Fairfield University Art Museum Presents Exhibition of Old Master Prints
The Fairfield University Art Museum announces an important exhibition of Old Master prints from the Wetmore Collection of Connecticut College opening on September 12, 2024, and on view through December 21, 2024
The Fairfield University Art Museum (200 Barlow Rd, Fairfield, CT 06824) (FUAM) is announces the opening of its latest exhibition, “Ink and Time: European Prints from the Wetmore Collection” on September 12, 2024 in the Museum’s Bellarmine Hall Galleries.
Curated by Michelle DiMarzo, PhD (Assistant Professor of Art History & Visual Culture), the exhibition presents a group of woodcuts, engravings, and etchings from the late 15th through late 18th centuries, including Albrecht Durer, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Canaletto. The works are part of a collection formed by New London, Conn. native Fanny Wetmore in the first decades of the 20th century, and bequeathed to Connecticut College in 1930. This exhibition is the second in the Museum’s history to have been co-curated with Fairfield University students, and has been supported by generous funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
The inspiration for the exhibition came from FUAM’s Executive Director Carey Weber, a Connecticut College alumna who remembered learning from this extraordinary teaching collection as an undergraduate art history student. Dr. DiMarzo explained, “Thanks to the generosity of our friends at Connecticut College, we were able to bring the prints to Fairfield a year in advance of the exhibition so that my students in the Museum exhibition seminar could work with them directly as we developed the show.”
Carey Weber added, “I’m delighted to have helped spark the idea for this exhibition, and even more pleased that one of my favorite pieces from the Wetmore Collection, Canaletto’s “View with a Porch,” will be among the works on display in our galleries.”
Although little is known of Fanny Wetmore herself, her collecting activities in the early 20th century place her within a tradition dating back to the rise of printmaking in early modern Europe. The surging production of prints by the beginning of the 16th century represented a sea change for both artists and consumers. For artists, prints provided additional revenue, increased their personal fame, and offered greater latitude for experimentation outside the traditional patronage structure. For consumers, prints represented access to visual art on an unprecedented scale; even those who would never have been able to commission an independent work from a great artist could now readily obtain an engraving or an etching. Prints were easily transported, could be pasted up on walls or into albums, and even large collections of them took up relatively little room. And, with the rise of reproductive printmaking, even geographically distant or physically inaccessible artworks could be added to the collector’s “paper museum.”
DiMarzo explains that although there is no information about Wetmore’s motivations for collecting, what she collected reflected both the prevailing taste for “Old Masters” (a term describing European artists from about 1500-1800), and the availability of prints by well-known artists. “Several of her Durer prints, for example, have stamps on the back indicating that they had been de-accessioned from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – presumably because the museum had other, better impressions of the same print,” DiMarzo said. “Then they wound up with a print dealer in New York City, and Fanny Wetmore acquired them there.”
DiMarzo noted that one of the surprises for her Fairfield University students was how few women artists were represented in the collection. “One of the things we discussed in the seminar was that the contents of a particular collection is different from the historical reality,” DiMarzo explained. “We wound up with only two works by women artists in our show, but there were many more women artists involved in the printmaking trade over the centuries.” One of these works, a striking aquatint touched with real gold, was once attributed to a German artist, Johann Prestel – but scholars have only recently realized that it was in fact the work of his wife and fellow artist Maria Katharina Prestel. An etching by the Swiss artist Angelica Kauffmann underwent conservation prior to being included in the exhibition, and the seminar students were also able to meet with the paper conservator to discuss the necessary treatment.
A broad slate of programming complements the exhibition, from workshops to rich public lectures. Dr. DiMarzo will deliver the opening night talk on Thursday, September 26, and on November 19, Nadine Orenstein, PhD, Drue Heinz Curator in Charge of the Department of Drawings and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art, will deliver a lecture on the market for prints during Rembrandt’s lifetime. Throughout the exhibition, community members will have the opportunity to attend in-gallery demonstrations as well as hands-on workshops led by a Master Printer from the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk. The museum is always free and open to all, and all programs are free, but registration is requested via Eventbrite (fuam.eventbrite.com). The Bellarmine Hall Galleries are open Tuesday – Saturday 11-4, and with special extended hours on Thursdays until 8 p.m.
Michelle DiMarzo
Michelle DiMarzo, PhD is Curator of Education and Academic Engagement at the Fairfield University Art Museum, and Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. She has curated several exhibitions at the Museum, most recently the 2022 “Out of the Kress Vaults: Women in Sacred Renaissance Painting,’ the first exhibition to be co-curated with Fairfield University students. Her curatorial assistants for Ink and Time are: Katherine Antico ’25, Priya Banerjee ’25, Caleigh Hopkins ’24, Arabella Resto ’24, and Blessed Stephen ’26.
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