Innovation and Abstraction: Women Artists and Atelier 17 examines the formal innovations and burgeoning feminist consciousness of eight artists who worked in the studio’s New York location. Atelier 17, a legendary printmaking studio, had relocated from Paris to New York at the outbreak of World War II, providing a workspace and support for some 200 artists – nearly half of whom were women – during this period of upheaval and uncertainty in Europe.
When the Zimmerli’s curators first devised two complementary exhibitions of American art titled Circa 1966 – American Prints from the Collection and Paintings and Sculpture from the Collection – the intention was to commemorate the museum’s golden anniversary by spotlighting key works created around the time of its founding. But in addition to spotlighting revolutionary movements that now have an established presence in art history, the subjects of many of the works focus on social and political discussions from the era that have prominently re-emerged across the nation.
Beloved characters Fletcher and the Knobby Boys charmingly remind viewers about childhood lessons that remain relevant no matter one’s age: the value of teamwork and lending a hand (or paw) when others face tough dilemmas. In celebration of Rutgers University’s 250th anniversary and the Zimmerli Art Museum’s 50th year, the new exhibition Fletcher and the Knobby Boys: Illustrations by Harry Devlin spotlights artwork from two early stories by the New Jersey artist, who also was an instrumental figure in developing the university’s resources related to children’s literature.
The exhibition explores the development of conceptual art in Moscow through pivotal works by nearly 50 artists, including many on view for the first time in the United States. It introduces audiences to the evolution of conceptual art in Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s, highlighting the unique sociopolitical contexts that made it distinct from analogous developments in the west.
The historic re-establishment of trade between Japan and Western nations in 1853 also greatly influenced exhibitions at museums and world’s fairs, which introduced Asian artists and traditions in North America and Europe, where artists enthusiastically embraced subjects, compositions, and materials they rarely – if ever – had seen before.
Thinking Pictures features approximately 80 works, including major installations, works on paper, paintings, mixed-media works, and documentary materials, many of which have not been publicly displayed in the U.S.
The Zimmerli welcomed a new appointment and announced two promotions to key museum positions, allowing the museum to continue serving both scholarly and general audiences from the Rutgers campus and beyond.
Honoré Daumier and the Art of La Caricature and More than Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Warhol’s Prints and Photographs demonstrate how these two artists – working nearly 150 years apart – applied their understanding of the public’s fallibility to create iconic images. Both also took advantage of new technologies of their eras to disseminate their work to a broad public, influencing the views and tastes of their contemporaries.
Dreamworlds and Catastrophes includes nearly 60 works by artists from Estonia, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine, all of whom were operating in underground circles and whose work was not sanctioned by the Soviet regime. They captured the duality of the intense geopolitical circumstances and the sense of hopeful possibility created by technological advancement in Soviet military and space technologies.
In 1776, Simeon De Witt – the sole graduate that year from Rutgers, then known as Queen’s College – joined the Continental Army to fight the British. Mapping the Revolution honors his crucial role during the Revolutionary War and explores the practice of 18th-century cartography.
Celebrate classic children’s literature with original drawings by Roger Duvoisin, the acclaimed illustrator of more than 140 books who lived and worked in New Jersey for nearly five decades. The exhibition Donkey-donkey, Petunia, and Other Pals spans his entire career, with nearly 40 works that chronicle the adventures, antics, and epiphanies of his characters – both animal and human – whose timeless life lessons resonate from generation to generation.