Fall Exhibitions With Ancient Roots at Fairfield University Art Museum

The Fairfield University Art Museum welcomes two new shows to the galleries this fall, taking visitors from Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt, to the modern day.

Hieroglyphs to Hype: The Modern Afterlife of Ancient Egypt

Running Sept. 18 through Dec. 12, 2026, in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries, 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. The exhibition will examine how these objects reflect the phenomenon of “Egyptomania” during the last two centuries, and will position their over-simplified or stereotypical narratives in conversation with current archeological understanding about ancient Egyptian culture.

Hieroglyphs to Hype is curated by Museum Registrar Megan Paqua, who explains that the idea for the show emerged from her other role as adjunct professor of Art History & Visual Culture. “Students frequently come into the courses assuming that they know ancient Egypt because they’ve been exposed to it through popular culture, everything from The Mummy movies to the Ancient Aliens TV show,” she said. “They’re often surprised to discover how much of that cultural context has been filtered through two centuries of ‘Egyptomania.’” Paqua holds an MA in Egyptology from The American University in Cairo, where she spent multiple seasons excavating at Tell el-Amarna with the Amarna Project.

James Welling: Cento

Running Sept. 25 through Dec. 12, 2026, in the Walsh Gallery at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, James Welling: Cento focuses on more than 60 recent works by contemporary, Connecticut-born photographer James Welling (American, born 1951), in the exhibition’s first American museum presentation.

From the artist’s Cento and Personae series, these photographs of ancient sites in Italy and Greece, as well as antiquities found in museums around the world, were subjected to digital and painterly alteration by the artist to achieve transformative effects. Welling prints his images on plastic sheets via a laser printer, and then animates the surface with oil paint, oil sticks, and even raw powdered pigment. The resulting prints lie somewhere between photography, painting, and printmaking, their surfaces mechanically printed while also visibly hand-altered. The photographs will be exhibited alongside a selection of 10 historic plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture from the Museum’s extensive collection of over 100 such casts.

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.

“I think people will find these photographs fascinating on many levels,” said Museum Director Carey Mack Weber. “They are aesthetically beautiful but disorienting at times. We are so pleased to be able to share these works with our museum patrons this fall.”

Learn More and Explore

A robust selection of free programming will complement the exhibitions, including opening night events and receptions, lectures, gallery talks, family days, and more.

Learn more and register at fairfield.edu/museum.