After being closed for over a year, Slater Memorial Museum reopens … – theday.com

The Lynn Curlee exhibit and Casts of the Ancient World at the Slater Museum at Norwich Free Academy. (Sarah Gordon/The Day) Buy Photo Reprints Pieces in the African gallery at the Slater Museum at Norwich Free Academy. (Sarah Gordon/The Day) Buy Photo Reprints The Lynn Curlee exhibit at the Slater Museum at Norwich Free Academy. (Sarah Gordon/The Day) Buy Photo Reprints Director Dayne Rugh talks about a piece in the Connecticut Artists of the 20th Century the Slater Museum at Norwich Free Academy. (Sarah Gordon/The Day) Buy Photo Reprints Some of the Norwich Masterpieces are seen in the Dr. Lewis and Mrs. Grace Sears Gallery at the Slater Museum at Norwich Free Academy. The Sears Gallery will be the new semi-permanent home of the museum's collection of 19th-century American paintings and sculptures. (Sarah Gordon/The Day) Buy Photo Reprints The Colors of Connecticut Artists exhibit at the Slater Museum at Norwich Free Academy. (Sarah Gordon/The Day) Buy Photo Reprints

For the past year and a half, Slater Museum on the Norwich Free Academy campus has been closed as its slate roof was being replaced.

The folks who work inside the Slater, though, werent idle during that time. When you walk in, you can see how the iconic museum has been rethought.

A new gallery is devoted to Norwich artist Ellis Ruley.

The Sears Gallery, which visitors see first, now houses the most historically significant works in the Slaters collection.

The museums famed cast gallery has been renamed; walls and pedestals have been painted different shades; and a number of the casts have been moved.

In general, the Slater team oversaw the reinstallation of the permanent exhibition galleries, with nine new exhibitions, along with some temporary shows.

Museum Director Dayne Rugh says it was a perfect time and opportunity to do all that when the Slater shut down in January 2022.

The Lynn Curlee exhibit and Casts of the Ancient World.

The Lynn Curlee exhibit and Casts of the Ancient World.

The last time the museum did this kind of extensive installation work was more than a decade ago when the adjacent atrium was built.

Thats a long time in the museum world to have something not change very much, so I wanted to look at the galleries again and go, Whats working? What isnt working? How can we display the same things, the same types of things but make it a totally new and fresh experience for people? At the end of the day, I really want people to come in here and feel like theyre entering a proper art museum, says Rugh, who became Slaters interim director in March 2021 and then permanent director that October.

He says the biggest challenge was that there were always 50 different things happening at the same time. With a few exceptions, everything we did in terms of either construction or restoration or the hanging of the pieces, we all did that ourselves.

A couple of examples of those few exceptions: They had to call in outside experts for light fixture installation and for putting up a new wall.

But the rest was done in-house. Rugh says, Its a testament to how talented our staff is here at NFA incredibly talented, incredibly versatile and just so cooperative throughout the whole process. Discussing the NFA facilities team in particular, he says, I cant stress enough how important they were to get all this done.

Rugh designed and wrote all of the new labels and panels. (He notes he only has so much money to use on exhibition services.) He decided how the artwork should now be arranged. But some of those new arrangements came about by accident. When the floor was being redone, the facilities folks moved one of the big ship models into a different room, and Rugh realized it looked perfect there, so thats where it has stayed.

People who have been to the Slater before will notice a variety of changes.

Theyre going to walk into spaces, and its going to feel so much more open These rooms are so big and theyre so grand and they are beautiful to look at I wanted people to be able walk into a room without running into another wall or an object or something, he says.

Rugh wanted them to be able to see to the other side of the room and to appreciate the architecture as well.

In the Sears Gallery, for instance, people can marvel at the intricate woodwork and the grand fireplace.

I really want people to be awed by the openness, by the architectural details because thats part of the museum, too. Its very hard to find a museum so well preserved as this one, where you can still see pretty much the entire original building unaltered, he says.

Sears Gallery

Museum Director Dayne Rugh discusses John Trumbull's 1820 painting of Yantic Falls, which is housed in the Sears Gallery.

Photo by Sarah Gordon/The Day

Museum Director Dayne Rugh discusses John Trumbull's 1820 painting of Yantic Falls, which is housed in the Sears Gallery.

Photo by Sarah Gordon/The Day

The Sears Gallery, located across from the entrance area, is the nicest looking room that we have, Rugh says, so he wanted it to house the museums non-cast crown jewels. They are pieces that are part of the permanent collection that really stand out. Theyve been on display before, and some are new additions, but this is a whole new way of experiencing these pieces.

He wanted to choose the most historically significant pieces that the Slater has. All but one of the paintings in the Sears Gallery were done by John Denison Crocker, who was born in Salem and moved to Norwich when he was a young man.

Rugh says that Crocker captured the natural beauty, the natural landscape of Norwich in more than one way, and through these images, you learn about Norwichs early history as well as how it transitioned from an agrarian community to an industrialized community. You can see the landscape, you can see the city as Crocker saw it. He employed, of course, artistic license in some places, but it really gives you a unique way of experiencing history through his eyes.

Crocker was entirely self-taught as an artist, and some of the paintings depict seminal moments in Norwichs history, like the battle of Sachem Plains in the early 1640s, with the Mohegan Sachem Uncas in pursuit of the Narragansett Sachem Miantonomo.

The Sears Gallery also features what Rugh says is probably the most historically significant painting the Slater owns: a painting of the Yantic Falls by John Trumbull. Its one of two scenes of the falls he created, with other one now in Yale Universitys collection. Trumbull, who was born in Lebanon, also painted massive scenes of the American Revolution that are in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.

The 1820 Crocker Yantic Falls painting that Slater owns was on display upstairs before. It was taken down to have some conservation work done, and it now has a new frame as well. It hasnt been on display since 2019.

And one of Slaters newest acquisitions is featured in the Sears Gallery: a sculpture by Bela Pratt, who attended Norwich Free Academy. He made three versions of The Bather, and the Slater now has the resin one. Pratts grandson, Nat Kennedy, donated the piece which hadnt left the family in more than 100 years to the Slater. (Pratt also designed Indian head gold coins for the U.S. government.)

Cast gallery

The museums renowned cast collection has been renamed Casts of the Ancient World.

The museums renowned cast collection has been renamed Casts of the Ancient World.

The Slaters cast gallery has been given a new name: Casts of the Ancient World.

I wanted to give this collection more definition, and the way to do that is give it a proper name, Rugh says.

Visitors are still greeted by the museums renowned cast collection when they step into the space, with the main area focused on Greek and Roman pieces.

The color scheme is now united throughout the gallery, with the pedestals painted a light peach called Peach Fuzz and the walls a gray-blue called Web Gray that makes the casts stand out more.

The biggest change, in the corridors on either side of the main gallery, is the aisles have been opened up. Eleven casts had been in the middle of the floor. They are now up against the wall; this way, they are better positioned and protected, and people can move more freely in the aisles.

Slater also added low-profile Q-cord stanchions in front of those casts, as an unobtrusive but effective way of indicating how close museumgoers should get.

New panels have been added to the cast area, explaining, for instance, how the casts were created and how they got to the Slater.

African gallery

The museums collection of masks and other three-

dimensional sculpture is highlighted in its African

gallery.

The museums collection of masks and other three-dimensional sculpture is highlighted in its African gallery.

In the Slaters African gallery, everything is rearranged, and the interpretation is a bit more streamlined and concise, Rugh says. The area highlights the Slaters collection of masks and other three-dimensional sculpture. Rugh says it all tells a story of how different civilizations of people on the same continent can create different works that mean something to them.

You can see so much symbolism and so many different designs that all have cultural meanings, he says.

This section boasts a brand-new cast, of Nefertiti. Its a copy of the original that is believed to have been created by Thutmose in 1345 BCE and is on view at the Neues Museum in Berlin. The cast was recently created for the Slater by Skylight Studios in Massachusetts.

There are ways we can add more casts to expose people to different masterpieces throughout history, Rugh says. This museum was designed to be a museum of replicas and duplicates. Later on, the plan to acquire and display original artwork was launched.

Connecticut artists

The space behind the cast gallery had been used to exhibit Connecticut Artists of the 20th Century. Works by state artists in the Slaters permanent collection are still showcased in that area, but the focus is now slightly different: "The Colors of Connecticut Artists.

The theme now is how artists use color to create shape, to create abstraction, to create feeling even. Each piece in here does it differently from the next, Rugh says.

Upstairs

In the mezzanine of the Slater the upstairs space all the rooms have been redone, and the floors have been refinished.

Previously, several rooms on the mezzanine were collectively called the Norwich Galleries. Rugh changed that; he wanted each space to be distinct from the next.

Ellis Ruley

In one of those mezzanine galleries is something that Rugh calls one of his favorite sections that he has seen come to fruition. It is all about Norwich artist Ellis Ruley (1882-1959).

Its special to me because Ellis Ruley is a Norwich story, and nowhere else in the world can claim it. He was born and raised here, and as an African-American artist, he plays an incredibly important role in the history of Black communities and artists of color, he says.

This is now a new permanent collecting endeavor for the museum, to acquire more Ellis Ruley pieces, to display them, to interpret them, and to ultimately make Slater Museum the definitive home (for people) to come here and see these pieces, to be inspired by them, to be inspired by his story.

The Slater currently owns five paintings by Ruley, one of which is a recent acquisition. The works had been part of the Connecticut Artists of the 20th Century section but now have their own space.

Among the other items on display here: a photo of Ruley exhibiting his art in front of the Slater Museum in the early 1950s.

Smaller rotating exhibitions

The Slaters expansive downstairs Converse Gallery will still host rotating exhibitions, but Rugh wanted a space for smaller or medium-sized temporary shows. The first one in this area on the mezzanine is a 50th-anniversary retrospective of the work of Lynn Curlee. Curlee, who has lived in Norwich for several years, was a professional author and illustrator, and many pieces in the exhibition are illustrations featured in his books. He has written a number of childrens books that connect to mythology and ships.

Norwich made

One mezzanine room is still devoted to Norwich Made, but it is laid out a little differently than before and incorporates some new items to the collection. The section, which focuses on the material culture of Norwich, from the start of the 1600s to the 1800s, boasts a range of items made in the Rose City, from tall case clocks to furniture to the newest addition to the collection, a bicycle from the late 1890s.

Ships built in Norwich

NFA facilities staffers Jason Barrett, left, and Eric Moss work on the Tall Ships: Building a Work of Art exhibit.

NFA facilities staffers Jason Barrett, left, and Eric Moss work on the Tall Ships: Building a Work of Art exhibit.

A space in one corner of the mezzanine focuses on the USS Confederacy, a ship that was built in Norwich during the American Revolution.

Rugh says the exhibition expands on the theme of Norwichs maritime history by telling the story of the building of the USS Confederacy.

New features include a cradle for the Confederacy ship model made by master ship modeler Lester Palifka of the Mystic Seaport Ship Modelers.

And in the interest of commemorating the visit with a photo: Visitors can take pictures in a new section where they can pose with a ships wheel.

What: Slater Memorial Museum

Where: Norwich Free Academy campus, 108 Crescent St., Norwich

Reopens to the public: Monday

Hours: Opens Monday, with hours 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon., Wed.-Fri.; Sat. hours to be added soon.

Admission: $10 for age 13 and up; $8 for seniors over 62, military and non-NFA high school or college students with ID; free for NFA students and families, NFA faculty and staff, NFA alums, and kids 12 and younger

Contact: (860) 425-5563, slatermuseum.org

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After being closed for over a year, Slater Memorial Museum reopens ... - theday.com