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Arts & Entertainment

Strokes of Humanity at the Bruce 
Museum

Figural art exhibition featuring works from the museum's collection opens today.

An exploration of figural art featuring nearly 40 works from the Bruce Museum’s permanent collection opened today at the museum.

The human form has been explored by artists for as long as we have had evidence of artistic expression. This exhibition – titled ‘Human Connections: Figural Art from the Bruce Museum Collection’ - spans a timeline of 2 millennia, from 1st century BC Roman marble busts to recent renderings of the human figure by contemporary artists.

The show with approximately 40 pieces includes paintings, sculpture, photographs and other works on paper. Curator Julie Barry handpicked the works from the museum’s collection. Barry has been crafting the exhibition for several months as the museum’s Zvi Grunberg Resident Intern for 2010-2011.  

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“I think it’s great for museums to take a look, to take stock in their own collection and be able to put those works of art on view,” said Barry. “I think that’s important to mind your collection and see what you have, and I think that you can come up with really great shows.”

The collection is arranged in groups that share similar distinguishing characteristics, however, no two renderings are the same – and viewers are continually confronted with another fresh face. Barry opted away from traditional frameworks that organize exhibitions by chronology, style or medium and instead chose instead to organize the works around key themes that cut across the divisions of culture, context and time.

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“Because the show is drawn from our collection, there are a lot of local connections; a lot of works by artists based in Connecticut or New York,” Barry explained.

Among the artists represented are Auguste Rodin, William Merritt Chase, George Wesley Bellows, Gaston Lachaise, Milton Avery, Romare Bearden and Lester Johnson. Johnson, who died last May, lived in Greenwich and taught figural drawing at Yale University.

 “The show is organized into six sections – Portraiture, The Nude, The Figure in Motion, Narrative and Genre, Expressive Body Language and Artistic Innovation – different figural themes,” Barry told Patch. 

The styles of the works and artistic approaches are as varied as the human figures they depict.  Scattered across years, artistic movements, societies and civilizations, each has piece retains its own allure – the mischievous expression of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s Neapolitan Boy or the contemplative smile of a woman lost in her own musings in James Jacques Joseph Tissot Admiring a Portfolio.

The exhibition will be on view through June 5, in the Arcade Gallery. 

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The Bruce Museum is located at 1 Museum Drive. General admission is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors and students, and free for children under five and Bruce Museum members. Free admission to all on Tuesdays. Museum hours are: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday; 1 to 5 p.m., Sunday. Groups of eight or more require advance reservations. Museum exhibition tours are held Fridays at 12:30 p.m. For information, call (203) 869-0376, or visit the website www.brucemuseum.org.

 

 

 

 

 

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