Still Magic
A career art retrospective captures the spirit of Emeritus Professor Maureen McCabe.
Over the course of her 55-year career, internationally known collage artist and Joanne Toor Cummings ’50 Professor Emeritus of Art Maureen McCabe has returned many times to the intertwined themes of fate and magic. This fall, 65 pieces of her playful yet carefully composed artworks—many of them rarely seen works from her studio and private collections—are on display at the University of Connecticut’s William Benton Museum of Art. The career retrospective, “Fate & Magic: The Art of Maureen McCabe,” runs through Dec. 14.
The exhibit functions not just as a survey of McCabe’s impressive career but also of her taste. It features several found objects of inspiration—items that make up what the artist calls “the material culture of magic that I have collected for decades”—and 15 works from her personal collection created by other artists, including her former Connecticut College colleagues Associate Professor Emeritus of Art Ted Hendrickson and the late Professor Emeritus of Studio Art Barkley L. Hendricks and her former students Jenn Collins ’98 and photographer Tod Gangler ’75.
In person, McCabe remains just as enthusiastic about art and energetic as ever. Her studio, which occupies much of the first floor of her home, is dotted with in-process projects and past works. Throughout the house are other works and objects that delight and inspire her—more of that material culture of magic. Even with many of the pieces that typically cover her walls currently on exhibit at the Benton, the house hums with color, texture and creativity.
Handing over a copy of the illustrated exhibit catalog, which includes an essay by Benton Curator and Academic Liaison Amanda A. Douberley, McCabe is proud to assert that the exhibition “captures the spirit” of her work.
“Amanda took a fresh look at my work in a way no one has done before. She wanted to see everything and selected many works that haven’t been seen in decades,” McCabe explains. As a result, she found herself restoring and reframing several works for showcasing.
The collection reaches back to 1970, the year before McCabe began teaching at Conn, with three pieces including Blood Stocking, a work Douberley dubbed “a decisive turn” in McCabe’s career, as it “directly references the body through the artist’s use of materials and resonates with emerging feminist and body art of the 1960s and 1970s … [and] also reach[es] back in time to the reliquaries of medieval Christianity that she encountered as a child in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.”
This kind of context and observation permeates the exhibit. As McCabe reveals, she frequently marks the back of her works with a collage of images. “I tell what the materials are in the piece and what the meaning of the piece is,” she explains. “But I also include what’s happening in real time, what’s going on in the world as I am working.” As the backs of the works aren’t visible while on display, the Benton includes wall labels and text to explain the broader contexts of the work.
Reflecting on her time at Conn, as a career retrospective is bound to make one do, McCabe acknowledges it required a balancing act to be both a professional artist and a teacher.
“My girlfriends were all moving to New York and telling me, ‘Come with us; you don’t want to be a teacher,’” she reminisces. “And, in some ways, being a teacher can ruin you. It depends what kind of artist you are. But you need a job, and for me, Conn was like a walking Britannica. I did a whole series on alchemy, and the Chemistry Department would give me all these things, vials and measures made with beautiful wood, because they were going all digital. Or I needed a piece of ancient Latin translated, so I’d reach out to [the late Elizabeth S. Kruidenier ’48 Professor of Classics] Dirk Held and he’d write back, ‘OK, Maureen, this is what’s happening.’
“So yes, I taught for 40 years and I learned a lot from my students,” she continues. “But I’m a professional artist. You have X number of years; you never know what’s going to happen. But I’ve been here in this studio since 1977. I’ve sold hundreds of works. I had art dealers in Washington, D.C.; Chicago and New York. I’ve been in exhibits with all kinds of artists. Once, in Mexico City, I was in an international show and there was my name, Maureen McCabe. And just above it? René Magritte. So wild!
“I started long before the digital age. I used to be avant-garde, up and coming, and now I’m art history,” the artist concludes. “But I’m still creating.”
Above: Maureen McCabe, Circe (with Oysters and a Mackerel) (2024), Mixed media on velour paper, Courtesy of the artist.