New art center to open at Wesleyan University showcasing Davison Art Collection February 14

Middletown, Conn.—Wesleyan University will open a new art venue in the center of campus, built to highlight the Davison Art Collection, on Wednesday, February 14, 2024. Two exhibitions will showcase works from the collection for the first time in over four years.

The Pruzan Art Center, located at 238 Church Street in Middletown, between Wesleyan’s Olin Memorial Library and the Frank Center for Public Affairs, will be open Monday through Friday from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.

“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time,” said Caleb T. Winchester University Librarian Andrew White. “The Davison Art Collection is a jewel of the Wesleyan campus and a respected resource for scholars around the country and the globe, and it finally has a gorgeous, purpose-built space to highlight its strengths and amplify its impact.”

Miya Tokumitsu, Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collection, said the new Pruzan Art Center provides an inspiring space to engage with historical and contemporary artworks from the collection. “It is my hope that community members will find it a welcoming venue to learn, teach, gather socially, and reflect on one’s own, whether for an hour or a few meaningful moments during the day,” Tokumitsu said.

The Davison Art Collection holds more than 25,000 works of art on paper, including prints, photographs, and drawings. The print collection is one of the foremost at a college or university in the United States. The collection supports teaching and learning in many ways, and was established at Wesleyan University with the founding gifts of George Willets Davison, class of 1892. For more information, please visit www.wesleyan.edu/dac.

EXHIBITIONS

Air Pressure

Wednesday, February 14 through Saturday, May 25, 2024
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 14, 2024 at 4:30 p.m.
Pruzan Art Center
New location between Wesleyan’s Olin Memorial Library and Frank Center for Public Affairs
238 Church Street, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!

“Air Pressure” is an exhibition that explores the representation of air in print. Working with the airless processes of printmaking, which require direct contact between a printing matrix and paper, artists have continually discovered new ways of achieving a variety of atmospheric effects in their work, from glowing clouds to changing weather systems. The exhibition features artworks spanning six centuries from the Davison Art Collection, including works by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Yvonne Jacquette (1934–2023), Stow Wengenroth (1906–1978), and James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903).

In the works on view in “Air Pressure,” unmarked expanses of paper, organized systems of lines, and translucent veils of ink left on printing plates take their turns infusing printed compositions with air. The prints also express artists’ fascination with air’s diverse qualities and changeable nature. Two prints by Félix-Hilaire Buhot (1847–1898) evoke the bracing contact between skin and air in compositions depicting a frigid winter morning and pedestrians buffeted by gales of wind. Wengenroth crafts atmospheres that are balmy yet refreshing in another pair of works portraying mild summer days. A selection of aerial views from five different centuries demonstrates artists’ longstanding interest in situating spectators in the air, and another selection of works examines darker manifestations of air as mediums for pollution, explosions, and stenches.

“Air Pressure” will be closed from Saturday, March 9 through Sunday, March 24, 2024; and from Saturday, May 18 through Thursday, May 23, 2024.

Image: Thomas Willoughby Nason, "Summer Storm," 1940. Chiaroscuro wood engraving. Gift of William C. Murphy (BA Wesleyan 1906) in honor of George W. Davison (BA Wesleyan 1892), 1942.17.1. (Photo: M. Cook). © Janet W. Eltinge Trust. Click here to download high resolution version.

Corot and the Cliché-verre in Nineteenth-Century France

Wednesday, February 14 through Friday, March 8, 2024
Pruzan Art Center
New location between Wesleyan’s Olin Memorial Library and Frank Center for Public Affairs
238 Church Street, Middletown, Connecticut 
FREE!

This exhibition features a selection of twelve cliché-verre prints by French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) and members of the so-called Barbizon School of painters. Cliché-verre is a graphic art technique that combines aspects of printmaking and photography: a hand-drawn or painted glass plate is placed over light-sensitive paper to create a photographic image. The nineteenth century saw isolated bursts of enthusiasm for cliché-verre, but the technique never became widely practiced.

Both Corot and his friends in the Barbizon School—among them, Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) and Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867)—were encouraged to try cliché-verre by photographers in their milieux. These prints therefore represent creative collaborations of artists working across the mediums of painting, printmaking, and photography. Most of the Barbizon artists abandoned cliché-verre after a few trials, but Corot continued making them intermittently until his death.

By the early twentieth century, many of these artists’ plates had come into the possession of Maurice Le Garrec, a Parisian art dealer. Le Garrec had several of them re-printed, and in 1921, released them in a portfolio, Forty Clichés-Glace (Quarante Clichés-Glace). This exhibition presents a selection of clichés-verre from the portfolio published by Le Garrec, alongside a photograph by Eugène Cuvelier (1837–1900), a photographer who introduced cliché-verre to many of the Barbizon artists.

Image: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, French, (1796–1875). Jeune Mere a l'Entree d'un Bois, 1856 (printed 1921). From Forty Clichés-Glace (Quarante Clichés-Glace). Cliché-verre. DAC accession number 1963.16.1.15. Purchase funds, 1963. Open Access Image from the Davison Art Collection, Wesleyan University (photo: M. Johnston). Click here to download high resolution version.