MIDDLETOWN, CONN.- Wesleyan University’s Pruzan Art Center highlights artworks from the Davison Art Collection in two exhibitions. The first is an exhibition of prints featuring engravings made after 1900. The second exhibition features artworks that depict sweets across cultural contexts. The two exhibitions--Engraving after 1900: A Technique in Its Time, and The Fascination of Sugar--opened on Wednesday, February 12, 2025.

Both exhibitions are curated by Miya Tokumitsu, Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collection.

Engraving after 1900: A Technique in Its Time

Associated most typically with the European Renaissance, copperplate engraving proved a vital and expansive method of printmaking for numerous artists working after the dawn of the 20th century. Some artists found the deliberate, systematic process of engraving lines, one by one, into copper plates to be a useful method for recording the people and places of their modern world. Others believed that engraving could be a productive process in avant-garde movements such as Surrealism. Engraving continues to be practiced today by artists who engage with the technique’s deep history while deriving ever new forms and meaning from it. The exhibition Engraving after 1900: A Technique in Its Time features artwork from the Davison Art Collection, including works by Stanley Anderson, Stanley William Hayter, Dorothy Dehner, Norma Morgan, Anton Würth, Andrew Raftery, Jean-Émile Laboureur, and many others.

“The concept for Engraving after 1900: A Technique in Its Time emerged gradually over the nearly seven years that I have been working with the Davison Art Collection,” said Miya Tokumitsu, Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collection. “Our founding donor, George W. Davison (BA Wesleyan 1892), is known primarily as a sophisticated collector of European Old Master prints, having acquired some of the finest known impressions of works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Albrecht Dürer, and Francisco de Goya. Less known is the fact that Davison also collected contemporary art. He was particularly interested in a group of British engraving revivalists including Robert Sargent Austin and Enid Butcher. Engraving had become a niche practice by the 19th century, however, small, scattered groups of artists have carried on the tradition to this day. It is not surprising that Davison, a connoisseur of Renaissance engravings, appreciated artists of the 1920s and 1930s who continued to work in the technique. The exhibition expands far beyond Davison’s interests, and includes avant-garde engravings of the early 20th century that he did not collect, as well as engravings made long after Davison’s lifetime, and as recently as 2021. With the exhibition, I hope to show that this rarified printmaking technique, typically associated with the distant past, has continued to be a source of novelty and creative exploration for modern and contemporary artists.”

Exhibition will be closed from Saturday, March 8 through Monday, March 24, 2025.

The Fascination of Sugar

The exhibition The Fascination of Sugar explores the allure, rituals, political controversies, and comforts of sweets in artworks of various historical moments. From a cozy bowl of warm milk to intoxicating coca wine to a seductively offered pear, sweet things appeal in a variety of ways, reflected in the artworks on view. The exhibition presents works from the Davison Art Collection by Claes Oldenburg, Pablo Bronstein, Julia Jacquette, James Gillray, and Winslow Homer, among others.

“The Fascination of Sugar is an eclectic array of works in the Davison Art Collection that relate in one way or another to the intense appeal of sweets across cultural contexts,” said Miya Tokumitsu, Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collection. “Over centuries of technological innovation and social change, sweeteners continue to be among the most traded commodities on the global market. The diverse works in The Fascination of Sugar invite viewers to reflect upon the various appeals of sweets and the role they play in social life.”