Widener Art Gallery Open Year-Long Deshong Exhibition

"Hasty Pudding," by Gaetano Chierici. 1883. Oil on canvas

Chester, Pa. – The Widener University Art Galley is presenting a year-long exhibition of selections from the Alfred O. Deshong and Widener University collections now through Aug. 4, 2011. Admission is free.

Deshong, a wealthy Chester industrialist, acquired his collection at a time when Japanese art and design began to strongly influence the style of Western artists. The collection includes Japanese carved ivory figures, Chinese carved hardstone vessels, Japanese and Chinese lacquerware and numerous large bronze vases. The paintings in Deshong's collection reflect his era with genre scenes of contemporary life and romantic glimpses of customs in distant lands. The artists he favored were mostly European, trained in the academies of Germany and Italy, their education often completed in Paris.

The Widener University collection includes paintings by American Impressionists Edward Redfield, Robert Spencer, George L. Noyes and others. 

The gallery is located in University Center on the Main Campus of Widener University on 14^th Street between Walnut Street and Melrose Avenue in Chester, Pa.

The Widener Art Gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information about the exhibition or the art gallery, contact Rebecca M. Warda at 610-499-1189, e-mail rmwarda@widener.edu, or visit www.widener.edu/artgallery.