Zilkha

Artist Renée Green ’81 spoke with Associate Director of Visual Arts Benjamin Chaffee ’00 during Wesleyan’s Homecoming + Family Weekend in October. Chaffee is the curator of the exhibition “No Title: Relays and Relations, Works by Renée Green and Sol LeWitt,” on display in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery through Sunday, December 3. As a student at Wesleyan, Green was exposed to LeWitt’s methodologies, ethos, and ways of relating to other artists. She participated in a course taught by Professor of Art History Emeritus John Paoletti that focused on LeWitt’s art collection in collaboration with the Wadsworth Atheneum, which…

Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts (CFA) starts a celebration of its 50th birthday in September. The 2023-2024 season features live performances and exhibitions that reflect on the roots of the center while also bringing new artists and works to campus. Director Joshua Lubin-Levy ‘06 said he and his staff want to hear from anyone who has engaged with the CFA over the years. The CFA’s curatorial team will be asking students, faculty, staff, and visiting artists to join them in their reimagining of what it means to center art in the context of a liberal arts education. “As with…

Assistant Professor of Art and Luther Gregg Sullivan Fellow in Art Ilana Harris-Babou’s video project “Liquid Gold” is being screened each night now through Wednesday, May 31 on the electronic billboards of Times Square in New York City. Over 92 digital displays spanning 41st to 49th Streets are showing the synchronized film from 11:57pm to midnight as part of Time Square Arts' Midnight Moment program, creating a dream-like canvas filled with flowing cream-colored bubbles. Since 2012, the Times Square Alliance has showcased over 100 contemporary digital artists on a monumental public scale in the iconic urban setting. A longer version of “Liquid Gold” was previously on display in Wesleyan’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery from January through March 2023, and included a sculpture in addition to the video installation. “I had such a lovely time sharing ‘Liquid Gold’ with the…

Art, like many areas of creative expression, does not always get the full attention it deserves. On average, visitors only spend 15 to 30 seconds looking at an artwork before moving on, according to studies done by several notable art museums. Peter Ketels Fulweiler ’23 said hearing this statistic fascinated him and made him want to create art that kept people’s attention. He exhibited his senior thesis piece “Terms and Conditions,” an interactive sculpture, at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery on March 28 to April 2. And yet, 15 to 30 seconds would seem long for many to view…

Every exhibition presented in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery establishes an idea–or an argument–of what art is, how art is made, who makes art, and what art does. “With every presentation, we attempt not to narrow the answers to any of those big questions,” said Associate Director of Visual Arts and Adjunct Instructor in Art Benjamin Chaffee ’00. “We think critically about the art that is shown and also how we’re framing it.” The most recent exhibition at Zilkha has created an interesting opportunity for juxtaposition. "Liquid Gold" includes a video installation and a sculpture by Assistant Professor of…

Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts has announced the highlights of its 2023 spring season, including world premiere dance and Connecticut premiere theater and music performances, as well as solo exhibitions by both alumni and current faculty. “The Center for the Arts is thrilled to be hosting several projects that consider, with such care, different scales of human existence, memory, and sense of belonging,” said Joshua Lubin-Levy '06, Director of the Center for the Arts. “From the urgency of ‘Ocean Filibuster,’ which takes up humanity’s relationship to the vastness of the ocean, to the intimacy of Carrie Yamaoka’s ’79 in…

In a time when the wounds of racial injustice continue to be raw in America, Wesleyan University’s Black History Month programming hopes to represent the complexity, struggles and joys of the African American experience. “We explicitly want to highlight the importance of the Black joy we are living,” said Demetrius Colvin, director of The Resource Center. “There is so much death, sadness, and trauma. We have to honor that. But an important aspect to the joy and sorrow is how people are surviving, resisting, and thriving.” The University will celebrate the month with gallery exhibits, film screenings, performances, and celebrations.…

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…

Gabby Farina ’23, an Art History and English major, was interested in how artists’ work dealt with family, identity, body, grossness, and fleshiness. What she found from her classmates inspired her. “Everything was very much tied back to this idea of the human form,” Farina said. Farina is the first Wesleyan student to curate a Senior Thesis Showcase exhibition on her own. The exhibition, “It's Mutual,” was the first such exhibition in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery since COVID-19 led to the cancellation of a planned showcase in May 2020. As part of her tutorial, Farina visited the working…

On April 6, artists and visitors gathered at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery for a reception for week three of the Senior Thesis Exhibition. This week's exhibition features work by seniors Sophie Becker, Casey Herrick, Samantha Ho, Gla, and Zach Scheinfeld from the Department of Art and Art History's art studio program. The exhibition will be on display through April 10. (Photos by Hannah Norman '16)

In February, the annual student-curated exhibition, Be The Art, committed to celebrating and raising awareness of artists of color, was held at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. The objective of this showcase is to create a space that exhibits the work of artists who are often underrepresented at Wesleyan and in the world at large. The exhibition featured works of art by Gandarv Chawla '17, Dung Pham '17, Ocean Gao '19, Eunice Lee '19, Justina Yam '19, Shirley Fang '18, Phuong Le '18, Malcolm Phillips '19, Katherine Puntiel '19, Tenzin Kyisarh '16, and Rajaa Elidrissi '16, and performances by Sahil Singhvi…

Zilkha Gallery Exhibit: “No Title: Relays and Relations, Works by Renée Green and Sol LeWitt”

Center for the Arts Celebrates 50 Years

Harris-Babou’s video “Liquid Gold” Screening at Midnight in Times Square in May

Senior Thesis: Peter Ketels Fulweiler ’23 Comments on AI and Surveillance with Sculpture

Open-Ended Questions: New Exhibit at the Zilkha Gallery

“Sharing the World With Each Other:” Spring Performances at CFA

Wesleyan Honors Black History Month

Lines of Prose, Drawing, and HVAC Systems at the Zilkha Gallery Fall Exhibition

“A Very Intimate Process:” Farina ’23 and Chaffee ’00 on curating the Senior Thesis Showcase

Audible Bacillus Exhibit Explores the Fluidity of the Human Biome

Art Studio Seniors Exhibit Theses at Zilkha

Student-Curated ‘Be the Art’ Exhibition Held at Zilkha