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Phone: (860) 278-2670
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Paintings: 19th century American, Spanish/Italian baroque, French Impressionits, 20th century masters. Early American furniture, porcelain, bronzes; Matrix Gallery of Contemporary Art.
The sheer quality and range of fine and decorative arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum place it among the dozen greatest art museums in the United States. Its world-renowned collections include Hudson River School landscapes, Old Master paintings, modernist masterpieces, 19th-century French and Impressionist paintings, Meissen and Sèvres porcelains, costumes and textiles, American furniture and decorative arts of the Pilgrim Century through the Gilded Age, and contemporary art.
Nationally recognized for its ambitious and imaginative special exhibitions program, the Wadsworth Atheneum presents more than fifteen special shows and installations each year. Many are inspired by masterworks in the museum’s holdings, while others are solo shows of contemporary artists.
The Wadsworth Atheneum is named for its founder, the arts patron and philanthropist Daniel Wadsworth (1771-1848), and after the Athenaeum in Rome (itself named for Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom). Established in 1842, the Wadsworth Atheneum is America’s oldest public art museum, preceding the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston by three decades.
It was the first American museum to acquire works by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Frederic Church, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miro, Alexander Calder, Piet Mondrian, Joseph Cornell, and Max Ernst. As it has always done, the museum collects work by contemporary artists in a variety of media.
WINTER 2002 – SUMMER 2003 EXHIBITION OPENINGS
Hairitage
January 26 – May 26, 2002
From the earliest contacts
between Africans and Europeans, hair has been a source of fascination,
consternation, and jubilation. Hairitage explores the aesthetics,
politics, and cultural legacy of hairstyles in African American culture through
painting and sculpture, photography, advertising, and artifacts. Presented by
The Amistad Foundation.
Impressionism to Surrealism from The Baltimore Museum of Art: Selections from
the Collections of Claribel and Etta Cone, Saidie Adler May, and Blanche
Adler
February 8 – April 21, 2002
During the first half of the
20th century, two pairs of sisters in Baltimore avidly collected
modernist masterworks (in addition to art of earlier eras). The famous Cone
sisters—Dr. Claribel (1864-1929) and Miss Etta (1870-1949)—acquired works by
Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and many by Matisse, while the Adler sisters—Saidie
Adler May (1879-1951) and Blanche Adler (1877-1941)—bought pieces by Degas,
Leger, Kandinsky, Klee, Matta, and Pollock. Both the Cones and Adlers purchased
works by Picasso and Masson, and both left their great collections to The
Baltimore Museum of Art. This exhibition features more than 50 paintings and
drawings spanning Impressionism to Surrealism.
UN Studio/MATRIX 146
February 16 – May 12,
2002
Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos of UN Studio, based in Amsterdam,
The Netherlands, are the design architects for the expansion and renovation of
the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. These gifted innovators are best known for
the asymmetrical, swan-like Erasmus Bridge, which is to Rotterdam what the
Brooklyn Bridge is to New York City; the Möbius House, a residence outside
Utrecht that plays with the notions of inside and outside, day and night, and
work and rest; and a massive urban infrastructure project currently under
construction in Arnhem. Blending imagination with computer technology, UN Studio
is creating "digital architecture" for the 21st century. MATRIX
146 is made possible by The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation,
Inc.
The Art of French Fashion
March 16 - August 18, 2002
Colonial
America looked to France for sumptuous styles as well as silks and velvets, but
the Revolu-tionary Wars in both countries interrupted the flow of French
fashion. Nearly a century later, with the end of the American Civil War in 1867,
the International Exhibition in Paris inspired a new wave of Franco mania.
Wealthy Americans flocked to Paris for special occasion dresses, especially to
the founder of French haute couture, Charles Frederick Worth. Gowns with labels
from Doucet, Raudnitz, Pingat, Paquin, Lanvin, and Vionnet also guaranteed
sartorial success. Highlights of this exhibition are a mid
18th-century French open robe and petticoat, a Worth turn of the
century court presentation dress, and a 1928 wedding gown by Madeline Vionnet.
Supported by the Costume and Textile Society and the Mary Pope Cheney
Exhibition Fund.
Sam Durant/MATRIX 147
May 18 – September 1, 2002
Los
Angeles-based artist Sam Durant is inspired by history, particularly the history
of radical artistic practice seen within the context of social history. From
conceptual art of the 1960s to Southern rock music and its origins, Durant
transmutes elements of high and popular culture in a variety of media, including
drawing, sculpture, architecture and film. MATRIX 147 marks
Sam Durant’s first solo museum exhibition.
Matières de rêves: Stuff of Dreams from the Paris Musée des Arts
Décoratifs
June 1 – August 11, 2002
Throughout the ages,
exceptional objects have been created that exceed the requirements of utility,
the conventions of tradition, and standards of craftsmanship. One hundred unique
masterpieces of French design—silver, ivory, porcelain, jewelry, and
furniture—dating from the Middle Ages to the present day are featured in
Stuff of Dreams. Organized by the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, and The Union
Centrale des Arts Décoratifs: Musée des arts décoratifs, this exhibition opens
in Portland, then travels to Hartford and to the Birmingham Museum of Art in
Alabama. Supported by The Florence Gould Foundation.
Fresh Faces
June 15, 2002 – January 19, 2003
Youth figure
prominently in works by many 20th-century and contemporary African
American artists. Augusta Savage, Laura Wheeling Waring, Hughie Lee-Smith, Alan
Crite, Charles White, Coreen Simpson, and Dawoud Bey have portrayed children and
teenagers with empathy, dignity, and wonderment. The shifting status and role of
youth in American society and popular culture will be revealed in painting,
sculpture, photography, and prints and drawings from the collections of The
Amistad Foundation, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and private and public holdings.
Presented by The Amistad Foundation.
Cloth of Kings
September 7, 2002 - February 9, 2003
Once
reserved for royalty in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the luxurious and
richly-hued plush fabric known as velvet remains as alluring as ever.
Michael Sweerts, 1624 – 1664
September 20 – December 1, 2002
Although less well known today than his contemporaries Johannes Vermeer
and Pieter de Hooch, Michael Sweerts was one of the most original and famous
painters working in Holland during the 17th century. This is the
first exhibition of his paintings and prints in nearly 50 years—and the first
ever in America. It consists of over forty of Sweerts’ finest works. These
include his remarkably tender portraits of children; genre scenes of beggars,
gamblers, and artists at work; and his series, The Seven Acts of Mercy,
which will be reunited from collections around the world. The Rijksmuseum
is organizing this exhibition in conjunction with the Wadsworth Atheneum, which
acquired two paintings by Sweerts in the 1940s. The accompanying catalogue
contains essays by the Rijksmuseum's curator Guido Jansen, the Atheneum's Eric
M. Zafran, as well as guest curator Peter C. Sutton, and Lynn Orr, curator of
the San Francisco Museums of Fine Art. The exhibition opens in Amsterdam, then
travels to San Francisco and Hartford. Supported by The Samuel H. Kress
Foundation and The Helen M. Saunders Charitable Foundation, Inc.
Consumed by the Past: Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old
America
May 1 – September 1, 2003
Wallace Nutting (1861-1941), the
Harvard educated Congregational minister turned entrepreneurial photographer,
author, and furniture maker, was an influential tastemaker and cultural critic
in the early 20th century. His hand-tinted platinum prints of
pastoral landscapes and "colonial" interiors, "States Beautiful" books, and
reproduction furniture line reinforced idealized notions of "Pilgrim-Century"
America at a time of cultural change and uncertainty. This exhibition—the first
to explore Nutting’s consumer empire—will shed new light on the Wallace Nutting
Collection of Early American Furniture, which was donated to the Wadsworth
Atheneum by J.P. Morgan, Jr. in 1925.
Marsden Hartley
January 17 - April 13, 2003
"The painter from
Maine" is how Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) identified himself, but the pioneering
modernist, author, and poet spent much of his peripatetic life in Paris, Berlin,
New York, Mexico, Bermuda, and elsewhere before returning, late in life, to his
native state. This retrospective—the first in more than 20 years—features
approximately 75 paintings and 20 works on paper that demonstrate the stylistic
and thematic range of Hartley’s innovative work. Included are early
impressionist Maine landscapes, symbolic "Berlin" paintings, the cubistic
"Provincetown" series, powerful landscapes of the American southwest, Mexico,
France, and the Alps, and examples of the raw figurative style that
characterizes Hartley’s return to the Northeast. The accompanying catalogue has
essays by Atheneum curators Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser and Amy Ellis, as well
as Jonathan Weinberg, Wanda Corn, Patricia McDonnell, Carol Troyen, and Bruce
Robertson. Travels to The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Sponsored by
United Technologies Corporation.
Benny Andrews: Bicentennial Series (working title)
May 2 – August 3,
2003
A leading figurative and collage artist, and a proponent of 1960s
protest art, Benny Andrews (b. 1930) has been depicting the complexities of
American life for over four decades. This exhibition focuses on his monumental
Bicentennial Series, created to coincide with and play off the mounting
patriotism leading up to the United States bicentennial celebration of 1976. All
six mural-size works in the series will be shown together for the first time:
Symbols (1970), Trash (1971), Circle (1972), Sexism
(1973), War (1974), and Utopia (1975). The show, which is
organized with the cooperation of the artist, also features 30 other related
paintings and drawings.
CONTINUING EXHIBITIONS
Architects of American Fashion: Norman Norell and Pauline
Trigère
Through February 17, 2002
Fashion designers, like
architects, start with a vision, create a "blueprint," and select materials
appropriate for the lifestyle and environment of their clients. American fashion designers Norman Norell (1900-72) and
Pauline Trigère (1908- ) were masters of their art. Although their working
methods differed (he drew, she draped and cut freehand), both constructed
functional and elegantly tailored garments. Norell is famous for his sequined
"mermaid dresses," as well as for the chemise and sailor dresses. Swirling coats
and capes, one-shoulder evening gowns, and the color red define the Trigère
look. Supported by the Costume and Textile Society and the Mary Pope Cheney
Exhibition Fund.
Noncomposition: 15 Case Studies, 1955-1980
Through June 23,
2002
"Composition" has been central to the traditional idea of artistic
creation, by which the artist arrives at a work of art through a personal
expression of taste or style. The notion of "non-composition" describes the
approach of artists who rejected tradition as they introduced non-subjective
ways to make their art. This approach revealed the creative potential of
concepts, systems, and processes including seriality, objectivity, and chance.
This exhibition, drawn from the Wadsworth Atheneum’s collections, including The
LeWitt Collection, features paintings, sculptures, and photographs by Vito
Acconci, John Baldessari, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Mel Bochner, Eva Hesse, Alfred
Jensen, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Lee Lozano, Roman Opalka, and Andy
Warhol.
Information: Call (860) 278-2670 or visit the museum website at http://www.wadsworthatheneum.org.
TDD is (860) 278-0294.
Open Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (The museum is open until 8 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month except December.) It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, and Independence Day. The museum closes at 3 p.m. on the eve of Thanksgiving and Christmas.
General Admission: Adults $7; seniors and students with I.D. $5; youths age 6-17 $4; members and children under 6 admitted free. Discounted admission fees apply for groups of 10 or more visitors with reservations.
Special Exhibition Admission: There is an additional $7 admission fee to Impressionism to Surrealism from The Baltimore Museum of Art and Matières de rêves: Stuff of Dreams from the Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The special exhibition fee for Michael Sweerts and Marsden Hartley will be announced.
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