DANBURY, Connecticut — “Sin Indiferencia” (Without Indifference), a collection of Mexican art treasures from the Western Connecticut State University archives, will run in English and Spanish from Thursday, Oct. 2, through Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in the Gallery at the Visual and Performing Arts Center on the Westside campus, 43 Lake Ave. Extension in Danbury. The opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 2, and is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are from noon to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, and from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free to the reception and the exhibit, and the public is invited. An RSVP is requested at wcsuvpac.eventbrite.com. Please note that the Gallery will be closed during the Thanksgiving break from Nov. 26-30.
WCSU Archivist, Brian Stevens, is the guest curator for “Sin Indiferencia: Without Indifference.” “Exhibiting this material enhances a spirit of inclusion that the university shares with the Latin community and shows that WestConn has deeper and longer connections with Latin cultures than many would have expected,” Stevens said, referring to the exhibit’s concept. “We’re recognized by the federal government as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, and here’s a great opportunity to do a bilingual exhibit of our material, and to have something accessible in its original language.”
The show features several sculptural models, called maquettes, by the artist Herbert Hofmann-Ysenbourg, a German who found political and artistic refuge in Mexico City just before the outbreak of World War II. Many of Hofmann-Ysenbourg’s large Bauhaus-inspired sculptures still decorate public spaces there.
One of Hofmann-Ysenbourg’s maquettes decorated a meeting room in WestConn’s Ruth Haas library and was eventually moved to the archives collection. No one knew how it got there until Stevens was asked to survey a collection left to the university by a former business school dean, Dr. Al Stewart.
Stewart’s endowment included several sculptures of a style that Stevens recognized. He confirmed that they, too, were the work of Hofmann-Ysenbourg. Stewart, a world traveler and collector, had likely donated the first piece of Hofmann-Ysenbourg’s art to the library years earlier.
Stewart was dean of the Ancell School of Business during two separate stints and had been an executive at Union Carbide for several years. He also served as a U.S. Navy officer during WWII, one of the few Black men to break into senior ranks during that time of institutional racism.
Stevens conceptualized a show that would feature the stories of the two men and their lives, with WestConn as the nexus. As it happened, the university archives hold artifacts of indigenous Mexican fiber artists collected by longtime WestConn history professor Truman Warner, and artist Donald Moss, who created marketing materials for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Moss also taught at WestConn.
The three collections will all be shown in the exhibit, which features an interview with a Hofmann-Ysenbourg expert and excerpts from a book on the artist that was published only in Mexico.
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