Giving Tuesday: Fairfield University Art Museum Black Art Fund

Press release from Fairfield University:

Nov. 30, 2021

To address a major gap in its permanent collection, the Fairfield University Art Museum (FUAM) created a fund last winter dedicated solely to the acquisition of art by contemporary Black artists.

FUAM Executive Director Carey Weber said, “As an art museum, we believe that there is no better way to celebrate the excellence of Black history and culture than through art, so we decided to make it a priority to develop this aspect of our permanent collection.”

Nearly every one of the 2,000 artworks in FUAM’s permanent collection was originally received as a donation, Weber noted, adding that the Museum has no permanent budget for acquisitions. In response, the Museum is now actively seeking both financial contributions and donations of museum-quality artwork to achieve greater representation and recognition of non-white artists and artwork. The Museum seeded this fund in 2021 with $20,000, with the goal of raising $40,000 in additional funds by the end of the year. So far, the Museum has received donations totaling $25,000 in support of this effort.

In July, the Museum used the fund to make its first purchase of Cardboard Slave Kit, Abolitionist Blend DIY by artist Roberto Visani (image below left). Visani took inspiration from iconic 18th-century anti-slavery medallion and seal by Josiah Wedgewood, Am I Not a Man and a Brother? Weber added, “The museum was gifted a fine example of the Wedgwood seal (image above right) by Connecticut collectors Ben Ortiz and Victor Torchia Jr. earlier this year, so we jumped at the opportunity to acquire a work by a Black contemporary artist responding to the same source material!”

The Museum made its second fund purchase in November: a ceramic work by Afro-Latino artist Roberto Lugo titled Peaceful Protesters: Nina Simone II. The cup, which incorporates a gun handle alongside a portrait of the singer, is featured in the special exhibition Roberto Lugo: New Ceramics, on view in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries until December 18th. The gun piece came from a Connecticut gun buyback sponsored by the #UNLOAD Foundation at the time of the Museum’s Guns in the Hands of Artists exhibition in 2019. At the time, Roberto Lugo was doing an artist’s residency in New Haven and received the gun parts to use in his artistic practice. Weber explains, “Through the Black Art Fund, we were able to add a piece from this body of work, which has such important ties to the state of Connecticut, to our permanent collection.”

The museum will be participating in Giving Tuesday, a day of radical generosity, on November 30, and all funds collected will be credited to the Black Art Fund. Anyone with an interest in contributing artwork or funds to the museums Black Art Fund should contact Carey Weber, cweber@fairfield.edu or 203-254-4000, ext.2499.

This press release was produced by Fairfield University. The views expressed here are the author's own.