Current Exhibitions

In this exhibition of recent work, Chamlin explores ideas about color theory and light through a series of landscape and interior stills. For each of her paintings, Chamlin sets a highly specific palette; experimentation within this limited range then guides her decisions about process and pictorial space.

Suzanne Chamlin is Associate Professor of Studio Art in the Department of Visual & Performing Arts at Fairfield University. Her drawings are in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and the Nelson Atkins Museum. Chamlin has attended numerous residencies including at the Albers Foundation and Yaddo. Chamlin received her B.A. from Barnard College and M.F.A. from Yale University.

Image: Suzanne Chamlin, Rose Bush Painting, 2019, oil on wood panel. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Malcolm Varon, NYC

This exhibition of contemporary landscape photography complements the exhibition of paintings by Suzanne Chamlin on view in the Museum’s Meditz Gallery.

In this intimate exhibition, remarkable landscape images share space with photographs which display poignant narratives of human interference with the natural world. Featuring works by Adger Cowans, Jeremy Dennis, Adriana Arenas Ilian, Alen Macweeney, Bea Nettles, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, Victoria Sambunaris, Larry Silver, James Welling, and Huang Yan, the exhibition includes both color and black-and-white photography, capturing landscapes from the 1960s to the present day, both real and imagined. These recent acquisitions, procured through generous gifts or purchased with funds especially allocated for diversifying the Museum’s permanent collection, invite contemplation on the relationship between humanity and our environment.

Image: Jeremy Dennis, "Nothing Happened Here #11," 2016, archival inkjet print on paper. Museum Purchase, 2024 (2024.03.01)

The leaves installed on the Bellarmine lawn are on loan to the Fairfield University Art Museum for the next year from the American artist Alan Sonfist (b. 1946), best known as a pioneer of the Land or Earth Art movement. These four larger-than-life aluminum sculptures of leaves were created in 2011 and represent several of New England’s most beloved native trees: the American Beech, the American Chestnut, the Burr Oak, and the Sugar Maple. The sculpted leaves act as reminders to honor and protect the trees, and as a warning that failure to do so could result in their extinction.

The museum is working with the Biology Department, the Environmental Studies Program and the artist, around a series of programs to be presented in the spring of 2022 to highlight these sculptures, along with climate change and endangered species.