PAST EXIBITIONS

The Photography of Augustus Jackson Thibaudeau

July 14 -September 15, 2002

Augustus Jackson Thibaudeau was a photographer during the infancy of the medium in the fine arts around the turn of the century. He was a prominent member of the Photo-Pictorialists of Buffalo, a local association of photographers roughly analgous to the Photosecessionists ( Kasebier, Stieglitz and company). Thibaudeau was acquainted with many of these pioneering photographers, and his daughter indicated that Margaret Bourke White was often a guest at the Thibaudeau home in Niagara Falls. To read Press Release, please click here.

GRACE: Judith Olson Gregory
March 24 - May 19, 2002

Judith Olson Gregory is a Rochester and Chautauqua-based artist working with a variety of media, explores the possiblities of lending physical form to language. In this case, she presents a visual investigation of a single, common word "grace." GRACE will also include a sound installation. Admission is Free of charge. To read Press Release, click here.

PAGES FROM THE PAST:
Iluminated Manuscripts from the Collections of John M. Lawrence and the Castellani Art Museum.
September 16th 2001 - January 6th, 2002

The exhibition featured manuscript leaves and books from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Rare hand-scripted texts with miniature paintings, early printed and hand illuminated pages vividly illustrate the history and meticulous aesthetic of this beautiful art form. Curator John M. Lawrence. To read Press Release, click here.

Feeding the Spirit:
Mexican Day of the Dead Traditions
September 30 to November 4, 2001

Feeding the Spirit: Mexican Day of the Dead Traditions includes a comprehensive and evocative documentation of contemporary Day of the Dead celebrations in Oaxaca, Mexico by photographer Denis Defibaugh, an Associate Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. A Fulbright Study Grant allowed Defibaugh to begin his documentation of the Day of the Dead tradition in 1993. Feeding the Spirit features both black and white images and large-scale prints. The photographs reflect the many aspects of the Day of the Dead celebration, documenting both private and public rituals in homes, cemeteries, at the market place and on the streets. To read more about this exhibition, please click here.

ECHOES: A Century Survey : Arnold Mesches
April 1 - May 27, 2001

A comprehensive exhibition of Arnold Mesches paintings, ECHOES: A Century Survey featuring selected paintings from two aspects of his rare vision; the historical Anomie 1492 – 2000 series dramatically installed in the large main gallery and the more familial Echoes series in two additional galleries. After more than fifty years of painting, Mesches continues to work prodigiously, with vivid colors and expressionistic brushwork, on series of paintings that consistently and passionately probe the social/political events of the 20th century. To read Press Release, click here.

ACROSS BORDERS:
BEADWORK IN IROQUOIS LIFE
July 2 - November 19, 2000

This groundbreaking exhibition offered a comprehensive overview of Iroquois beadwork from the pre-contact period to the present. Across Bordersfeatures more than 350 beaded artworks, including many historic pieces that are being exhibited for the first time, traditional works by living artists, and contemporary Iroquois art that draws on the beadwork tradition. To read Press Release, click here.

Image: Beadwork pincushion by Marlene Printup; background
 photograph of Niagara Falls by Biff Henrich; design by Mike Morgan.

SHELDON BERLYN:New Works on Paper
April 27 - June 1, 1997

In 1997, painter Sheldon Berlyn, a long-standing member of the University at Buffalo faculty, is being honored with concurrent exhibitions at the University at Buffalo Art Gallery and the Castellani Art Museum. While UBAG will be featuring Berlyn's recent paintings, the Castellani focuses on his recent works on paper. The exhibition, which runs from April 27 through June 1, 1997, is accompanied by a UBAG publication which addresses both the new paintings and the new works on paper, with essays by Al Harris F., Director of UBAG, and Elizabeth Licata, former Castellani Exhibitions Curator. More information about Sheldon Berlyn, click here.

CARL CHIARENZA:Large-Scale Photographs
March 9 - April 20, 1997

Carl Chiarenza is a key figure in recent American photography. A respected authority in the areas of photography history, theory, and criticism as well as a widely influential artist, Chiarenza has had solo exhibitions at the George Eastman House in Rochester, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Tampa Museum of Art, to name just a few of many venues. In the book Chiarenza: Landscapes of the Mind (Boston, 1988), essayist Charles Millard writes that Chiarenzas mature work "constitutes the flowering of a remarkable art...large-scaled totally abstract pictures that neither looked nor felt like the photographs of any other artist."

The NAMES Project
AIDS Memorial Quilt
February 9 - March 2, 1997

In February Niagara University's Campus Ministry and the Castellani Art Museum join in displaying four large sections from the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The sections, each 12 by 12 feet, will be displayed on the back wall of the Main Exhibition Hall, and will be accompanied by three weeks of special programming, including a film screening, a poetry reading, lectures, panel discussions, and other educational programming. In addition, several panels from the Western New York Mending of the Hearts Memorial Project, sponsored by WNY AIDS Community Services, will be displayed on adjacent walls, and visitors will receive information on community AIDS services and how to make their own panels.

June 22 - September 1, 1996

Satoshi Yabuuchi is a master wood carver specializing in marquetry lacquer techniques who has restored many of Japan's national treasures. He is also well-known as a sculptor in his own right, often combining traditional techniques with contemporary subject matter. Yabuuchi's work is usually representational, featuring creatures from Japanese mythology, characters from folk tales, animals, and human figures. Yabuuchi portrays the universal beauty of natural forms as well as the range of human emotions, producing works that can be powerful or playful, gracious or fierce, contemplative or expressive. To read more about this show, please click here.

Pat Bacon, Tim Rollins & KOS, Marion Faller, and Adrienne Salinger
Youth Matters
4/21/96 - 6/9/96

Youth Matters included work which deconstructed stereotypes of young people, recognizing individuality and youth empowerment. Pat Bacon, a Rochester based artist/educator, has made a series of tributes to the individual gestures and expressions of her high school students of which Students and Desks is one. Bacon's photo-derived mixed media murals question the anonymity assigned to a student as a number on a class roster and challenge the power relationships of the classroom. Bacon also attempts to create a much more participatory dynamic in her own classroom.

Jean-Michel Basquiat & Kevin Young
Two Cents
2/11/96 - 3/31/96

Two Cents included 40 works on paper by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and 10 text installations by poet Kevin Young. Two Cents was organized in an attempt to try to see Basquiat's work with "new eyes," which in some ways meant simply revisiting Basquiat's penchant for working with other artists (Rammellzee, Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente) and his early ties to an alternative space sensibility. Since the written word both as text as well as visual image is essential particularly in Jean-Michel Basquiat's works on paper, it seemed fitting to see his work in relation to the work of a poet...The poetry of Kevin Young was inspired directly by Basquiat's work, barely a generation later.

Kathleen Campbell's Modern Theology Or
A Universe of Our Own Creation
11/12/95 - 2/11/96

Kathy Campbell's installation included 5 large-scale lightboxes enclosing large transparencies of photographed and handpainted symbolic "beings." The installation addressed scientific rationalism and spirtuality. A statement from Campbell: "In this work, I attempt to create a metaphor for the western concept of the all-powerful, rational, scientific "Man" who, since the Renaissance, has gradually usurped the role of the Divine and "created" the universe in which we must now live. Using traditional Western iconography referring to our lost spiritual traditions, I try to suggest the result of our rationalized and contemptuous treatment of the natural world and all living creatures, including ourselves."