The holiday season is one of the happiest times of year on the Connecticut Art Trail, as art museums and cultural sites across the state host special events and celebrations. It’s a great time to explore some of the fantastic destinations Connecticut has to offer, and to wrap up your 2024 Passport-Journal if you want to enter our grand prize giveaway! Don’t forget to take advantage of our seasonal buy one, get one deal for next year’s Passport-Journal; it makes a great gift!

Read our latest newsletter to learn about the latest news and upcoming events on the Connecticut Art Trail, including:

• A reopening date at the Yale Center for British Art after a two-year building renovation
• The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art being named as one of the top 20 art museums in the United States by the Washington Post
• A special display of Hockey Hall of Fame trophies on display this weekend at the Bruce Museum
• Family activities for the holidays including an Access for All Community Day and Holiday Makers Market at the New Britain Museum of American Art, Winter Wonder Day at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, and a Holiday Linocut Sampler course at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking
• A featured item from a Connecticut Art Trail museum’s permanent collection: The Minutes No. 14 by prominent Surrealist artist Kay Sage at the Mattatuck Museum

All that glitters…is gold, in this case! Our final edition of Art in Focus this fall, takes a look at this extraordinary print by Maria Katherina Prestel. Prestel has only recently been rediscovered by print historians, as she worked for her husband, Johann Prestel, and his initials appear rather than hers on many of the works.
Join us at 12 noon on December 12 in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries for informal conversation about this work, led by Curator of Education Michelle DiMarzo, PhD. This work is included in the exhibition Ink and Time: European Prints from the Wetmore Collection (Bellarmine Hall Galleries, September 12 – December 21, 2024). Click here for more information about the exhibition.
Looking for the virtual edition? Click here to register.
Image: Maria Katharina Prestel after Jacopo Ligozzi, The Triumph of Truth over Envy, 1780, etching and aquatint in brown and ochre ink, touched with gold leaf. Courtesy of the Wetmore Collection, Connecticut College
Please note that only 2 tickets may be reserved per order. If you have questions, please contact museum@fairfield.edu

All that glitters…is gold, in this case! Our final edition of Virtual Art in Focus this fall, takes a look at this extraordinary print by Maria Katherina Prestel. Prestel has only recently been rediscovered by print historians, as she worked for her husband, Johann Prestel, and his initials appear rather than hers on many of the works.
Join us at 1pm on December 12 on thequicklive.com for informal conversation about this work, led by Curator of Education Michelle DiMarzo, PhD. This work is included in the exhibition Ink and Time: European Prints from the Wetmore Collection (Bellarmine Hall Galleries, September 12 – December 21, 2024). Click here for more information about the exhibition.
Image: Maria Katharina Prestel after Jacopo Ligozzi, The Triumph of Truth over Envy, 1780, etching and aquatint in brown and ochre ink, touched with gold leaf. Courtesy of the Wetmore Collection, Connecticut College.

As we move closer to the holiday season, there’s still plenty of great exhibitions and events to discover on the Connecticut Art Trail — and just a couple of months left to complete your Passport-Journal! If you’re looking to get a head start on your holiday shopping, our popular buy one, get one deal on Passport-Journals will return on November 15th. Member museums will continue to sell 2024 Passports until they run out, or until the start of the new year.

Read our latest newsletter to learn about the latest news and upcoming events on the Connecticut Art Trail, including:

• The reopening of a sculpture garden at The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art
• Museum honors for the Housatonic Museum of Art and Mattatuck Museum
• A combined Giving Tuesday effort among the Hill-Stead Museum, New Britain Museum of American Art, and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
• Featured family activities including Colonial Toys and Crafts at the Greenwich Historical Society, Fun with Printmaking at the Fairfield University Art Museum, and A Sandra Boynton Christmas at the American Mural Project
• A featured permanent collection item at a Connecticut Art Trail site: Childe Hassam’s The Mill Pond, Cos Cob at the Bruce Museum

In conjunction with the Bruce exhibition Every Leaf & Twig: Andrew Wyeth’s Botanical Imagination, curator William L. Coleman will share an insider perspective on an underrecognized aspect of the work of a widely loved artist. Wyeth’s place-based practice in the immediate environs of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and Port Clyde, Maine included a fascinating array of watercolors and drawings devoted to individual specimens of plant life that he responded to freely across the seasons. In conjunction with the artist’s surviving painting materials and correspondence and in dialogue with the dramatic changes Wyeth’s country has faced in recent years, these remarkable creations speak to a model of sensitive engagement with the natural world that could not be timelier.

Artist and visual storyteller Arvia Walker, whose altar entitled “Sacred” is on view in the exhibition, will lead a discussion on the history and significance of altar-making in AfroDiasporic cultures, followed by a hands-on workshop. Space is limited, and supplies will be provided!

As the changing leaves paint Connecticut’s landscapes in vibrant hues of red, orange, and gold, we’re reminded of the transformative power of nature — and its everlasting ability to inspire us. This autumn, come visit the museums and cultural sites on the Connecticut Art Trail to witness the changes taking place everywhere from artists’ homesteads to award-winning galleries. Whether you view the awe-inspiring landscapes of famous artists or the thought-provoking pieces of contemporary talents, you’re sure to find your own inspiration. 

Read our latest newsletter to learn about the latest news and upcoming events on the Connecticut Art Trail, including:

• A profile of the Eastern Art Gallery
• Information on the Governor’s Art Awards taking place at the Five Points Arts Center
• The Art Museum at the University of Saint Joseph seeking public input on a new acquisition
• How the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art helped the Yale University School of Art earn a high ranking in a prestigious publication
• Featured family activities at the New Britain Museum of American Art, Lyme Art Association, and Fairfield University Art Museum

If you currently have a Connecticut Art Trail Passport-Journal, you only have a few months left to visit all 24 sites on the Trail and be eligible for our grand prize giveaway! We’ll have more information shortly on Passport-Journal availability for 2025.

Family Day: Crafting Sweet Treats
Join us on Saturday, June 1st in the Quick Center for the Arts, Walsh Gallery for a Family Day inspired by the exhibition Peter Anton: Just Desserts!
Sculptor Peter Anton creates over-sized, hyper-realistic sculptures of candies, donuts, ice cream bars, and other mouth-watering treats. In this Family Day, kids ages 4-10 get to let their imaginations run wild as they build their own unique desserts out of clay, and decorate special dessert boxes to hold them!
Each session will begin promptly at 12:30 p.m. and again at 2:30 p.m.

Peter Anton, Dark Bar Chaos, 2021, mixed media. ©2023 Peter Anton

Join us from 6:30-8:30p.m. on Friday, September 20 in the Walsh Gallery and Quick Center for the Arts’ Lobby for the opening reception of our new exhibition Sacred Space: A Brandywine Workshop and Archives Print Exhibition, which will be on view through December 21 (for more information on the exhibition, click here).
In addition to our usual wine and cheese, the opening reception will feature poetry reading by Iyaba Ibo Mandingo.
To register for the opening conversation with guest curator Juanita Sunday and nico w. okoro, please click here. The lecture will be followed by a movement performance by Lauren Horn.

Image: Mikel Elam, Veil, 2019, offset lithograph, screenprint. Partial gift of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives and Museum Purchase with funds from the Black Art Fund, 2022 (2022.17.13) © Mikel Elam

Join us to celebrate the opening of Ink and Time: European Prints from the Wetmore Collection on Thursday, September 26! Exhibition curator Michelle DiMarzo, PhD, will present an opening lecture at 5 p.m. in Bellarmine Hall’s Diffley Board Room.

About the Exhibition: This exhibition presents a group of woodcuts, engravings, and etchings from the late 15th through late 18th centuries drawn from the Wetmore Collection at Connecticut College. The collection was assembled in the early 20th century by New London, CT native Fanny Wetmore, and bequeathed to the College in 1930.
Although little is known of Wetmore herself, her collecting activities place her within a tradition dating back to the rise of printmaking in early modern Europe. The surging production of prints by the beginning of the 16th century represented a sea change for both artists and consumers. For artists, prints provided additional revenue, increased their personal fame, and offered greater latitude for experimentation outside the traditional patronage structure. For consumers, prints represented access to visual art on an unprecedented scale; even those who would never have been able to commission an independent work from a great artist could now readily obtain an engraving or an etching. Prints were easily transported, could be pasted up on walls or into albums, and even large collections of them took up relatively little room. And, with the rise of reproductive printmaking, even geographically distant or physically inaccessible artworks could be added to the collector’s “paper museum.”

This exhibition is the second in the Museum’s history to have been co-curated with Fairfield University students, and has been supported by generous funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Learn more at the website here. To register for the livestream of this event, click here.

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait Etching at a Window, 1648, etching, drypoint, and burin. Courtesy of the Wetmore Collection, Connecticut College