Encounters with the Collection: Art and Human Rights  is the fourth in a series of annual collection gallery rotations that bring fresh perspectives to the interpretation of the Benton’s holdings. This installation is mounted in collaboration with the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute’s Research Program on Arts & Human Rights at UConn. Spanning the 19th century to the present, the exhibition explores the ways that artists make human rights visible.

It features works of art by Francisco Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, William Kentridge, Michael Rakowitz, Ben Shahn, Zanele Muholi, Binh Danh, Genara Banzon, Juan Sánchez, and Sylvia de Swaan, among many others.

“Must we say again” argues Georges Didi-Huberman, “that Auschwitz is unimaginable? Certainly not: one must, on the contrary, say that Auschwitz is only imaginable, that we are bound to images.” Yet, while imperative, “any recourse to the image is [necessarily] inadequate, incomplete.” Prussian Blue presents Mexican artist Yishai Jusidman’s haunting reflection on this ethical and representational conundrum. Through the medium of painting, Jusidman explores the extent to which visual imagery can effectively represent the horror of the Holocaust, or any horror, for that matter. If not, what can painting offer instead? Might the inevitable inadequacy of representation be embedded in the representation itself?

Prussian blue, a pigment chemically related to the Zyklon-B gas used by the Nazis, is the very substance that closes the paintings’ representational gap, while emphasizing as well the safety of art spectatorship. Thus, the aesthetic dilemma becomes an ethical one. Prussian Blue plunges us deep into the heart of this predicament. Offering no panacea, the artist’s depictions of the now empty architectures and landscapes of the concentration, work and extermination camps denies us any position of comfort or moral certainty, any consoling illusion that we have somehow moved beyond such barbarism.

Guest curated by Jose Falconi, Assistant Professor of Art History & Human Rights, and Robin Greeley, Professor of Art History, the exhibition is displayed across three venues—UConn’s William Benton Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Galleries, and The Dodd Center for Human Rights. It is co-sponsored by the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program of Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs, the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, and UConn Global Affairs. Prussian Blue inaugurates the “Nuremberg-ICTY Archives Initiative,” which invites artists to create contemporary responses to these important archives at UConn.

Artist David LaChapelle is one of the most frequently published photographers, best known for his large-scale, hyper-clear photographs of celebrities and for his iconic music videos (for Mariah Carey, Elton John, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, among others).

He was born in Hartford in 1963 and grew up in Simsbury and Farmington. He attended North Carolina School of the Arts where he developed an analogue technique by hand-painting his own negatives to achieve a sublime spectrum of color before processing his film. At age 17, LaChapelle moved to New York City where he was hired by Andy Warhol to work at Interview Magazine. His unconventional and often surreal portraits quickly earned him international interest.

Through his mastery of color, unique composition, and imaginative narratives, LaChapelle began to expand the genre of photography. His staged tableau, portrait and still life works challenged devices of traditional photography. By 1997, The New York Times predicted, “LaChapelle is certain to influence the work of a new generation...in the same way that Mr. Avedon pioneered so much of what is familiar today.”

LaChapelle merges contemporary photography with art history. He references the work of Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keeffe as well as the Renaissance and Baroque masters in many of his photographs. Over 40 works by LaChapelle will be on view at the Benton Museum this fall.

LaChapelle’s anthology of books includes LaChapelle Land (1996), Hotel LaChapelle (1999), Heaven to Hell (2006), Lost & Found, and Good News (2017). Simultaneously, his work has expanded into music video, film, and stage projects. His 2005 feature film Rize was released in 17 countries. Many of his still and film works have become iconic archetypes of America in the 21st Century.

In the fall of 2023, LaChapelle was honored with the “Lorenzo il Magnifico” Lifetime Achievement Award at the XIV Florence Biennale.