By the numbers, the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art's new exhibition, Julia Jacquette: Unrequited and Acts of Play, has been a great success with more than 1,500 visitors in the first two weeks since its opening. It has also garnered significant critical attention in arts publications.
Most recently, Artnet included the show in its March 6 article 13 Feminist Art Shows to See in Honor of Women’s History Month along with exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and the New York Historical Society, among other significant institutions. The article focused on the work of “pioneering feminist artists, old and new.”
In Julia Jacquette Plays with Perception published by Artinfo, the reviewer described her work. “The imagery of Julia Jacquette’s hyperrealistic paintings is recognizable yet unplaceable. … at this macro scale, all that’s left is an aura of opulence so familiar that you realize you’ve already been sold.”
Commenting on the original drawings from Jacquette’s illustrated book Playground of My Mind—a personalized account of the artist’s childhood in Manhattan in the 1960s and 1970s—artdaily described it as an “effort [that] culminates in compelling storytelling that moves fluidly between social movements, the history of New York City, childhood memories, and significant works of modernist architecture in the United States and abroad.”
Social media outlet Good’s article, This Artist’s Paintings Turn Domestic Life On Its Head, observed that “Food is more often than not at the center of Julia Jacquette’s paintings. … And the way she paints them, so lush and gleaming, fills them with a seduction as powerful as the ads and glossy images she’s sourcing.”
The show has been a big hit with the Hamilton community as well. So far, 19 Hamilton classes have visited or are planning visits from departments including art, physics, art history, sociology, women’s studies, French, Hispanic studies and history. More than 20 K-12 tours have also been booked with the nine public school districts with which the museum works.
