Established | 1877 as The Mattatuck Historical Society |
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Location | 144 West Main Street, Waterbury, CT 06702 |
Type | Art museum, history museum |
Website | www.mattatuckmuseum.org |
The Mattatuck Museum is a cultural institution based in Waterbury, Connecticut, USA. The museum's displays include the history, industries and culture of Waterbury and the Central Naugatuck Valley area, and art, including works about the state's history, people and scenery, and works of artists from Connecticut. The museum also features a collection of 15,000 buttons from around the world.
The Mattatuck Museum focuses on the work of painters and sculptors who were born and/or based in Connecticut. Its collection spans the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and the artists represented in the museum's collection include Paolo Abbate, Abe Ajay, Alexander Calder, Frederic Church, Erastus Salisbury Field, Arshile Gorky, John Frederick Kensett, Peter Poskas, Kay Sage, Yves Tanguy and John Trumbull. [1]
The museum also highlights the commercial and cultural achievements related to the city of Waterbury. This includes a collection of 15,000 buttons, which was donated to the museum by the now-defunct Button Museum operated by the Waterbury Button Company. [2]
In 2008, the museum began offering self-guided tours of downtown Waterbury that highlight the city’s distinctive architectural achievements. [3] The museum also features a regional history exhibit that uses interactive displays, oral histories and historic movie clips to trace the past and present of Waterbury and the surrounding areas in New Haven County, Connecticut. [1]
The museum supports ongoing artistic achievement with its Connecticut Biennial, a competition that is open to artists who maintain a residence or a studio within the state. The biennial competition awards include products and gift certificates from local businesses. [4]
In 1999, the museum received national attention regarding one of its collection items: the skeleton of a man. The skeleton was believed to date from the late 18th century and was named "Larry," as that name was written on its skull. Fortune's bones were donated by the McGlannon family in the 1930s who had ancestral ties to the slave owner Dr. Preserved Porter. [5] Fortune was on display in a glass case until 1970, when he was removed from public viewing. During the time of his display at the museum there was no information regarding who he truly was - his remains were seen as a teaching tool. [6] An investigation in the late 1990s by the African-American History Project Committee determined that he was an enslaved black man named Fortune who died in 1798. The museum created a special exhibit in honor of Fortune that detailed the lives of African-American slaves in Waterbury during the early part of the 19th century. [6] Fortune was buried in Riverside Cemetery (Waterbury, Connecticut) on September 13, 2013. [7]
Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut on the Naugatuck River, 33 miles (53 km) southwest of Hartford and 77 miles (124 km) northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the second-largest city in New Haven County, Connecticut. According to the 2020 US Census, in 2020 Waterbury had a population of 114,403. As of the 2010 census, Waterbury had a population of 110,366, making it the 10th largest city in the New York Metropolitan Area, 9th largest city in New England and the 5th largest city in Connecticut.
A button is a fastener that joins two pieces of fabric together by slipping through a loop or by sliding through a buttonhole.
The Mütter Museum is a medical museum located in the Center City area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It contains a collection of anatomical and pathological specimens, wax models, and antique medical equipment. The museum is part of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The original purpose of the collection, donated by Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter in 1858, was for biomedical research and education.
The Bruce Museum is a museum in downtown Greenwich, Connecticut with both art and natural history exhibition space. The Bruce's main building sits on a hill in a downtown park, and its tower can be easily seen by drivers passing by on Interstate 95. Permanent exhibits include minerals, area Native American history and culture, changes in the area landscape and environment by human activity, and dioramas of Connecticut woodland wildlife and birds. The museum hosts changing exhibitions of art, photography, natural history, science, history and culture.
Connecticut's 5th congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of Connecticut. Located in the western part of the state spanning across parts of Fairfield, Litchfield, New Haven and Hartford counties, the district runs from Meriden and New Britain in central Connecticut, westward to Danbury and the surrounding Housatonic Valley, encompassing the Farmington Valley, Upper Naugatuck River Valley, and the Litchfield Hills. The district also includes most of Waterbury.
The Museum of the Earth is a natural history museum located in Ithaca, New York. The museum was opened in 2003 as part of the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), an independent organization pursuing research and education in the history of the Earth and its life. Both PRI and the Museum of the Earth are formally affiliated with Cornell University. The Museum of the Earth is home to Earth science exhibits and science-related art displays with a focus on the concurrent evolution of the Earth and life.
Mattatuck State Forest is a Connecticut state forest spread over twenty parcels in the towns of Waterbury, Plymouth, Thomaston, Watertown, Litchfield, and Harwinton. The Naugatuck River runs through a portion of the forest. The largest section of the forest is located about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Waterbury. The Leatherman's Cave, named after the vagabond Leatherman of the late 19th century, is located in Thomaston on the Mattatuck Trail, just north of the junction with the Jericho Trail.
The Timexpo Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut was dedicated to the history of Timex Group and its predecessors, featuring exhibits dating to the founding of Waterbury Clock Company in 1854. The museum was located in the Brass Mill Commons shopping center with its location marked by a 40-foot (12 m) high replica of an Easter Island Moai statue which connected with the museum's archaeology exhibit. The museum covered 14,000 square feet (1,300 m2) with 8,000 square feet (740 m2) dedicated to the two main exhibits: the company's history of timepieces and archaeology.
Henry Golden Dearth was a distinguished American painter who studied in Paris and continued to spend his summers in France painting in the Normandy region. He would return to New York in winter, and became known for his moody paintings of the Long Island area. Around 1912, Dearth changed his artistic style, and began to include portrait and still life pieces as well as his paintings of rock pools created mainly in Brittany. A winner of several career medals and the Webb prize in 1893, Dearth died suddenly in 1918 aged 53 and was survived by a wife and daughter.
The Housatonic Museum of Art is a museum at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The museum's collection is displayed throughout the college campus and in the Burt Chernow Galleries, which also hosts visiting exhibitions.
The 'Whitestone Cliffs Trail' is a 1.7-mile (2.7 km) Blue-Blazed hiking trail in the Waterbury area in Thomaston and Plymouth, Litchfield County, Connecticut. It is contained almost entirely in a section of the Mattatuck State Forest. The mainline trail is a loop trail with one connector trail to the Jericho Blue-Blazed Trail.
The 'Hancock Brook Trail' is a 2.8-mile (4.5 km) Blue-Blazed hiking trail Waterville Section of the City of Waterbury in New Haven County close to the borders of Thomaston and Plymouth, Litchfield County, Connecticut. It is contained overwhelmingly in a section of the Mattatuck State Forest bounded by Hancock Brook on the east, Thomaston Avenue on the west and Spruce Brook Road / Route 262 to the north.
The Jericho trail is a 3.4-mile (5.5 km) Blue-Blazed hiking trail in the Oakville section of Watertown, near the border with Thomaston and Plymouth, Litchfield County, Connecticut. The trail is contained almost entirely in a section of the Mattatuck State Forest. The mainline trail is a linear north–south "hike-through" trail with one east–west connector trail to the Whitestone Cliffs Blue-Blazed Trail.
Paolo (Paul) Salvatore Abbate was an Italian-born sculptor and minister who lived and worked in Connecticut.
Josephine Paddock was an American painter born in New York City. She earned a B.A. degree at Barnard College and studied at the Art Students League with Robert Henri, Kenyon Cox, William Merritt Chase, and John Alexander.
Allen Butler Talcott was an American landscape painter. After studying art in Paris for three years at Académie Julian, he returned to the United States, becoming one of the first members of the Old Lyme Art Colony in Connecticut. His paintings, usually landscapes depicting the local scenery and often executed en plein air, were generally Barbizon and Tonalist, sometimes incorporating elements of Impressionism. He was especially known and respected for his paintings of trees. After eight summers at Old Lyme, he died there at the age of 41.
Fortune was an African-American slave who achieved posthumous notability over the transfer of his remains from a museum storage room to a state funeral.
Augustus Sabin Chase was an American industrialist of the Gilded Age.
http://www.judyonofrio.com
Homer Franklin Bassett was an American hymenopterist specializing in gall wasps. In addition, he was the librarian of Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury, Connecticut.
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