Fairfield University Art Museum

One museum, two spaces. In the Bellarmine Hall Galleries, the Fairfield University Art Museum displays its permanent collection alongside rotating special exhibitions. In the Walsh Gallery, located in the Quick Center for the Arts, the museum presents larger special exhibitions.

The permanent collection features European and American paintings — including a core group of 10 Renaissance and Baroque paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection — drawings, prints, photographs, and historic plaster casts as well as artwork from Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

Also on view are works of art on long-term loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Worcester Art Museum, the American Numismatic Society, Columbia University, and private collections.

Exhibits

Only the Bellarmine Hall Galleries, located on the lower level of Bellarmine Hall, will be open 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday, September 17. The Walsh Gallery, located inside the Quick Center for the Arts, will reopen on Friday, September 23.
Our normal gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Out of the Kress Vaults: Women in Sacred Renaissance Painting
September 16 – December 17, 2022 (Bellarmine Hall Galleries)
The exhibition explores representations of femininity and virtue in Italian Renaissance paintings of the Virgin Mary, female saints, and nuns. Ranging from small, devotional images intended for the highly gendered spaces of the Renaissance home, to large altarpieces originally on display in churches, these artworks intertwine depictions of idealized beauty with messages of virtue and piety, presenting these women as models of virtue and devotion for emulation – and admiration – by their Renaissance viewers.
This exhibition is the first in the museum’s history to be co-curated with Fairfield University students. Taking inspiration from two paintings of the Madonna and Child in the museum’s own Samuel H. Kress Collection, students in Dr. Michelle DiMarzo’s art history seminar developed the exhibition by examining Kress collections at other institutions, with an emphasis on works typically held in storage. Lenders to the exhibition include the National Gallery of Art, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami.
https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/kressvaults/

Specimens and Reflections
September 16 – December 17, 2022 (Bellarmine Hall Galleries)
Digitally manipulated photographic panoramas of the interiors of Roman churches by Claudia
Esslinger (Professor of Art, Kenyon College) are accompanied by the poetry of Royal Rhodes ‘68 (Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, Kenyon College) in this unique exhibition that explores the intersection of word and image.
https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/specimens-andreflections/index.html

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