Alumni, faculty, and students were on hand for a reception held on Wednesday, Feb. 14 to open the new Pruzan Art Center and its first two exhibits: “Air Pressure” and “Corot and the Cliché-verre in Nineteenth-Century France.” Located between the recently completed Frank Center for Public Affairs (PAC) and Olin Memorial Library, the Pruzan Art Center will be used to display the Davison Art Collection (DAC), a collection of over 25,000 works, mostly prints and photographs.
Outside the gallery entrance, the atrium that connects the PAC and Olin has been open since the beginning of the semester. Students often use the couches in the space, which has a large glass wall facing Church Street. Beyond the foyer, the Pruzan Art Center has a larger hall in the front and a smaller area for separate exhibits past the main room. Wooden floors and beams surround white walls, with two benches in the larger room.
This is the first time since late 2019, when the old gallery in a modern annex at the Alsop House closed, that works from the DAC have been exhibited. The works are displayed in a circle around the room, with related works grouped together. The wall separating the larger and smaller halls is covered with information on the “Air Pressure” exhibit and a graphic displaying its name.
“We had planned to move across campus soon after [the old gallery closed], but of course COVID happened,” curator of the Davison Art Collection Miya Tokumitsu said. “So that delayed a couple of years, but we got the collection moved, the gallery got built, and we’re finally open.”
“Air Pressure,” curated by Tokumitsu, focuses on the relationship between air and printmaking and is made up of dozens of prints from over six centuries by artists such as Pieter Bruegel, Albrecht Dürer, and Rembrandt. The exhibition will run until the end of the semester and is located in the main room of the Pruzan Art Center.
“The theme is air in print,” Tokumitsu said. “Personally, I was fascinated by this…concept of atmosphere, and printmaking because printmaking is a contact process, so there is no error in the actual process of making the image because the matrix and a piece of paper are pressed together to make the image. And so I thought that was an interesting tension to explore in the show.”
It’s exciting that the University is beginning to display its expansive art collection again, allowing not only the Wesleyan community but the general public to view works that should be enjoyed. “Air Pressure” combines the historical works the DAC is known for with contemporary prints that are artistic while also showing the extension of a genre into the modern day.
“Corot and the Cliché-verre in Nineteenth-Century France” is much more specific, focusing on a narrower genre and time period, but it still fits the theme of print and printmaking that “Air Pressure” explores. The monochromatic pictures are often of natural scenes, and the frantic lines evoke a sense of hurriedness even in what seems a placid subject.
“Corot and the Cliché-verre in Nineteenth-Century France” is held in the smaller hall of the gallery and will be on display until March 8. The exhibit has twelve prints made with cliché-verre, a photograph-like printmaking process, by the 19th-century French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and a photograph by Eugène Cuvelier, a photographer involved with cliché-verre.
The cliché-verre exhibit will be followed by “Dürer and His Time,” opening Mar. 26. Students in “Curatorial Workshop: The Northern Renaissance Print” (ARHA263C) are researching and curating this exhibit with help from Tokumitsu; it will feature 13 pieces, including seven Dürers.
The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding academic breaks.
Spencer Landers can be reached at sklanders@wesleyan.edu.