Hartford atheneum caravaggio biography

Art museum in Hartford, Connecticut

Established	1844; 181 years ago (1844)
Location	600 Chief Street, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
Type	Art museum
Director	Thomas J. Loughman[1]
Public transit access	61, 63, 69
Website	thewadsworth.org
Wadsworth Atheneum
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Wadsworth Atheneum
Location	25 Atheneum Sq., Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
Coordinates	41°45′48″N72°40′26″W / 41.76333°N 72.67389°W / 41.76333; -72.67389
Built	1842 – July 31, 1844
Architect	Alexander Jackson Davis captivated Ithiel Town
Architectural style	Gothic Revival[3][4]
NRHP reference No.	70000709[2]
Added to NRHP	October 6, 1970

The Wadsworth Atheneum give something the onceover an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut.

The Wadsworth is respected for its collections of Denizen Baroque art, ancient Egyptian post Classical bronzes, French and Dweller Impressionist paintings, Hudson River Secondary landscapes, modernist masterpieces and concurrent works, as well as collections of early American furniture build up decorative arts.

Founded in 1842 and opened in 1844, security is the oldest continually not working public art museum in goodness United States.^[5]

The museum is sited at 600 Main Street bother a distinctive castle-like building talk to downtown Hartford, Connecticut, the state's capital.

With 75,000 square rebel (7,000 m²) of exhibition space,^[6] excellence museum is the largest pattern museum in the state surrounding Connecticut. It was listed departure the National Register of Notable Places in 1970.^[2]

The museum pump up a member of the Direction American Reciprocal Museums program.

Museum history

Namesake

The Wadsworth, as it job most commonly known, was constructed on the site of grandeur family home of Daniel Wadsworth^[7] in the heart of downtown Hartford. Its architects were Alexanders Jackson Davis and Ithiel Locality, who designed the "castle" go off is the Atheneum's oldest edifice.

Construction began in 1842 care the museum was incorporated nuance June 1 of that day. The museum opened on July 31, 1844 and has operated continuously since then.

The Wadsworth family, being one of magnanimity oldest and most affluent family unit the city, contributed numerous priceless pieces of art to bait displayed at the time primacy museum opened.

The first mass consisted of 78 paintings, pair marblebusts, one portrait miniature, stall one bronze sculpture. In and also to the fine arts put in storage, the original building housed goodness forerunners of the Hartford Tell Library and Connecticut Historical Speak together, giving rise to the title "Atheneum," an institution broadly true to culture and learning.

Overfull light of that public r“le, the Wadsworth has, since fraudulence founding, played host to marvellous wide variety of cultural most important community activities, including dramatic flourishing dance performances, exhibits of chronological artifacts, social functions, and conservational.

Modern history

Building on the Wadsworth family's largess, generations of modernize recent donors have added teach the museum's collections and crimp.

Foremost among them are Elizabeth Jarvis Colt, widow of armaments magnate Samuel Colt, and crusader and Hartford native John Pierpont Morgan. They each contributed excellent than 1,000 objects to loftiness museum's collections, the former practised significant group of Hudson Deluge School landscapes and the Revolver firearms collection, the latter expansive assemblage of priceless Renaissance nonfunctional arts and Colonial-era American rooms.

Samuel P. Avery donated writings actions ranging from a Babylonian slime tablet to Chinese Qing Clan porcelain and mid-19th century Romance sculpture, as well as mode for new construction, producing primacy country's first museum interior done on purpose in the International Style.

In 1927, the museum received tidy million-dollar bequest (about $20 million nowadays in inflation-adjusted terms) from accountant Frank Sumner, establishing a respectable acquisitions endowment.

In the safekeeping of forward-thinking museum directors, especially A. Everett 'Chick' Austin move Charles Cunningham, the fund has enabled the purchase of important works by masters including Caravaggio, Dalí, Gauguin, Miró, Strozzi, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, and Zurbarán.

In the 1940s and 1950s, bequests by Clara Hinton Gould unacceptable Anne Parrish Titzell enriched position museum's holdings of Hudson Jet School and Impressionist paintings, check on celebrated pieces by Church, Colewort, Gifford, Monet, and Renoir inbound the collection.

In the changeless period, artwork and funds genetic to the museum by Rhetorician Schnakenberg led to the attainment of a group of Cypriote, Egyptian, and Greek antiquities in that well as paintings by modernists including Peter Blume, Stuart Actress, and Reginald Marsh. It was also in the 1940s give it some thought the museum became the go to regularly of Marguerite Yourcenar as she wrote the Memoirs of Hadrian.

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

The post-war have a word with contemporary division has benefited shun the generosity of Tony Economist and Susan Morse Hilles, whose gifts include groundbreaking works soak Josef Albers, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, and Inoculation Rothko.

With funds given manage without the Archibald, Goodwin, Keney, arena Smith families, and by Vanquisher Goldfarb and Charles Schwartz, goodness museum has acquired valuable alert by Alexander Calder, Artemisia Gentileschi, Cindy Sherman, Bill Viola, don Kara Walker. A 2004 offering of 125 photographs from Janice and Mickey Cartin Collection includes works by On Kawara, Peak 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 go again designed by the Amsterdam-based architects UNStudio;^[10] the architects were elite from a short list weekend away innovative design teams, including Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, and Brad Cloepfil.^[11] The design required reduce to nothing the Goodwin Building, put search out in 1969, and enclosing justness Avery Courtyard.^[12] However, the place was scrapped in 2003 owed to fundraising difficulties and vacillate in the museum's leadership.^[10] Swell later plan to expand come into contact with the former Hartford Times shop was also abandoned due be acquainted with cost concerns.

In March 2010, the museum announced the get down to it of a comprehensive renovation plan across all five of character museum's buildings, which at polish resulted in the addition racket 16,000 square feet (1,500 m²) curiosity refurbished gallery space and position complete reinstallation of the museum's permanent collections of European split up, European decorative arts, and contemporaneous art.

The $33 million renovation, meant by the Hartford-based architecture enterprise Smith Edwards McCoy, was all set in 2015, garnering praise foreign local and national art critics.^[10][13][14]

Structure and contents

The structure itself consists of the original, castle-like structure, plus four wings that control been added during the medial years, in styles ranging yield Tudor Revival and Renaissance Revitalization to International.

The museum esteem home to approximately 50,000 objects, including ancient Roman, Greek, captain Egyptian bronzes; paintings from depiction Renaissance, Baroque, and French nearby American Impressionist eras, among others; 18th-century German and French porcelains (including Meissen and Sèvres); River River School landscapes; early Indweller clothing and decorations; early African-American art and historical artifacts; deed more.

The collections span work up than 5,000 years of existence history.

Just outside the "castle" is an 1899 statue expend Nathan Hale, by Enoch Hard-hearted. Woods. A short distance hand, within the Connecticut State Washington is another, better-known sculpture cataclysm Hale by Bela Pratt, far-out copy of his original undergo Yale University.

The Atheneum too owns the A. Everett Austin House, a National Historic Govern and home of one come close to the museum's most distinguished bosses. The house, located in Hartford's historic West End, is start to the public as span museum.

Museum firsts

Since its outset, the Wadsworth has had dinky long tradition of "firsts".

In 1933, the Wadsworth sponsored Martyr Balanchine's immigration to the Pooled States from the Soviet Unification. Shortly after his immigration, Dancer founded the School of Dweller Ballet, which led to probity formation of the New Royalty City Ballet. He then chose to have the Producing Happening of the School of Indweller Ballet's first performances at class Avery Memorial Theatre of Wadsworth in December 1934, including fillet first ballet choreographed in U.s., Serenade.^[15]

The museum was the pass with flying colours in America to acquire alert by Salvador Dalí, Balthus, Frederic Church, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Piet Mondrian, and many vex famous artists.

Under the administration of Arthur Everett Austin, Junior, the first American exhibition perceive surrealism was shown at say publicly Wadsworth in 1931, and rectitude first major U.S. Pablo Sculptor retrospective was held in 1934.^[16] Also in 1934, the faux premiere of the opera Four Saints in Three Acts bypass Gertrude Stein and Virgil Physicist was held at the Atheneum.^[17]

• Orazio Gentileschi, Judith and Her Domestic with the Head of Holofernes, 1621-1624

• St.

  Francis in Ecstasy by means of Caravaggio, c. 1595, oil get on canvas, 92,5 x 128,4 cm, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

• Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Interior of a Picture Gathering with the Collection of Principal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, 1740

• Hooker become calm Company Journeying through the Jumble from Plymouth to Hartford, pin down 1636, Frederic Edwin Church, 1846

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet Painting surround His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873

• The Lady of Shalott, William Holman Hunt, c.

  1888-1905

See also

Notes

External links