The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum located 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.
The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art was founded in 1842, one of the oldest continually operating public art museum in the United States.. The museum’s collections of nearly 50,000 works of art span 5,000 years and feature the Morgan collection of Greek and Roman antiquities and European decorative arts; world-renowned baroque and surrealist paintings; an unsurpassed collection of Hudson River School landscapes; European and American Impressionist paintings; modernist masterpieces; the Serge Lifar collection of Ballets Russes drawings and costumes; the George A. Gay collection of prints; the Wallace Nutting collection of American colonial furniture and decorative arts; the Samuel Colt firearms collection; costumes and textiles; African American art and artifacts; and contemporary art.
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 of exhibition space, the museum is the largest art museum in the state of Connecticut. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The museum is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museums program.
The Wadsworth, as it is most commonly known, was constructed on the site of the family home of Daniel Wadsworth 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.
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. 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. 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.
In 2001, the museum announced a large-scale $100 million expansion designed by the Amsterdam-based architects UNStudio; the architects were chosen from a short list of innovative design teams, including Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, and Brad Cloepfil. The design required demolishing the Goodwin Building, put up in 1969, and enclosing the Avery Courtyard. However, the proposal was scrapped in 2003 due to fundraising difficulties and changes in the museum’s leadership. 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.
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 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.
Just outside the “castle” is a statue of Nathan Hale, dated 1899, 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.
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.
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. 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.
Collection:
Founded by Daniel Wadsworth in 1842, the Wadsworth Atheneum opened two years later with just seventy-nine paintings and three sculptures. Today the collection exceeds 50,000 works of art – the result of active acquisitions by patrons, directors, and curators who continue Wadsworth’s dedication to collecting and supporting the work of living artists.
European Art:
The European Art collection contains about 900 paintings, 500 sculptures, and 3,500 works on paper, ranging from the medieval to the modern period.
The Wadsworth Atheneum’s European collection is particularly strong in Italian Baroque painting, with major examples by Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi, and Bernardo Strozzi. Surrealist art is also strongly represented including works by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, and René Magritte. Additionally, there are some very famous works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, William Holman Hunt, and Joseph Wright of Derby.
European Decorative Arts:
The European Decorative Arts collection comprises approximately 7,000 objects, more than 1,300 of which are from the legendary collection of J. Pierpont Morgan. These include ancient glass and bronzes, Italian maiolica, Venetian and façon de venise glass, nautilus cups, ostrich egg ewers, mounted ivories, silver-gilt vessels, Meissen porcelain, and Vincennes and Sèvres porcelain.
The museum has a large collection of ceramics, including Pre-Columbian pottery, Chinese export and domestic porcelain, 18th and 19th century English pottery and porcelain, Berlin and Meissen Art Nouveau porcelain, and 19th century Sèvres porcelain. Other highlights include English silver from the Elizabeth B. Miles Collection, ceramic veilleuses from The Harold and Wendy Newman Collection, and The Richard and Georgette A. Koopman Collection of Dutch Delft.
Cabinet of Art and Curiosity:
The Wadsworth Atheneum’s Cabinet of Art and Curiosity is an immersive, interactive environment that fills one entire gallery with over 200 awe-inspiring European Decorative Arts objects. Click here to read more about the Cabinet of Art and Curiosity.
Costume & Textiles:
The Wadsworth Atheneum’s Costume and Textiles collection holds approximately 2,500 textile objects and 5,000 costumes and accessories, ranging in time from Coptic to Contemporary, in size from thimbles to tapestries, and representing every continent. Many objects cross curatorial lines, like African American story quilts, Native American baskets, and contemporary fiber art.
Some holdings are unique, like paper gowns created by contemporary artists for the museum’s Paper Balls of 1936 and 1966. The museum’s world-renowned Lifar collection of Ballets Russes paintings and drawings is supplemented by Ballets Russes costumes. The museum is also the depository for Cheney Brothers textiles and keeper of the Cheney legacy.
American Art:
The Wadsworth Atheneum’s American Art collection contains approximately 1,000 paintings, 400 sculptures, and 4,000 works on paper. In addition to the museum’s celebrated Hudson River School paintings, collection highlights include 18th century portraits by Ralph Earl and John Singleton Copley, 19th century still lifes by the Peale family, late-19th century trompe l’oeil paintings, and American modernism, with important paintings by Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Andrew Wyeth.
The American sculpture collection features works by noted artists such as Horatio Greenough, Harriet Hosmer, Gaston Lachaise, Elie Nadelman, Paul Manship, and Alexander Calder.
American Decorative Arts
The American Decorative arts collection uniquely embodies the history of material culture in New England and America. From elaborately carved and painted 17th century chests to the modern masterpieces of Marcel Breuer and Frank Lloyd Wright, the collection contains works ranging from the utilitarian to the luxurious. It also includes the museum’s collection of Colt Firearms, acquired from Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt in 1905.
Connecticut craftsmen are celebrated through fine examples of Samuel Loomis (1748-1814), maker of Colchester/Norwich style furniture, and Eliphalet Chapin (1741-1807), Connecticut’s most renowned colonial cabinetmaker. Unique forms come to life in the modern meets natural ethos designs of George Nakashima (1905-90).
Contemporary Art:
Since its opening in 1844, the Wadsworth Atheneum has presented artists of its own time, from Thomas Cole and Frederic Church to Salvador Dalí, Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol, and Sol LeWitt.
The Contemporary art collection encompasses works created from 1945 to the present with strong examples of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Pop art, Conceptual art, and recent movements in painting, sculpture, photography, and video.
Supplemented by acquisitions from its groundbreaking MATRIX exhibition program—launched in 1975—the collection includes work by many past MATRIX artists, such as John Baldessari, Duane Hanson, Christian Jankowski, Ellsworth Kelly, Glenn Ligon, Lee Lozano, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and William Wegman.
The Austin House:
The Austin House, a National Historic Landmark, is the largest object in the Wadsworth Atheneum’s collection and is the former West End home of the legendary and innovative A. Everett “Chick” Austin, Jr., the museum’s director from 1927 to 1944.
Located two miles from the museum in Hartford’s West End, the home was modeled on a grand 16th-century villa near Venice, which Chick and his wife Helen Goodwin Austin had seen on their wedding trip in 1929, the house is 86 feet wide and a mere 18 feet deep. Inside, the first floor is decorated in the 18th-century Rococo style, with silk-covered walls, gilded and painted furniture, and a spectacular Bavarian alcove. A few steps lead from the entry hall down to the living room in one direction, and the dining room in the other. Upstairs, Helen Austin’s dressing room proclaims a radically modern aesthetic. Featuring a black linoleum floor, walls of different colors, chromium light fixtures, and tubular steel furniture, it is one of the first International Style interiors in America.