Fairfield University Art Museum lines up James Welling 'Cento' for fall 2026

Fairfield University Art Museum will present 'James Welling: Cento' from September 25 to December 12, 2026, at the Walsh Gallery in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts in Fairfield, Connecticut. The exhibition will feature more than 60 recent works by the contemporary photographer James Welling, including photographs from his 'Cento' and 'Personae' series.

According to the museum, the show brings together images of ancient sites in Italy and Greece and antiquities held in museums around the world. Welling’s photographs have been digitally and painterly altered to produce transformative effects, a process the museum says is central to the exhibition’s focus on reanimation and change. The artist describes his approach as one that reanimates figures from the ancient past and connects them to the present through a combination of photography and painting.

The exhibition will also be shown alongside selections from the Fairfield University Art Museum’s historic plaster cast collection of Greek and Roman sculpture. That pairing places Welling’s recent work in direct conversation with objects tied to the museum’s own collection, extending the exhibition beyond photography into the broader visual language of antiquity.

Welling, born in 1951, has built the project around images that are at once familiar and altered. The museum’s exhibition text emphasizes the “elusive and often haunting” quality of the works, which draw on the ancient Mediterranean world while reshaping it through contemporary image-making. In the museum’s framing, the series asks visitors to look again at the ancient world not as fixed heritage, but as a field of visual interpretation.

The exhibition also arrives with a calendar of public programs. Fairfield will open the run with an opening night lecture by Welling on September 24 at 5:30 p.m. in Kelley Theatre at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, followed by a reception at 6:30 p.m. in the Walsh Gallery and lobby. A family day on photography is set for September 26, and the museum has also scheduled exhibition tours with Andrew Ward, PhD, on October 22 and November 19.

Additional programming includes an October 15 keynote lecture by Katherine A. Schwab, PhD, titled 'Altered States? The Shifting Impact of Our Visualizations of Antiquity,' as well as an October 16 symposium organized by Andrew Ward, PhD, on aesthetics, objectivity and interpretation in archaeological visual practices. An art workshop on anatomical drawing will take place on December 3, using the plaster casts on view in the exhibition as a point of reference.

'James Welling: Cento' is sponsored by Michael T. Vigario, '08, M & T Bank, Wealthspire Trust, Aquarion Water Company and the Delamar Southport. The museum states that admission is free and that the Walsh Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with Thursday hours extended to 8 p.m.