A new exhibition highlighting the work of The Westbrook Gallery will run in the Ely Center for Contemporary Art at 51 Trumbull Street in New Haven until March 31. The exhibit features art that hasn’t been publicly displayed in decades.

In the mid-1950s, West Haven native Aage V. Hogfeldt opened the Westbrook Gallery in the town’s former ice house. Eric Litke, who, along with Peter Hastings Falk, is curating the exhibit, said the gallery remained open from about 1956 until the late 1980s. During that time, the gallery had a core group of artists, including Hogfeldt, William Kent, Leo V. Jensen, David T.S. Jones, William Skardon, and Robert Alan DeVoe.

“As a galley, it was pretty unique for some the art they had in there,” said Litke. “In that core group of artists, four of the six had been students at the Yale School of Art in the late 1940s [and] early 1950s. Because of that influence they were very interested in avant-garde art and contemporary art. Because of where the galley was located on shoreline far away from New Haven, it was different than what people in Eastern Connecticut were probably used to.”

According to a press release, the exhibition contains paintings, works on paper, three-dimensional works, artist books, printed ephemera, newspaper articles, photography, and an accompanying essay.

“None of this art has probably been seen publicly since this period of the ’50s to early 60s,” said Litke.

In 2018, Litke discovered a museum dedicated to Kent in Durham and was intrigued by his life and work. “That was sort of my entry point into an interest in the Westbrook Gallery,” Litke said. “Through him, I got interested in his friends and their work,” Litke said. Litke stressed that while all the artists did impressive work, Kent and Jensen had noteworthy and interesting careers.

It wasn’t just the men of the gallery who were notable either. Dalia Ramanauskas and Sandra Swan, wives of Jensen and Skardon, respectively, were also successful artists. While the gallery was typical of its time in that it was a male-centric group, Litke said he hoped to offer a “corrective” of that notion and feature the work from the women. There’s sort of a narrative that it was very much a boy’s club. The two wives were very talented and successful in their own right,” said Litke.

Part of the reason Litke said the center wanted to do the exhibit now is because other are museums in the area doing respective on the artists. The Florence Griswold Museum and Lyman Allyn Museum have exhibits open on Jensen, while the Mattatuck Museum has one on Ramanauskas. The New Haven Museum will feature an exhibit on Kent in the fall Litke said.