Welcome to the Walsh Art Gallery

The mission of the Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery is informed by certain humanistic traditions that provide a framework of inquiry throughout the University. As art has the visual capacity to "engage the body, mind, heart and soul of the human person," it is isomorphic with Jesuit pedagogy and supports the whole person entering the learning experience and the "continual interplay of context, experience, reflection, action and evaluation." This principle is further supported by the living and learning communities at Fairfield University that encourage the benefit of inquiry through the creation of meaningful experiences appropriate for reflection and action. The Integrative Learning paradigm encourages students to push the framework of inquiry further by attempting to understand issues and positions contextually, while using diverse and even contradictory points of views in the learning process. This paradigm guides students in combining skills and knowledge from multiple sources and experiences while asking the probing questions that bring them to the level of self awareness - the level at which we all experience the consequences of our actions, and how to make a difference in our own community - social justice.

The humanistic traditions centered on "inquiry" that define Fairfield University, are equally embedded in the mission and activities of the Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery. The gallery seeks to establish direct, interactive and meaningful connections with students, faculty and the Fairfield community. Committed to facilitating a growing relationship with visitors by creating conditions and opportunities in which they can immediately experience reflection and action, the gallery also seeks to provide its visitors with the experience of multiple contemporary visual and didactic discourses through which the visitor can continue to make significant connections, dialogue with others and question meanings.

In realizing the freedom and dignity of all people, the gallery recognizes an awareness and compassion for contextual variables such as development, gender, culture and socio-economic issues, and for how these variables shape our perceptions, judgments and choices through the sponsoring of diverse, multicultural and contemporary exhibitions, lectures and educational programming. Our intent is to intensify our visitor's experience of understanding and compassion when listening to the stories of the "other."

Our unique focus on the art of contemporaries provides a never-ending frame for considering new ideas, viewpoints and theories that present opportunities for individual and collective growth from which making differences in the community are more possible. Furthermore, as a practical visual and didactic study laboratory for adults, university and high school students, the Walsh Art Gallery offers diverse and conflicting points of view that challenges the student's skill to understand, to ask probing questions and to critique. The gallery features specific programming in an effort to connect the visitor's skills and knowledge, learned from multiple artistic sources and experiences, with a greater sense of self awareness, and to perhaps inspire in them a desire to discover their own artistic voice.

Under the umbrella of another humanistic tradition at Fairfield University - the Quick Center for the Arts - the gallery is dedicated to collaborating with the performing arts by providing patrons with interrelated visual experiences that are welcoming, challenging and thought-provoking. A trained and dedicated group of adult and student volunteers work together to realize our "shared" experience as a cultural haven for the visual and performing arts.