The Mattatuck Museum dates back to 1877 and offers exhibits based on its extensive collection of works by Connecticut artists. The museum offered a variety of exhibits and sponsored events in its early decades and acquired an exhibit hall in 1912. Highlights of the museum include the collection of ten thousand miniature works donated by the Waterbury Button Company and works by Alexander Calder, Frederic Church, and Anni Albers. The museum is also home to the Max R. Traurig Library which offers 1500 volumes and is open by appointment.
The New Britain museum of American Art has a history of growth, acceptance, success, and education that makes it one of a kind. Their focus and pursuit of an excellent educational program that will meet the needs of generations to come only adds to that. Visitors to the Museum are offered a variety of programs to experience the diverse collections of American art that span over centuries and differ in style.
The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the oldest public art museum in the United States, was founded in 1842 by Daniel Wadsworth, one of the first important American patrons of the arts. Its collections include around 50,000 works of art produced over a 5,000-year time span. Visitors can enjoy the Morgan collection of Greek and Roman antiquities and European decorative arts; baroque and surrealist paintings; an acclaimed collection of Hudson River School landscapes; European and American Impressionist paintings; modernist masterpieces; the Serge Lifar collecton 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. Although Daniel Wadsworth at first planned to open “a Gallery of Fine Arts,” he was instead convinced to establish an “atheneum,” a cultural institution that included a library, works of art, artifacts, and a mission of promoting history, literature, art and science.
Slater Memorial Museum is situated on the Norwich Free Academy Campus. It was founded in the late 19th century by William Albert Slater to honor his father, John Fox Slater, a wealthy industrialist. William Slater was an avid patron of the arts, who collected art and funded Norwich's "Broadway Theater." Museum holdings are diverse, spanning over 3 millennia and 5 continents.
Lyman Allyn Art Museum was founded by the bequest of Harriet Upson Allyn, a New London resident, in 1926. It is housed in a neo-classical granite building designed by Charles A. Platt and opened in 1932 with an inaugural collection of just 13 works. Today, it has a permanent collection of more than 15,000 pieces, nine galleries, an auditorium, a conservation lab, and a library. Its focus is on 18th-20th-century American art.
The Florence Griswold Museum is an art museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut centered around the family home of Florence Griswold. The home was used as a boardinghouse and in 1899 welcomed artist Henry Ward Ranger. Griswold's home soon blossomed into the most famous Impressionist artists' colony in the country. The Lyme Art Colony flourished for over thirty years.
The Yale University Art Gallery carries the proud role of being the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere, and with a history that dates back to 1832 along with its 69,975 square-feet main building, this museum is a central hub for art enthusiasts, students, and the general public. The museum’s permanent exhibitions were founded in 1832 when the iconic artist and patriot John Trumbull gave Yale College more than 100 of his own paintings. Since this monumental donation, the museum has acquired more than 200,000 objects representing both Eastern and Western cultures, ranging in date from antiquity to the present day. In addition to the museum’s goal to encourage art appreciation and understanding, the Yale University Art Gallery also seeks to stimulate research and active learning about art through compelling exhibitions and educational programs. Some of the most acclaimed works of original art found at this museum include Van Gogh’s The Night Café, Robert Field’s Miniature of George Washington, and Trumbull’s The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec.
The Yale Center of British Art, located in the picturesque Yale University campus, carries the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom, and since its doors opened in 1977, this massive art gallery houses more than 2,000 paintings and over 200 sculptures reflecting the development of British art and society. From the Elizabethan period and onward, the multifaceted collection at the Yale Center for British Art emphasizes the preservation of art and culture, and in addition to the painting and sculpture collection, visitors can experience more than 20,000 drawings and watercolors, 30,000 prints, 35,000 rare books and manuscripts, and a reference library and archive featuring more than 30,000 volumes that aid in British art research and other related fields.
The Housatonic Museum of Art (HMA) stands as one of the premier college art collections in the United States. Scattered throughout the Housatonic Community College Campus and located within the university’s Lafayette Hall, the free and permanent collections at this museum traverse centuries and art forms to enhance the cultural life of Bridgeport students and residents. While strolling through the campus hallways, visitors are greeted with 18th, 19th, and 20th century works of art, as well as ethnographic objects from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. These collections are quite unique to the Housatonic campus, and permanent exhibitions remain on continuous display throughout the 300,000 square-foot facility. Within the permanent collection, visitors can view and interact over 4,000 works of art from various time periods, and some of the most famous artists featured at this museum include Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Ansel Adams, Klimt, and many others. The Burt Chernow Gallery, named after the museum’s founder, offers rotating exhibitions every six weeks that feature national, regional, and even local artists as well as art shows.
The history of this museum dates back to 1908, when Robert Moffat Bruce donated his mansion to the leaders of Greenwich to be used as a history, science, and art museum. The museum opened with its first exhibit at the Bruce mansion four years later. Today, the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science offers a number of exhibits dedicated to archaeology, natural history, art, and the history of Native American tribes and early inhabitants of the city of Greenwich and surrounding communities.
Housed on the the former estate of department store founder Henri Bendel; SM&NC is a118-acre site with 3,000 square feet of exhibition galleries, a 50-seat planetarium; the Overbrook Nature Center, a visitor orientation resource featuring live animal exhibits and a and gift shop; the Heckscher Farm, an 18-acre working farm with heritage breeds and organic garden; Art, Nature & Me, a state-licensed pre-school; the Stamford Observatory, with a 22” research telescope; a National Weather Bureau Cooperative Weather Station; Nature's Playground, and an 80-acre interpretive woodland trail system, including the Wheels in the Woods universally-accessible trail. SM&NC maintains a permanent collection of nearly 20,000 works of art, artifacts, specimens, and live animals.
Founded in 1964 by philanthropist Larry Aldrich, this museum holds one of the leading collections of contemporary art in the region. For most of its history, the museum was located downtown in the "Old Hundred" building which Aldrich purchased in 1964 for the purpose of opening a museum. In 2004, the museum moved to this location, a 17,000 square foot facility that includes classrooms and a studio in addition to two floors of gallery spaces and a sculpture garden.
This Tour is a Walking Tour.
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This driving tour includes stops at most of the art museums in central and Southern Connecticut and would be a wonderful journey for art lovers with a week to enjoy some of the best museums in the region.
