The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Six unique exhibitions open Sunday with reception
Photography, history, contemporary works featured in galleries
WATERBURY >> The Mattatuck Museum celebrates six new exhibitions with an opening reception on Sunday, March 26 from 1-3 p.m. These exhibitions cover a broad range of topics, from photography to history to contemporary installation. New acquisitions from the Museum’s permanent collection will also be on view.
First Look/New to the Collection, on view March 26-May 14 in the Whittemore Gallery, includes gifts, promised gifts and Museum purchases in conjunction with the five-year anniversary of our Director Bob Burns collaborating with our Curator Cynthia Roznoy. The exhibit highlights works by Richard Bosman, Frank DuMond, Janet Fish, Jasper Johns, Dina Melicov and Tom Yost, among others.
Black and White: Photos from the Collection of Kevin McNamara & Craig Nowak showcases contemporary photography. It features photographs by masters of 20th and 21st century American photography including John Dugdale, Sally Mann and Jock Sturges, among others. Contemporary photographers make imaginative use of the camera’s power to document reality. The pictures pose questions about identity, self-representation, history and truth. Black & White will be on view in the Munger Room from March 26-July 16.
Luminous Garden: Beth Galston features a site-specific installation by sculptor and conceptual artist Beth Galston. The artist creates installations that are informed by many sources, including science, architecture, engineering and nature. The immersive environment of Luminous Garden (Aerial) is an ephemeral light piece made of tiny yellow LEDs set in cast resin acorn caps. Luminous Garden (Aerial) will be on view in The Lab between March 26 and July 16. Luminous Garden: Beth Galston is supported in part through a gift from David & Mara Sfara to underwrite exhibitions in The Lab.
Yankees or Red Sox: America’s Greatest Rivalry documents the competition between New York’s and Boston’s baseball teams, of which Connecticut is at the epicenter, more or less being split in two. Guest curated by sports lover Neil Scherer, this exhibition has its inception in the 2004 American League Champion Series. This was the infamous year that the Yankees won the first three games, leading everyone to believe the Yankees would sweep, only to leave America stunned as the Red Sox rebounded to win the remaining four games and their first World Series title in 86 years. The exhibition tells this and other exciting stories about each team. Yankees or Red Sox is on view in the Orton P. Camp Jr. History Gallery from March 23-December 3. It is supported in part by MacDermid Performance Solutions.
Federico Uribe’s stunning Quedamos en Paz #3, on view in the lobby from March 26-July 16, is part of Uribe’s At Peace series, in which he creates sculptures from ammunition. His work is informed both by his homeland Colombia, where violence is a part of daily life, and the epidemic of gun crime in the United States where he has lived for fifteen years. Colombian-born, Miami-based Uribe trained as a painter. In 1996, he abandoned paint brushes to make art with the objects of everyday life, the results of which are seen in his work on view at the Museum.
The City of Waterbury responded to the April 6, 1917 call to take up arms against Germany by sending 5,000 men and women to various branches of the service. But the “War to End All Wars” did not begin as a popular cause. To turn public opinion around, the government mobilized artists to create pictorial publicity for all aspects of the war effort. Guest Curator Katherine Anthony has organized On the Job for Victory: World War I Posters to showcase approximately 25 posters from the Museum collection that give glimpses of the war front, illustrate participation at home, reveal the new role of women, demonstrate new technologies, and show the breadth of military service. On view in the Monteiro Family Community Gallery from March 12-April 23.
About First Look: In February 2012, Director Bob Burns joined the Mattatuck Museum team. Charged by the board to bring new awareness to the Museum, Burns focused on expanding the Museum’s art and history exhibitions in an effort to increase visitation, grow the Museum’s reach and solicit gifts to the collections. His partner in the endeavor has been Dr. Cynthia Roznoy, Curator of the Mattatuck Museum since 2007. Together Burns and Roznoy have not only increased the exhibition program to more than twenty changing exhibits each year, they have reinstalled the Museum’s collections galleries and significantly grown the Museum’s permanent collection through gifts and acquisitions. Working with the Collections Committee, the team set a course of action in collections management.
The MATT has long prided itself as the home of Connecticut art and artists. In the early 1960s the board of the then-Mattatuck Historical Society established the path and began to focus on works by artists from and/or working in the State of Connecticut. Through these efforts the Museum built up a fine collection of works from the 18th through the 20th century by artists from and working in Connecticut.
Beginning in 2012, the team identified “gaps” in the collection and developed a plan to focus limited acquisition funds on the purchase of works by Connecticut artists not yet represented in the collection, or artists of note that were represented with lesser works. The team also endorsed allocating funds to purchase works specifically by women and artists of color, as these artists are traditionally under-represented in museum collections.
The notion of identifying under-represented artists led the team to champion the idea that criteria for accepting gifts to the collection would not be restricted to Connecticutbased artists. This guideline thus allowed the Museum to more broadly reflect the diversity of our community in an effort to attract constituencies that may not recognize their own culture and heritage in the existing collection. This departure from past priorities enables the Museum to accept gifts of work by artists from across the globe.
Burns and Roznoy have prioritized their efforts to grow the contemporary collection, expand holdings in photography, further develop the decorative arts and furniture collections and to seek out relevant historical archives, artifacts and objects both acquisitions and gifts.
First Look demonstrates the progress made during these first five years of collaboration. The exhibition in the Whittemore Gallery highlights some of the many additions. Others can be located in the Collections Galleries adjacent. These works are easily identified by the “5” logo near the works.