Press + Media Coverage
MoCA\CT and WestPAC Debut Art, Jazz + the Blues, with Sold-Out Opening Night
+ + + + + March 30, 2026New Exhibition Celebrating the Interplay Between Visual Art and African American Musical Traditions Now Open Through June 7 (Westport, CT) March 2, 2026 — The Museum of Contemporary Art \ Connecticut (MoCA\CT) and the Westport Public Art Collections (WestPAC) celebrated the opening of Art, Jazz + the Blues February 26 with a sold-out reception that drew hundreds of members, artists, and community supporters. The exhibition, curated by Anne Boberski, Ive Covaci, and the WestPAC Committee, is now open to the public through June 7, 2026. The evening began with a buzzing 5pm Members’ Preview, where guests enjoyed Jazz Age–inspired cocktails, an abundant offering of gourmet bites by A·S Westport, and specially made chocolates in the shape of instruments by Chocolatieree. From 6–8pm, the sold-out public reception was complemented by a live piano performance from legendary Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and WPKN host Mark Naftalin, whose music added ambiance to the evening. The evening brought in celebrated guests who included: featured artists Eric Chiang, Tudor Maier, and Larry Silver; Caitlin von Schmidt (daughter of artist Eric von Schmidt); Westport First Selectman Kevin Christie; Town Curator and Executive Director of the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center Kathie Bennewitz; […]
That Was Me: California Native Recognizes herself in 1978 Photo
+ + + + + March 30, 2026Oct 14, 2025 — by Marissa Alter Contemporary art can and should surprise and connect people, according to Pamela Hovland, acting executive director at the Museum of Contemporary Art Connecticut. MoCA\CT’s current exhibition, “Tod Papageorge: At the Beach,” did just that, bringing together strangers at the Westport museum, who now share a unique bond. The collection of black and white photographs were taken decades ago in southern California by famed photographer Tod Papageorge, a former professor of photography at the Yale School of Art, where he taught for 35 years and directed the graduate program in photography. “I’ve been a photographer since I was a senior in college in 1962 and saw a couple pictures by a man named Henri Cartier-Bresson and decided that night that I was going to be a photographer,” Papageorge told News 12. “These pictures in this show happened over four separate trips that I made to Los Angeles and the beaches.” The pictures capture candid moments of beachgoers back in the 1970s and 80s, but they’re still making waves today. Papageorge said during the pandemic, he was looking at his old work and thought he could make a collection out of it. That led to […]
Photography exhibition celebrates influence of School of Art veteran
+ + + + + March 30, 2026October 7, 2025 — by Isabella Sanchez Black and white prints of sweaty, half-naked beachgoers in 1970s and ’80s Los Angeles line the walls of the Museum of Contemporary in Westport, known as MoCA CT. On display for the first time on the East Coast, the exhibition, “At the Beach,” immortalizes the bodies and beaches that fill the frames. The photographer responsible for their creation is Tod Papageorge, who was the director of graduate studies in photography at the Yale School of Art from 1979–2013. “It makes me think of Greek friezes. It makes me think of Goya. It makes me think of ancient art that’s lost its coloring and has become monochrome,” Tanya Marcuse ART ’90, one of Papageorge’s former students, said of the exhibit. The prints are accompanied by “In the Pool,” a collection of photographs that were all taken by students Papageorge taught. Over his 34 years at the School of Art, he instructed 295 students, according to the exhibition catalogue. The photographs were originally compiled into a portfolio gifted to Papageorge over a decade ago upon his retirement from the School of Art. A slideshow of all the photographs plays on an approximately 20-minute loop in […]
Sink or Swim
+ + + + + March 26, 2026July 5, 2025 — by Emma Allen Fifty years ago, a glitchy yet terrifying animatronic shark persuaded movie audiences never to go in the water again. Luckily—for the photographer Tod Papageorge, at least—it didn’t keep people off the beaches. That same year, 1975, Papageorge was slowly making his way across the country, from New York City, where he’d become known for his 35-mm. street scenes, to Los Angeles, where he’d shoot throngs of sun-dazed, sweat-glazed beachgoers with a clunkier medium-format camera. He made four trips to L.A.’s beaches between 1975 and 1988, and a selection of the resulting black-and-white photographs—detail-rich, often dense, rapturous yet funny tableaux of stripped-down bodies engaged in sport or sprawled on the sand—will be on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Connecticut through October 26th. Amazingly, few of Papageorge’s subjects stare directly at the guy lugging a 6×9-cm.-format camera around the beach, although, as he said, “even on the nude beaches, I was out there in my street clothes, looking like an idiot.” He noted that this was the same kind of format camera that Brassaï used to photograph in Paris night clubs, in the thirties and forties; Papageorge would also use it to photograph […]
The Brilliant Light of California’s Beaches
+ + + + + March 26, 2026June 25, 2025 — By Lisa Kereszi In 1975, the thirty-five-year-old photographer Tod Papageorge took a cross-country trip that ended on the beaches of Los Angeles. There, challenged by the play of the brilliant light on skin, swimsuits, sand, water, and surfboards, he experimented with the descriptive qualities of the medium-format camera he brought with him. Employing a machine that produced a negative four times larger than his usual Leicas, Papageorge aimed to create poetry from the details of the physical world. Over the years, he returned to those beaches, and several others along the coast, three more times. Now, fifty years later, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Connecticut is presenting an exhibition of these images, previously shown on the West Coast at James Danziger Gallery and in Europe at Thomas Zander Galerie, and published as a book in 2023. Papageorge began taking photographs during his final semester at the University of New Hampshire. In a basic technical class, he saw a few early pictures by Henri Cartier-Bresson, which struck him as the visual equivalent of the poetry he was studying and attempting to write. Observing how the French photographer created pictures à la sauvette changed the course of his life. Following graduation, and […]