Art lovers and history buffs owe it to themselves to take a trip to Fairfield University, where three very different exhibits focus on the current world, the ancient world and classic works of art, reimagined.
“Hair in the Classical World” is at the campus’s Bellarmine Museum of Art until Dec. 18. The historical exhibit features sculptures and coins from ancient Greece, Rome and Cyprus that prominently feature elaborate hairstyles that served as cultural signifiers.
“Hair has always been central to how people define themselves, even in the classical world,” said Linda Wolk-Simon, director and chief curator of the university museums.
The show, curated by professors Kathy Schwab and Maurice Rose, focuses on prominent women and a few men, whose hair indicated different things: that her husband was a warrior, that he is going into battle, that an enemy has been vanquished, that a youth has reached adolescence or adulthood, that she is in mourning, that she is an ideal wife and mother or that she has a distinguished bloodline.
The highlight of the show is a video of six female students at the university, who model hairstyles copied from caryatid columns found in a Greek building. Also charming is a tiny bronze statue of Medusa, who has long, textured hair instead of the snakes with which Medusa is so often associated. Medusa’s hair and wings serve as a warning to those who approach that she is a challenging woman.
“Dance” is in the Walsh Art Gallery, off the lobby of the Quick Center for the Arts, until Jan. 15. Three artists approach the subject in different ways. Jane Sutherland focuses exclusively on Edgar Degas’ legendary sculpture “Little 14-Year-Old Dancer,” re-creating that piece from a variety of angles in drawings and paintings. Marc Mellon creates bronze sculptures of dancers in a variety of classic poses and Philip Trager turns his camera lens on contemporary dancers in poses that often seem to defy nature and gravity.
In the lobby of the Quick is a lovely surprise, referred to as a “pop-up exhibit,” of seven large-scale photographs by the Italian team of Tania Brassesco and Lazlo Passi Norberto. The two meticulously re-create the backgrounds of classic works of art — including Rossetti’s “The Day Dream” and Klimt’s “Nuda Veritas” — and then pose Brassesco as the lead character in those artworks. The show, called “The Essence of Decadence,” will be there until January.
