Wadsworth Atheneum

Last updated

Wadsworth Atheneum
Wadsworth Atheneum Logo.svg
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.JPG
Wadsworth Atheneum
Established1844;180 years ago (1844)
Location600 Main Street, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
Type Art museum
Director Thomas J. Loughman [1]
Public transit accessAiga bus trans.svg CTtransit logo.png 61, 63, 69
Website thewadsworth.org
Wadsworth Atheneum
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.JPG
Wadsworth Atheneum
USA Connecticut location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location25 Atheneum Sq., Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
Coordinates 41°45′48″N72°40′26″W / 41.76333°N 72.67389°W / 41.76333; -72.67389
Built1842 – July 31, 1844
Architect Alexander Jackson Davis and Ithiel Town
Architectural style Gothic Revival [2] [3]
NRHP reference No. 70000709 [4]
Added to NRHPOctober 6, 1970

The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School landscapes, modernist masterpieces and contemporary works, as well as collections of early American furniture and decorative arts.

Contents

Founded in 1842 and opened in 1844, it is the oldest continually operating public art museum in the United States. [5]

The museum is located at 600 Main Street in a distinctive castle-like building in downtown Hartford, Connecticut, the state's capital. With 75,000 square feet (7,000 m2) of exhibition space, [6] the museum is the largest art museum in the state of Connecticut. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. [4]

The museum is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museums program.

Museum history

Namesake

The Wadsworth, as it is most commonly known, was constructed on the site of the family home of Daniel Wadsworth [7] in the heart of downtown Hartford. Its architects were Alexander Jackson Davis and Ithiel Town, who designed the "castle" that is the Atheneum's oldest building. Construction began in 1842 after the museum was incorporated on June 1 of that year. The museum opened on July 31, 1844 and has operated continuously since then.

The Wadsworth family, being one of the oldest and most affluent in the city, contributed numerous valuable pieces of art to be displayed at the time the museum opened. The first collection consisted of 78 paintings, two marble busts, one portrait miniature, and one bronze sculpture. In addition to the fine arts collection, the original building housed the forerunners of the Hartford Public Library and Connecticut Historical Society, giving rise to the name "Atheneum," an institution broadly devoted to culture and learning. In light of that public role, the Wadsworth has, since its founding, played host to a wide variety of cultural and community activities, including dramatic and dance performances, exhibits of historical artifacts, social functions, and benefits.

Modern history

Building on the Wadsworth family's largess, generations of more recent donors have added to the museum's collections and resources. Foremost among them are Elizabeth Jarvis Colt, widow of firearms magnate Samuel Colt, and financier and Hartford native John Pierpont Morgan. They each contributed more than 1,000 objects to the museum's collections, the former a significant group of Hudson River School landscapes and the Colt firearms collection, the latter an assemblage of priceless Renaissance decorative arts and Colonial-era American furniture. Samuel P. Avery donated works ranging from a Babylonian clay tablet to Chinese Qing Dynasty porcelain and mid-19th century French sculpture, as well as funds for new construction, producing the country's first museum interior designed in the International Style.

In 1927, the museum received a million-dollar bequest (about $20 million today in inflation-adjusted terms) from banker Frank Sumner, establishing a sizable acquisitions endowment. In the hands of forward-thinking museum directors, particularly A. Everett 'Chick' Austin and Charles Cunningham, the fund has enabled the purchase of major works by masters including Caravaggio, Dalí, Gauguin, Miró, Strozzi, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, and Zurbarán.

In the 1940s and 1950s, bequests by Clara Hinton Gould and Anne Parrish Titzell enriched the museum's holdings of Hudson River School and Impressionist paintings, with celebrated pieces by Church, Cole, Gifford, Monet, and Renoir entering the collection. In the same period, artwork and funds bequeathed to the museum by Henry Schnakenberg led to the acquisition of a group of Cypriot, Egyptian, and Greek antiquities as well as paintings by modernists including Peter Blume, Stuart Davis, and Reginald Marsh. It was also in the 1940s that the museum became the haunt of Marguerite Yourcenar as she wrote the Memoirs of Hadrian .

In 1973, Mierle Ukeles cleaned the steps of the museum's entrance, as part of the all-female art exhibition c.7500, curated by Lucy Lippard. [8]

The post-war and contemporary division has benefited from the generosity of Tony Smith and Susan Morse Hilles, whose gifts include groundbreaking works by Josef Albers, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, and Mark Rothko. With funds given by the Archibald, Goodwin, Keney, and Smith families, and by Alexander Goldfarb and Charles Schwartz, the museum has acquired valuable pieces by Alexander Calder, Artemisia Gentileschi, Cindy Sherman, Bill Viola, and Kara Walker. A 2004 gift of 125 photographs from Janice and Mickey Cartin Collection includes works by On Kawara, Ed Ruscha, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Arnold Odermatt, Lucinda Devlin, Joe Ovelman, Jonathan Monk, Frank Breuer, Malick Sidibé, and more. [9]

In 2001, the museum announced a large-scale $100 million expansion designed by the Amsterdam-based architects UNStudio; [10] the architects were chosen from a short list of innovative design teams, including Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, and Brad Cloepfil. [11] The design required demolishing the Goodwin Building, put up in 1969, and enclosing the Avery Courtyard. [12] However, the proposal was scrapped in 2003 due to fundraising difficulties and changes in the museum's leadership. [10] A later plan to expand into the former Hartford Times building was also abandoned due to cost concerns. In March 2010, the museum announced the start of a comprehensive renovation project across all five of the museum's buildings, which at completion resulted in the addition of 16,000 square feet (1,500 m2) of refurbished gallery space and the complete reinstallation of the museum's permanent collections of European art, European decorative arts, and contemporary art. The $33 million renovation, designed by the Hartford-based architecture firm Smith Edwards McCoy, was completed in 2015, garnering praise from local and national art critics. [10] [13] [14]

Structure and contents

The structure itself consists of the original, castle-like building, plus four wings that have been added during the intervening years, in styles ranging from Tudor Revival and Renaissance Revival to International. The museum is home to approximately 50,000 objects, including ancient Roman, Greek, and Egyptian bronzes; paintings from the Renaissance, Baroque, and French and American Impressionist eras, among others; 18th-century German and French porcelains (including Meissen and Sèvres); Hudson River School landscapes; early American clothing and decorations; early African-American art and historical artifacts; and more. The collections span more than 5,000 years of world history.

Nathan Hale, statue by Enoch Smith Woods, 1889 Nathan Hale statue at Wadsworth Atheneum.jpg
Nathan Hale, statue by Enoch Smith Woods, 1889

Just outside the "castle" is an 1899 statue of Nathan Hale, by Enoch S. Woods. A short distance away, within the Connecticut State Capitol is another, better-known sculpture of Hale by Bela Pratt, a copy of his original at Yale University.

The Atheneum also owns the A. Everett Austin House, a National Historic Landmark and home of one of the museum's most distinguished directors. The house, located in Hartford's historic West End, is open to the public as a museum.

Museum firsts

Since its beginning, the Wadsworth has had a long tradition of "firsts".

In 1933, the Wadsworth sponsored George Balanchine's immigration to the United States from the Soviet Union. Shortly after his immigration, Balanchine founded the School of American Ballet, which led to the formation of the New York City Ballet. He then chose to have the Producing Company of the School of American Ballet's first performances at the Avery Memorial Theatre of Wadsworth in December 1934, including his first ballet choreographed in America, Serenade . [15]

The museum was the first in America to acquire pieces by Salvador Dalí, Balthus, Frederic Church, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Piet Mondrian, and many other famous artists. Under the directorship of Arthur Everett Austin, Jr., the first American exhibition of surrealism was shown at the Wadsworth in 1931, and the first major U.S. Pablo Picasso retrospective was held in 1934. [16] Also in 1934, the world premiere of the opera Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson was held at the Atheneum. [17]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "New Director and CEO Tom Loughman". Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  2. ↑ Darbee, Herbert C. (August 25, 1969). "Wadsworth Atheneum" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places – Nomination and Inventory. National Park Service . Retrieved May 25, 2012.
  3. ↑ "Wadsworth Atheneum" (PDF). Photographs. National Park Service . Retrieved May 25, 2012.
  4. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  5. ↑ The Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island was founded in 1747, and opened a private museum in 1750. Charles Willson Peale opened the Philadelphia Museum, a public museum on the second floor of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1786, and charged admission. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, organized in 1805, opened its public museum in 1806, and charged admission of 25 cents. The Peale Museum in Baltimore, Maryland opened its doors to the public in 1814.
  6. ↑ "Unveiling of Refurbished Galleries Marks Completion of Major Renovation and Secures Future for Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art" (PDF) (Press release). August 31, 2015. Retrieved February 3, 2016. The renovation has reclaimed space previously used for storage and other purposes to add 17 new galleries—nearly 16,000 square feet of new exhibition space (a 27% increase)—to the building's existing footprint. [16000 is 27% of 59240, making the total 75000 sqft]
  7. ↑ "Wadsworth Atheneum scrapbooks, 1899–1963". Archives of American Art . Retrieved October 31, 2011.
  8. ↑ Western, Mirjam (2010). Rebelle. De Rijn, Arnhem: Museum voor Modern Kunst Arnhem. p. 254. ISBN   978-90-72861-45-0.
  9. ↑ Genocchio, Benjamin (September 2, 2007). "Ready, Set, Art!". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331.
  10. 1 2 3 Julia Halperin (January 25, 2015), Wadsworth Atheneum restores spaces it very nearly lost The Art Newspaper .
  11. ↑ Julie V. Iovine (February 17, 2001), Hartford Museum Chooses a Novel Architect The New York Times .
  12. ↑ Noted Hartford Museum Unveils Its New Design The New York Times , June 22, 2002.
  13. ↑ "The Wadsworth Atheneum – RENEW".
  14. ↑ Sebastian Smee (September 19, 2015), "European Marvels Await in Hartford at Refurbished Atheneum", Boston Globe .
  15. ↑ Steichen, James (Spring 2012). "The Stories of Serenade: Nonprofit History and George Balanchine's "First Ballet in America"". Princeton University: Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.
  16. ↑ Perl, Jed. (August 24, 2012) Jed Perl: The Barnes Foundation's Disastrous New Home | New Republic. Tnr.com. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  17. ↑ Houseman, John (1972). Run-Through: A Memoir . New York: Simon & Schuster. pp.  99–100. ISBN   0-671-21034-3.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederic Edwin Church</span> American landscape painter (1826–1900)

Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, best known for painting large landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets. Church's paintings put an emphasis on realistic detail, dramatic light, and panoramic views. He debuted some of his major works in single-painting exhibitions to a paying and often enthralled audience in New York City. In his prime, he was one of the most famous painters in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milton Avery</span> American artist (1885–1965)

Milton Clark Avery was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City. He was the husband of artist Sally Michel Avery and the father of artist March Avery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hudson River School</span> American art movement

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. Early on, the paintings typically depicted the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and White Mountains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Cole</span> 19th-century English-American painter (1801-1848)

Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintings. Influenced by European painters, but with a strong American sensibility, he was prolific throughout his career and worked primarily with oil on canvas. His paintings are typically allegoric and often depict small figures or structures set against moody and evocative natural landscapes. They are usually escapist, framing the New World as a natural eden contrasting with the smog-filled cityscapes of Industrial Revolution-era Britain, in which he grew up. His works, often seen as conservative, criticize the contemporary trends of industrialism, urbanism, and westward expansion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Alden Weir</span> American painter (1852–1919)

Julian Alden Weir was an American impressionist painter and member of the Cos Cob Art Colony near Greenwich, Connecticut. Weir was also one of the founding members of "The Ten", a loosely allied group of American artists dissatisfied with professional art organizations, who banded together in 1898 to exhibit their works as a stylistically unified group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lincoln Kirstein</span> American writer

Lincoln Edward Kirstein was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and sustained the company with his organizing ability and fundraising for more than four decades, serving as the company's general director from 1946 to 1989. According to the New York Times, he was "an expert in many fields", organizing art exhibits and lecture tours in the same years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Wadsworth</span> American artist and collector

Daniel Wadsworth (1771–1848) of Hartford, Connecticut, was an American amateur artist and architect, arts patron and traveler. He is most remembered as the founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in his native city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Natkin</span> American abstract painter (1930–2010)

Robert Natkin was an American abstract painter whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, color field painting, and Lyrical Abstraction.

Philip Grausman is an American sculptor, known for his portrait works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Britain Museum of American Art</span> Art museum in Connecticut, United States

The New Britain Museum of American Art is an art museum in New Britain, Connecticut. Founded in 1903, it is the first museum in the country dedicated to American art.

Arthur Everett "Chick" Austin Jr. was the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum from 1927 through 1944. Austin persisted in the introduction of then-modern theater and modern design and especially contemporaneous art. Salvador Dalí, Alexander Calder, and Gertrude Stein benefited from his advocacy.

Chick Austin helped alter the way Americans looked at and thought about modern art. For starters, he organized the first Picasso retrospective in the United States, put on the first show of Surrealist art and, with Kirstein, helped engineer the immigration of choreographer George Balanchine and sow the seeds for Balanchine's School of American Ballet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florence Griswold Museum</span> United States historic place

The Florence Griswold Museum is an art museum at 96 Lyme Street in Old Lyme, Connecticut centered on the home of Florence Griswold (1850–1937), which was the center of the Old Lyme Art Colony, a main nexus of American Impressionism. The museum is noted for its collection of American Impressionist paintings. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The site encompasses 12-acres of historic buildings, grounds, gardens, and walking trails.

Sylvia Plimack Mangold is an American artist, painter, printmaker, and pastelist. She is known for her representational depictions of interiors and landscapes. She is the mother of film director/screenwriter James Mangold and musician Andrew Mangold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Sheffield Bartholomew</span> American sculptor

Edward Sheffield Bartholomew was an American sculptor active in the Papal State and later in Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hartford Public Library</span>

The Hartford Public Library serves the city of Hartford, Connecticut, United States. The library's main branch is located at 500 Main Street in downtown Hartford. The nine branch locations are named Albany, Barbour, Blue Hills, Camp Field, Dwight, Goodwin, Mark Twain, Park and Ropkins. All branches feature free public access computers and free Wi-Fi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Downtown Hartford</span> City in Connecticut, United States

Downtown Hartford, Connecticut is the primary business district of the city, and the center of Connecticut's state government. Because of the large number of insurance companies headquartered there, Hartford is known as the "Insurance Capital of the World".

<i>Ancient Rome</i> (painting) 1750s paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini

Ancient Rome is a trio of almost identical paintings by Italian artist Giovanni Paolo Panini, produced as pendant paintings to Modern Rome for his patron, the comte de Stainville, in the 1750s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Rogers Williams</span> American painter

Mary Rogers Williams was an American tonalist and Impressionist artist known for pastel and oil portraits and landscapes. She was second in command of Smith College's art department from 1888 to 1906 under Dwight William Tryon and earned acclaim for paintings of her native New England and scenes from her wide travels in Europe, from Norway to the Paestum ruins south of Naples. She often depicted high horizons, whether in meadows or medieval hill towns, under ribbons of sky.

<i>Self-Portrait as a Lute Player</i> Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi

Self-Portrait as a Lute Player is one of many self-portrait paintings made by the Italian baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi. It was created between 1615 and 1617 for the Medici family in Florence. Today, it hangs in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, US. It shows the artist posing as a lute player looking directly at the audience. The painting has symbolism in the headscarf and outfit that portray Gentileschi in a costume that resembles a Romani woman. Self-Portrait as a Lute Player has been interpreted as Gentileschi portraying herself as a knowledgeable musician, a self portrayal as a prostitute, and as a fictive expression of one aspect of her identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Master of the Hartford Still-Life</span> Italian painter

The Master of the Hartford Still-Life or simply the Master of Hartford was an Italian painter in the Baroque style who worked in Rome from the 1590s to the 1610s and specialized in lavish still-lifes. Together with the Master of the Acquavella Still-Life, he helped establish a brighter style for the Italian still-life, as opposed to the prevailing dark style of the Netherlands.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.