Bruce Museum Presents “Jo Sandman: What Remains”

The Bruce Museum presents “Jo Sandman: What Remains,” on view August 29, 2026, through January 3, 2027, in the Vicki Netter Fitzgerald Gallery. Organized by the Bruce Museum, the exhibition celebrates a recent gift of 30 works by Jo Sandman (American, b. 1931) and traces the artist’s sustained engagement with found materials, unconventional processes, and the visual language of archaeology.

The gift adds a significant body of work to the Bruce’s growing collection, deepening the Museum’s holdings by contemporary artists whose practices dissolve the boundaries between art and science.

Across a career spanning more than seven decades, Sandman has transformed discarded and everyday materials — including facsimile and parchment paper, linen, tape, tin foil, x-rays, painter’s tarps, and snakeskins — into works that stand as both visual records and material remains of her creative interventions. Bringing together collage, drawing, installation, and photography, “Jo Sandman: What Remains” reveals an artist whose practice continually expands the possibilities of surface, form, and process.

“Often the result of complex chemical reactions, Jo Sandman’s work exists at the intersection of
art and science,” said Jordan Hillman, Assistant Curator of Art and curator of the exhibition. “It
also exists at the intersection of several histories. Looking closely, one can trace Sandman’s acts of burning, cutting, exposing, folding, and scraping, but also find evidence of prior use and forms seemingly drawn from human history, prompting us to consider how materials poignantly register the passage of time.”

Sandman’s early artistic education shaped a lifelong commitment to experimentation. She studied at Black Mountain College, later worked with Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell in New York City, and earned her MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1955. Though she felt that painting had “exhausted itself” as a mode of expression by the 1970s, its emphasis on materiality, composition, and surface has remained central to her work ever since.

The exhibition follows Sandman’s shift from applied paint toward subtractive, transformative processes. Works on view include selections from her Ignitions, Foils, Folds, and Tarp series, along with photographic pieces in which heat, light, and found fragments become active collaborators. Sandman’s imagery frequently recalls ancient hieroglyphs, architectural ruins, city plans, and geological formations — archaeological and anthropological interests first nurtured during her time at Black Mountain College.

Taken together, her singular focus on “what remains”
— of materials, artistic ideas, and humanity’s past — forms the connective thread across her varied bodies of work.

Exhibition Details
Jo Sandman: What Remains
August 29, 2026 to January 3, 2027
Vicki Netter Fitzgerald Gallery
Bruce Museum
1 Museum Drive, Greenwich, CT 06830
Organized by the Bruce Museum.

Located in Bruce Park, overlooking the Long Island Sound in Greenwich, Connecticut, the Bruce Museum harnesses the transformative potential of art and science to spark curiosity and connection. Established in 1912 with a multidisciplinary vision, the museum houses a unique collection that encompasses visual arts as well as works of scientific, historical, and ethnological significance spanning millennia. With education at its core, the Bruce offers a wide-ranging exhibition and public program, serving as a dynamic laboratory for discovery that welcomes and engages visitors of all ages.

The Bruce underwent a dramatic expansion and upgrade in 2023 with the opening of a new building that doubled its size and tripled its gallery spaces. In its new state-of-the-art home, the Bruce is deepening its role as a vital resource for learning, community building, and connectivity. For more information, visit www.brucemuseum.org