Wadsworth Atheneum

Namesake 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. 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. 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. 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. == 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. 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. 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. File:Orazio Gentileschi - Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes.JPG|Orazio Gentileschi, Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, 1621–1624 File:Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy-Caravaggio (c.1595).jpg|St. Francis in Ecstasy by Caravaggio, c. 1595, oil on canvas, 92,5 x 128,4 cm, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut File:Pannini, Giovanni Paolo - Interior of a Picture Gallery with the Collection of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga - 1740.jpg|Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Interior of a Picture Gallery with the Collection of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, 1740 File:Hooker and Company Frederic Edwin Church.jpeg|Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, in 1636, Frederic Edwin Church, 1846 File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 083.jpg|Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873 File:The Lady of Shalott by William Holman Hunt, c. 1890-1905, oil on canvas - Wadsworth Atheneum - Hartford, CT - DSC05541.jpg|The Lady of Shalott, William Holman Hunt, c. 1888–1905 ==See also==