Upcoming Exhibitions

By Design: Theater and Fashion in the Photography of Lalla Essaydi explores the artistic process behind the creation of Essaydi’s carefully staged photographs, which deconstruct and reimagine stereotypes of Muslim womanhood. Guest Curator Cynthia Becker (Associate Professor in the History of Art & Architecture Department at Boston University) has selected approximately 20 works spanning Essaydi’s career for inclusion in this groundbreaking exhibition. Becker notes that, “This is the first time an exhibition has emphasized fashion and staging in Essaydi’s work ...[she] might spend months creating a single garment to be worn in one of her carefully crafted tableaus. She spends hours arranging her models and, in the process, recreates the familial bonds so important to Moroccan women’s lives.”

Born in Morocco, Lalla Essaydi lived in Saudi Arabia for many years and studied painting and photography at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She currently lives between New York and Morocco. Her time in Morocco also exposed her to the nation’s rich history of architectural design and the ceremonial occasions so important to daily life, both of which are featured in her photographs.

Image: Lalla Essaydi (Moroccan, b. 1956), Harem Revisited #31, 2012, chromogenic print. © Lalla Essaydi, Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

Birds of the Northeast: Gulls to Great Auks features paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and natural history specimens from the early 19th century through the present day. Curated by Carey Weber and Fairfield University Biology professors, Brian Walker, Jim Biardi and Tod Osier, the show complements the installation on Fairfield’s campus of The Lost Bird Project by artist Todd McGrain. On view from October 2020 to June 2021, these five monumental sculptures were created as a public memorials to birds driven to extinction in modern times.

The Lost Birds section of the exhibition will include a Great Auk skeleton lent by the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University along with preparatory drawings, photographs and maquettes for The Lost Bird Project by Todd McGrain. Complementing these works are paintings of lost birds by contemporary artists including Walton Ford, Ann Craven, James Prosek, Morgan Bulkeley, and Alberto Rey. The living birds section of the exhibition will include specimens of a variety of common, local birds, also coming from the Peabody. Highlights of this section of the exhibition include Marsden Hartley’s Give Us This Day, (lent by the Art Bridges Foundation), and Andrew Day Jackson’s portfolio There Will Come Soft Rains, which draws from numerous sources including old Audubon copper plates, to refer to both preservation and apocalyptic destruction (lent by the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation). Additional artworks depicting living birds include works by Alexander Wilson, John Gould, Emily Eveleth, James Prosek, Rick Shaefer, Carolyn Blackwood, Christy Rupp, Christina Empedocles, and Paul Villinski.

Image: Marsden Hartley (American, 1877 - 1943), Give Us This Day, 1938, oil on canvas. Lent by Art Bridges