Recent renovations to SUArt Galleries in the Shaffer Art Building will allow for more of Syracuse University’s private art collection to be publicly displayed. The next round of exhibitions will open to the public Nov. 9. 

‘We wanted to celebrate the university’s collection in a way we hadn’t done before,’ said Andrew Saluti, exhibitions and publications designer and preparator at SUArt Galleries.

The display was made possible when the museum studies department in the School of Art and Design moved its location from the Shaffer building to The Warehouse, Saluti said.

The move allowed the art gallery to open a closed facility, previously used for preparations and framing, to visitors. The area is filled with many new artifacts from different cultures and time periods in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The pieces are displayed in storage facilities built into the wall with glass coverings so they can be viewed.

‘On display right now are about 1,500 objects,’ Saluti said. ‘It’s still a seemingly small percentage of what we have, but it does show the breadth of the collection.’

When the closed facility was opened up to the public at the beginning of the semester, a hallway was connected to the facility, creating a loop in the gallery so people can view the artwork in one continued direction.

Construction in the West Galleries has also created an area for a selection of paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints examining American cities and their inhabitants. An additional exhibition space displays examples of American sculpture, glass and ceramic. 

SUArt Galleries also has two more exhibits available for viewing that did not go under reconstruction, Saluti said. The exhibits are part of the permanent collection and are on display for up to 18 months at a time.

The first exhibit SUArt Galleries is displaying currently is in the print area and is called ‘Impassioned Images: German Expressionist Prints,’ which reviews the major artists and approaches expressionism, an art movement that focuses on depicting emotions over reality, in the early 20th century, according to an article by SU News Services.  

Another exhibit will be displayed in the photo gallery and is called ‘Monument to a Warlord: Photographs of Nikko and the Temple of Ieyasu,’ which presents 40 19th century hand-colored album prints that display a tour of Nikko, the final resting place of Ieyasu Tokugawa, Japan’s first shogun on the Edo Period, according to the website. 

These exhibits are now a more permanent part of the gallery and will be available for anywhere between a year and 18 months, Saluti said. 

The collection in the photo and print gallery areas also functions as study rooms, Saluti said. These galleries are large rooms with tables in the middle that students and teachers can use to study more of the pieces. 

The SU art collection dates back to 1873 when Dr. George Comfort, the first dean of the College of Fine Arts at SU, purchased a series of plaster casts for the studio arts program. In 1949, a university trustee, George Arents, donated a group of 19th century European and American paintings collected by his mother, Annie Walters Arents, according to the SUArt Galleries website.

While the collection is focused primarily on American art, there are more than 45,000 objects, including European, Chinese, Columbian and Asian Indian materials, according to the website.

The majority of the university’s private collection is available for viewing at SUArt Galleries in Shaffer, but parts of the collection can be found in offices and public areas in university buildings, such as the mural ‘The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti,’ found on the east wall of Huntington Beard Crouse Hall, according to the website.

The SUArt gallery is open to the public Tuesday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and on Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. 

medelane@syr.edu

Published on October 31, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Meghin: medelane@syr.edu | @meghinwithani