an exhibition of American works of the era — from posters to photographs, prints, and UConn ephemera that convey the anti-war sentiments that were held by many. Featured are works by Nancy Spero, LeRoy Henderson, and Douglas Huebler, anti-war posters by Seymour Chwast and Peter Max, and student-produced posters illustrating the strong feelings that prevailed on the UConn campus.
This exhibition is a collaboration between the Benton and the University’s Asian and Asian American Studies Institute.
Many of the posters included in the exhibition including the images below are from the Poras Collection, Alternative Press Collection, University Photographs Collection. Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.
LeRoy Henderson, Anti-War, Anti-Nixon Rally, Washington, DC, 1973. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the June Kelly Gallery, NY.
Uncle Sam Now Playing Magician, Don Seebach, 1971March Against Death, Picasso, 1969
Opening Reception: Wednesday April 22, 4 – 6:30 pm
The 2015 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition: A World Still in the Making is the annual culminating experience in the Master of Fine Arts program at UConn. This year’s exhibition presents the works of Claire Coleman (printmaker and photographer), Elliott Katz (sculptor and photographer), Cynthia Melendez (photographer), Georgia Polkey (mixed media artist and painter), and Linda Smith (photographer and video artist).
The exhibition title the students have chosen, A World Still in the Making, is inspired by the book Women Artists: The Creative Process by bell hooks.
