Pruzan Art Center at Wesleyan University to feature modern engravings, artworks depicting sweets across cultural contexts from Davison Art Collection opening February 12, 2025

Middletown, Conn.—Wesleyan University’s Pruzan Art Center will highlight artworks from the Davison Art Collection in two exhibitions. The first is an exhibition of prints featuring engravings made after 1900. The second exhibition features artworks that depict sweets across cultural contexts. The two exhibitions--Engraving after 1900: A Technique in Its Time, and The Fascination of Sugar--will open on Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 4:30pm.

Both exhibitions are curated by Miya Tokumitsu, Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collection. Please see details about each of the exhibitions below.

The Pruzan Art Center's Goldrach Gallery is located at 238 Church Street in Middletown, between Wesleyan’s Olin Memorial Library and the Frank Center for Public Affairs, and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12:30pm to 4:30pm during the spring and fall semesters of the academic year. Admission is free.

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

Engraving after 1900: A Technique in Its Time

Wednesday, February 12 through Saturday, May 24, 2025
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 from 4:30pm to 6pm
Pruzan Art Center, Goldrach Gallery
Located between Wesleyan’s Olin Memorial Library and Frank Center for Public Affairs
238 Church Street, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!

Associated most typically with the European Renaissance, copperplate engraving proved a vital and expansive method of printmaking for numerous artists working after the dawn of the 20th century. Some artists found the deliberate, systematic process of engraving lines, one by one, into copper plates to be a useful method for recording the people and places of their modern world. Others believed that engraving could be a productive process in avant-garde movements such as Surrealism. Engraving continues to be practiced today by artists who engage with the technique’s deep history while deriving ever new forms and meaning from it. The exhibition Engraving after 1900: A Technique in Its Time features artwork from the Davison Art Collection, including works by Stanley Anderson, Stanley William Hayter, Dorothy Dehner, Norma Morgan, Anton Würth, Andrew Raftery, Jean-Émile Laboureur, and many others.

“The concept for Engraving after 1900: A Technique in Its Time emerged gradually over the nearly seven years that I have been working with the Davison Art Collection,” said Miya Tokumitsu, Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collection. “Our founding donor, George W. Davison (BA Wesleyan 1892), is known primarily as a sophisticated collector of European Old Master prints, having acquired some of the finest known impressions of works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Albrecht Dürer, and Francisco de Goya. Less known is the fact that Davison also collected contemporary art. He was particularly interested in a group of British engraving revivalists including Robert Sargent Austin and Enid Butcher. Engraving had become a niche practice by the 19th century, however, small, scattered groups of artists have carried on the tradition to this day. It is not surprising that Davison, a connoisseur of Renaissance engravings, appreciated artists of the 1920s and 1930s who continued to work in the technique. The exhibition expands far beyond Davison’s interests, and includes avant-garde engravings of the early 20th century that he did not collect, as well as engravings made long after Davison’s lifetime, and as recently as 2021. With the exhibition, I hope to show that this rarified printmaking technique, typically associated with the distant past, has continued to be a source of novelty and creative exploration for modern and contemporary artists.”

Exhibition will be closed from Saturday, March 8 through Monday, March 24, 2025.

Image: Anton Würth, "DürerÜbung II Nemesis," 2017. Engraving printed in two colors. Davison Art Collection, Wesleyan University accession number 2019.4.2. Magdalena Wagner Fund. (Photo: J. Giammatteo). © Anton Würth.

To request a high resolution version of the exhibition image, please contact Andrew R. Chatfield, Director, Arts Communication at Wesleyan University at achatfield@wesleyan.edu.

The Fascination of Sugar

Wednesday, February 12 through Friday, March 7, 2025
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 from 4:30pm to 6pm
Pruzan Art Center, Goldrach Gallery
Located between Wesleyan’s Olin Memorial Library and Frank Center for Public Affairs
238 Church Street, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!

The exhibition The Fascination of Sugar explores the allure, rituals, political controversies, and comforts of sweets in artworks of various historical moments. From a cozy bowl of warm milk to intoxicating coca wine to a seductively offered pear, sweet things appeal in a variety of ways, reflected in the artworks on view. The exhibition presents works from the Davison Art Collection by Claes Oldenburg, Pablo Bronstein, Julia Jacquette, James Gillray, and Winslow Homer, among others.

“The Fascination of Sugar is an eclectic array of works in the Davison Art Collection that relate in one way or another to the intense appeal of sweets across cultural contexts,” said Miya Tokumitsu, Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collection. “Over centuries of technological innovation and social change, sweeteners continue to be among the most traded commodities on the global market. The diverse works in The Fascination of Sugar invite viewers to reflect upon the various appeals of sweets and the role they play in social life.”

Image: Julia Jacquette, "Four Sweets," 1995. Screenprint. Davison Art Collection, Wesleyan University accession number 2010.13.1. Friends of the Davison Art Center funds. (Photo: J. Giammatteo). © Julia Jacquette.

To request a high resolution version of the exhibition image, please contact Andrew R. Chatfield, Director, Arts Communication at Wesleyan University at achatfield@wesleyan.edu.