Current Exhibitions

Organized by The New York Historical

Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy explores monuments and their representations in public spaces as flashpoints of fierce debate over national identity, politics, and race that have raged for centuries. Offering a historical foundation for understanding today’s controversies, the exhibition features fragments of a statue of King George III torn down by American Revolutionaries, a souvenir replica of a bulldozed monument by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage, and a maquette of New York City’s first public monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman, among other objects from The New York Historical's collection. The exhibition reveals how monument-making and monument-breaking have long shaped American life as public statues have been celebrated, attacked, protested, altered, and removed. 

The exhibition is curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto,Vice President and Chief Curator at the New York Historical.

Image: Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, New York City, 11852-1853, oil on canvas. Gift of Samuel V. Hoffman. The New York Historical, 1925.6

Stitching Time features 12 quilts created by men who are incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison. These works of art, and accompanying recorded interviews, tell the story of a unique inside-outside quilt collaboration. The exhibition focuses our attention on the quilt creators, people often forgotten by society when discussing the history of the U.S. criminal justice system. Also on view in the gallery will be Give Me Life, a selection of works from women artists presently or formerly incarcerated at York Correctional Institution, a maximum security state prison in Niantic, CT, courtesy of Community Partners in Action (CPA). The CPA’s Prison Arts program was initiated in 1978 and is one of the longest-running projects of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1875, CPA is celebrating 150 years of working within the criminal justice system.

Image: Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore, Etienne, Mutulu Shakur, and Maureen Kelleher (quilt design); Maureen Kelleher (quilting), James Baldwin: Quote #3, 2019, mixed cotton blends. Lent by Maureen Kelleher, © Maureen Kelleher

Fairfield University Art Museum is the first stop for The Tulip Family by artist Lauren Booth. The sculpture is a play on simplicity and the joy of a childhood drawing, juxtaposed with a humble nod to Henry Moore, Niki de Saint Phalle and Barbara Hepworth, all of whom influenced this sculpture.

Image: Lauren Booth, The Tulip Family, 2017-2023, bronze. On loan from the artist

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.