JULY-SEPTEMBER 2017 JULY-SEPTEMBER Dmitri Wright, Compline: Ora Pro Norbis (detail), 2015, Oil on canvas A Note from the Director Current Exhibitions Greetings, @ THE MATT 2 @ THE MATT 3 @ THE MATT The Matt kicked off the start of Summer in June with its 5th Annual Summer Fling! More than 160 Heartbreak in Peanuts guests joined us in the courtyard for specialty cocktails before heading to the galleries to dine, dance ON VIEW THROUGH AUGUST 13, 2017 and bid on fabulous auction items. The evening raised over $35,000 for our education department and exhibition program. The fun continues all summer so stop in to enjoy our current exhibits, Heartbreak in Peanuts, celebrating Charles Schultz’s beloved characters, Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy Love is everywhere in Peanuts—Charlie Brown loves the Little Red-Haired Girl, Lucy adores EXHIBITIONS and the gang and Yankees or Red Sox: America’s Greatest Rivalry to vote for your team. Schroeder, Sally pursues Linus—but sadly these sentiments are rarely returned. Experience the joys and sorrows of unrequited love Peanuts-style in the traveling exhibition, Heartbreak in Peanuts. Opening on Sunday, July 30th are two new exhibitions: Passing By: Laure Dunne, winner of our Join the Peanuts characters as they continually return to their hopeless quests for love, undaunted MIXMASTER juried art show and Winslow Homer: American Life 1857-1875 featuring nearly by defeat. 80 illustrated works recently donated to the Museum by collectors David and Ann Jones. The A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR Jones’ collection will be paired with masterworks from the Yale University Art Gallery, New Britain Heartbreak in Peanuts is organized and toured by the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Museum of American Art and Wadsworth Athenaeum. Center, Santa Rosa, California. We will be hitting the road again with two trips to New York (p. 15)! Join me to visit the Presenting Sponsor Media Sponsor blockbuster Chihuly Show at the New York Botanical Gardens in August—the reviews have been Republican phenomenal and we’ll do the driving so you can enjoy the day. I also invite you to sign up for American our fall visit to Storm King, one of the world’s leading sculpture parks to experience monumental REP-AM.COM sculpture by artists as varied as George Rickey, Maya Lin, Alexander Calder, Mark di Suervo, Ursula von Rydingsvard and David Smith to name only a few. We’ll end our day with a visit to Brotherhood Winery – America’s Oldest Winery, established in 1839. Summer Art Adventures - our week-long art programs for children ages 4-13 begins in July (p. 21) and these spots fill quickly so register your child or grandchild today! We’ll also have art workshops (p. 16) and lectures (p. 14) presented in air-conditioned comfort this summer so there is something for all ages. Finally, I want to share with you the exciting project our curatorial team has been working on for the last two years. This November the Museum will present Jane Peterson: At Home and Abroad with a beautiful, full-color catalogue to accompany the show. The exhibition of more than 60 works by artist Jane Peterson (1876-1965) will be the first museum show of her art in forty-five years. There is always something happening @ The MATT! Bob Burns, Director #IBelieveInWaterbury IMAGE © 2017 PEANUTS WORLDWIDE LLC RELATED PROGRAMS FAMILY ACTIVITY: ART WITH SNOOPY MATT BY NIGHT: HEARTBREAK IN PEANUTS Sunday, July 9, 1:00 p.m. (p. 19) Thursday, August 10, 6:00 p.m. (p. 13) SNOOPY’S YAPPY HOUR FAMILY ACTIVITY: GOOD-BYE CHARLIE BROWN Tuesday, July 11, 5:00 p.m. (p. 13) Sunday, August 13, 1:00 p.m. (p. 19) Summer Fling 2017 (from left): David Sfara, Board President; Mike O’Connor, Webster Bank; STORY TIME FOR TODDLERS Senator Richard Blumenthal; Frank Monteiro, MacDermid Performance Solutions; and Bob Burns, Director Wednesday, July 26, 10:00 a.m. (p. 19) Black & White Quedamos En Paz #3 Photographs from the Collection of Kevin McNamara & Craig Nowak Federico Uribe ON VIEW THROUGH JULY 16, 2017 ON VIEW THROUGH JULY 16, 2017 @ THE MATT 4 @ THE MATT This exhibition draws from the collection of Kevin McNamara and Craig Nowak, and features Colombian-born, Miami-based artist Federico Uribe trained as a painter, but in 1996 he 5 @ THE MATT photographs by masters of 20th and 21st century American photography including John Dugdale, abandoned paint brushes to make art with the objects of everyday life. In the At Peace series he Sally Mann, and Jock Sturges, among others. Like many contemporary photographers, the artists in this creates sculptures from ammunition, his work informed both by his homeland Colombia, where exhibition use the camera’s power to document and question reality. Their pictures address issues about violence is part of daily life, and the epidemic of gun crime in the United States where he has lived identity, self-representation, history and truth. for 15 years. This large scale work depicts a peaceful garden where sun shines, flowers bloom, EXHIBITIONS EXHIBITIONS and animals play. Luminous Garden Yankees or Red Sox Beth Galston America’s Greatest Rivalry ON VIEW THROUGH JULY 16, 2017 ON VIEW THROUGH NOVEMBER 12, 2017 Sculptor and conceptual artist Beth Galston creates site-specific installations that are informed Like most sports rivalries, picking a side in the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry is almost entirely geographic by many sources, including science, architecture, engineering, and nature. The immersive – and Connecticut is at the epicenter, more or less being split in two. Guest curated by sports lover environment of Luminous Garden (Aerial) is an ephemeral light piece made of tiny yellow LEDs set Neil Scherer, this exhibition had its inception in the 2004 American League Champion Series. This in cast resin acorn caps. was the infamous year that the Yankees won the first three games, leading everyone to believe the Yankees would sweep, only to leave America stunned as the Red Sox rebounded to win the Supported in part through a gift from David & Mara Sfara to underwrite exhibitions in The Lab. remaining four games and their first World Series title in 86 years. Scherer was at the deciding seventh game. In this exhibition Scherer tells this and other exciting stories about each team. Supported in part by MacDermid Performance Solutions. RELATED PROGRAMS AMERICA’S GREATEST RIVALRY (p. 14) July 15, August 13 and September 10, 1:00 p.m. Coming This Summer @ THE MATT 7 @ THE MATT @ THE MATT 6 @ THE MATT Winslow Homer Passing By American Life 1857-1875 Laure Dunne JULY 30 - SEPTEMBER 3, 2017 JULY 30 - SEPTEMBER 3, 2017 EXHIBITIONS EXHIBITIONS The exhibition features approximately 80 prints from illustrated weeklies and journals by American As the winner of The MATT’s 2017 MIXMASTER Juried Members Exhibition, Laure Dunne was selected Master, Winslow Homer. The works were selected from a gift of engravings recently donated to the for a solo show in The Lab. She has had a passion for fine art, design and photography throughout her Mattatuck Museum by Fairfield collector David Jones and his wife Ann. This group of engravings will career. After earning a BFA at Indiana University/Bloomington in the areas of design and photography, be complemented by several paintings on loan from Connecticut institutions, including Yale University Dunne honed her photographic capabilities at NYU and at the International Center of Photography in Art Gallery, Wadsworth Atheneum and New Britain Museum of American Art. This overview of Homer’s New York City. rich career as an illustrator will be presented thematically. It will reflect the concerns of a nation during a period of significant social and political change. Subjects addressed include the Civil War, domestic and Her professional work focuses on interior design and real estate but her art photographs are oftentimes daily life in the 19th century, the changing role of women, popular entertainments and the outdoors. the result and record of her travel. This exhibition of 25 photos includes shots from Oregon, Maine, New York, and Connecticut. Thematically organized between two subjects, trains and trees, Dunne’s clear, RECEPTION clean aesthetic is evident in these compositionally strong and dramatic images. Sunday, July 30, 1:00-3:00 p.m. Highlight Tour Supported in part through a gift from Raymond Learsy to underwrite exhibitions in The Lab. RELATED PROGRAMS Sunday, July 30, 12:00–1:00 p.m. LUNCH & LEARN (p. 14) Join us for a docent-led overview tour of several Thursday, August 3, 11:00 a.m. of the special exhibitions on display in the RECEPTION Museum this Summer. Stay for the opening Sunday, July 30, 1:00-3:00 p.m. HOMER IN NATURE (p. 14) reception beginning at 1:00 p.m. Tuesday, August 22, 5:30 p.m. Winslow Homer, A Game of Croquet, 1866, Oil on canvas, Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery. Laure Dunn, Train, Returning, 2016, Digital print @ THE MATT 8 @ THE MATT 9 @ THE MATT EXHIBITIONS EXHIBITIONS Nnenna Okore, On Land and Beyond, 2017, Mixed media installation Ùtútù #IBelieveInWaterbury Nnenna Okore SEPTEMBER 10 - DECEMBER 3, 2017 SEPTEMBER 10 - DECEMBER 3, 2017 Ùtútù (ooh-TUH-tuh), is an Igbo word (from the Focusing on the City of Waterbury, artists are Above Image: Artist Dmitri Wright in front of his landscape Painting with a Stick at Weir Farm, 2016, Oil on canvas principal native language of the Igbo people, challenged to identify those unique aspects of an ethnic group of southeastern Nigeria), the city and her people that resonate for her/ which means ‘morning’ and implies ‘a new him. We invite artists to share their inspiration beginning’.