gallery

Members of the Class of 2024 persevered through years of COVID-19 restrictions and global uncertainty to emerge stronger and better prepared for life after graduation. Wesleyan University celebrated their achievements during the 192nd Commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 26. Beneath blue skies, students walked across the stage to receive their diplomas to the resounding cheers of friends and family. Here is a selection of photographs from the special day:

Alumni from years ending in 3 and 8 gathered on Wesleyan's campus in Middletown from May 25 to 27 for the annual Reunion celebration at Reunion & Commencement Weekend. From WESeminars to the annual Alumni Assembly to a picnic on Foss Hill, the Wesleyan alumni community was on full display.

At the sound of an emphatic drumbeat, the Class of 2023 and the faculty who led them to their degrees marched from atop Foss Hill on Sunday morning for Wesleyan's 191st Commencement. Smiles of celebration and stares of reflection were scattered among the crowd of students and their loved ones. Here is a selection of photographs from the special day:

Students gathered behind Exley Science Center on May 10 to watch The Big Drop—the end of semester dropping of fruit and various items from the roof of the building. The Wesleyan Mathematics and Science Scholars (WesMaSS) and the Free Radicals have hosted The Big Drop since Spring 2016 to mark the last day of classes with a bang. They recreated Galileo's famous experiment where he dropped balls of different sizes from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1589. The Free Radicals also demonstrated a series of experiments and pyrotechnical displays.

A collection of Wesleyan's seniors gathered on the steps of Olin Memorial Library on April 19 to celebrate the submission of their senior theses with a champagne shower. Smiling faces, hugs between friends, and cries of joy and relief fluttered through the air alongside the popped corks and bubbly.

The Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery has a climate problem. “The airflow is not democratic,” said Ben Chaffee, associate director of visual arts and the curator for this fall’s exhibit by artists Renee Gladman and Nick Raffel, running through October 16. In the wing that is favored by airflow, Raffel installed a fan. In the other wing is Gladman’s collection. Her lines of prose and lines of drawing are neglected by the ventilation system. Raffel’s installation, called airfoil, explores how the aesthetics of utilities express historic understandings of energy usage. Gladman’s exhibit, called THE DREAM OF SENTENCES, is the…

By Maia Dawson '24 Benjamin Chaffee, associate director of visual arts, adjunct instructor in art, and curator for Wesleyan’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, has to crouch slightly when he tries to envision an exhibition from the perspective of someone of average stature. He said that when Brandon Ndife, one of the artists featured in the gallery’s latest pair of exhibitions, came to set up his postapocalyptic yet homely sculptures, Ndife had to crouch too. The result of his careful curation is an uninterrupted view from the entrance of three consecutive sculptures, and the hint of one more hiding around…

Unspun wool. Silver-spray painted stones. A worn leather suit. Sketches from an iPad. A video of children studying. Each object offers its own narrative. Set again the viewers’ assumptions and impressions, a whole new set of meanings are created. A new art exhibition titled "The Language in Common," curated by Benjamin Chaffee, associate director of visual arts, attempts to offer more questions than answers. The exhibition, featuring installation, sculpture, video, sound, drawing, poetry and performance, brings together five international and intergenerational artists, including Cecilia Vicuña, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Julien Creuzet, Jasper Marsalis, and Alice Notley. It opened to the public…