Community Calendar

Join us for the Keynote Lecture with Katherine A. Schwab, PhD (Professor emerita, Art History & Visual Culture)!

As part of the Fairfield Museum and History Center's commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, join us for a timely and vital conversation exploring practical ways we can build a new, collective commitment to democratic citizenship, using the landmark report “Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century” as a starting point.

Panelists will include: Stephen Heintz, President and CEO of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Global Commission on Democracy; CT Secretary of State and national voting rights advocate Stephanie Thomas; David McCullough III, founder of the American Exchange Project, an innovative program that builds connections between young Americans from different backgrounds; and Fairfield University’s Aaron Weinstein, PhD, assistant professor of politics—a scholar of the intersection of secular and religious thought in American politics. Reception to follow.

The Fairfield Museum and History Center presents this event in partnership with Fairfield University’s Center for Arts & Minds.

Go Behind the Headlines

What was really happening inside Israel’s war room after October 7?

Join us for a fascinating behind-the-scenes conversation with Elliot Kaufman, Wall Street Journal editorial board member and co-author of the new book 'In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel’s Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis'.

Drawing on extraordinary access to senior Israeli and U.S. officials, Elliot will take us inside the leaders, debates and decisions that have shaped Israel’s war and explore what they mean for Israel and the Middle East going forward.

The conversation will be followed by audience Q&A.

$30 per person • Includes a copy of 'In the War Room'

Chicago, 1927. Tensions and temperatures rise during a blistering recording session as the legendary “Mother of the Blues,” Ma Rainey, and her ambitious trumpeter, Levee, clash over control of her music, exposing the emotional and economic exploitation Black artists faced in America. An exploration of dreams deferred, cultural identity, and the power of the blues, August Wilson’s electrifying masterpiece, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, returns in a brand-new production more than 40 years after it first raised the roof of the American theater in its world premiere at Yale Rep.

Cold Chocolate
Thursday, October 15, 2026, 8 PM (Doors at 7 PM)
Tickets: $25 in advance, $30 at the door

Cold Chocolate is a genre-bending Americana band that fuses folk, funk, and bluegrass to create a unique sound all their own.

Featuring Ethan Robbins on guitar and mandolin & Ariel Bernstein on percussion and banjo, this power duo from Boston is impressing audiences throughout New England and beyond. Punctuated by tight harmonies and skillful musicianship, and with a focus on songwriting, Cold Chocolate has quickly gained recognition for their original music and high-energy shows.

The band has shared bills with Leftover Salmon and David Grisman, and regularly performs at venues and music festivals across the country.

Keeping sharp and staying active is vital for older adults.

The AFA Barbara Rabinowitz Center offers free, dementia-friendly activities for Long Island seniors every weekday in Amityville.

The Center’s free programs help seniors strengthen their brains, be creative, and socialize.

Programs include arts & crafts, music, games, chair yoga, dance, and movement.

Visit afalongisland.org or call 631-223-4000 to learn more.

A one-day interdisciplinary symposium examining the visual construction of antiquity through archaeology, art history, and photography.

The Tremaine Gallery at Hotchkiss presents Field Notes, an exhibition of works by contemporary artist Eve Biddle, curated by Terri Moore.

Drawing on the symbolism of snakes as signs of life and fertility and referencing archaeological artifacts across time, Biddle's work explores the ways memory, perception, and presence transform our understanding of the natural world. Her images follow a meandering path, reminding us that neither history nor our own lives move in straight lines. Nature appears ambiguously alive or dead, abstracted and literal at once.

Rather than documenting a specific place, Biddle reshapes the landscape genre through layering, translation, and physical intervention. The resulting works invite viewers to consider the connections between nature, memory, time, and transformation.

Upcoming Events

Artist Talk
Thursday, September 17 | 7:00–7:45 p.m.
Join Eve Biddle for a conversation about her work and the ideas behind Field Notes.

Artist Reception
Saturday, September 19 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Celebrate the exhibition and meet artist Eve Biddle at the Tremaine Gallery.

The exhibition and events are free and open to the public.

Field Notes remains on view through October 18.

The Tremaine Art Gallery is located at 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, CT, and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. The Gallery is closed on Mondays.

Hieroglyphs to Hype: The Modern Afterlife of Ancient Egypt will explore the enduring fascination with ancient Egyptian art and culture (dubbed “Egyptomania” by 19th-century Europeans) through a selection of paintings, prints, photographs, and decorative art ranging from the early 19th century through the present day. These objects, from the humble to the refined, from the shamelessly commercial to the Afrofuturist, represent the range of artistic responses to – and misconceptions about – ancient Egyptian visual culture.
Paradoxically, this enthusiasm for Egyptian symbols and motifs contributed to the erasure of the ancient Egyptian people themselves, as their beliefs and customs became exoticized in popular memory. The exhibition will examine how these objects reflect the phenomenon of “Egyptomania” over the last two centuries and will position their oversimplified or stereotypical narratives in conversation with current archaeological understandings of ancient Egyptian culture.
Hieroglyphs to Hype: The Modern Afterlife of Ancient Egypt is curated by Megan Paqua (adjunct instructor of ancient Egyptian archaeology and art history and Fairfield University Art Museum Registrar) and will be on view from September 18 - December 12, 2026 in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries.

Charles-Théodore Frère, Along the Nile, ca. 1870, oil on panel. Fairfield University Art Museum, Gift of Michael T. Vigario’08, 2023, 2023.11.01

This exhibition focuses on more than 60 recent works by photographer James Welling (American, born 1951). From the artist’s Cento and Personae series, these photographs of ancient sites in Italy and Greece, as well as antiquities in museums around the world, underwent digital and painterly alteration to achieve transformative effects. The photographs will be exhibited alongside a selection from the Museum’s extensive collection of historic plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture.
As Welling explains, he is interested in “reanimating” the men and women of the ancient past through these works and connecting them to our own time in a fresh way through his innovative combination of photography and painting. Visitors to the exhibition will feel their curiosity piqued by his elusive and often haunting evocations of the ancient Mediterranean world.

James Welling, Fragment of a gold leaf wreath, 2020, oil pigment, oil pastel, and wax over electrostatic print on polypropylene substrate. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects. © James Welling