The Ben Wigfall & Communications Village Catalog Launch event at the Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz, originally scheduled for Sept. 1, has been rescheduled to Tuesday, Sept. 26 from 5-7 p.m. at the museum.

“The catalog was published in June by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where the exhibit is currently on display,” said Richard Frumess, owner of R&F Handmade Paints and a tireless booster of the city’s art community, both past and present. “It is a beautifully produced 250-page survey of Ben Wigfall's brilliant artwork, his deeply moving mentorship of Ponckhockie youth from 1973-83, and the story of his development as an artist growing up in Richmond, his studies at Yale, his teaching experience at Hampton Institute (1955-63) and SUNY New Paltz (1963-91), and his legendary Watermark/Cargo Gallery in the Rondout from 1988-circa 2008.”

The original exhibition was held late last year at the Dorsky, curated by Drew Thompson in consultation with Sarah Eckhardt of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA). The collection highlighted Wigfall’s upbringing in Virginia, his time as a SUNY New Paltz professor — the first African American professor the school ever had — and his print shop, Communications Village, a community art space in Ponckhockie that was founded during the 1970s.

According to the Dorsky’s website page on the exhibition, Wigfall saw Communications Village “as a unique space where leading African American artists of the era could engage with the local community while experimenting with printmaking as an art form.” It was a collaborative space where each artist Wigfall invited in inspired his own work as much as he inspired theirs. The precedent that Wigfall’s legacy has left on the community of Kingston is undeniable; his art and passion for it was the driving factor that led to the establishment of his art space and his influence on all those that he taught and worked beside over the years.

To read more about the original exhibition in 2022 and take a virtual tour, you can go here: The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art | SUNY New Paltz.