Overnight trip to Hartford & New Haven
Puritan but not Puritanical: Art & Architecture in Hartford & New Haven

Art Seminar Group will visit Hartford & New Haven, Connecticut for two days of superb art and architecture. Two of America’s oldest towns, Hartford & New Haven were settled in 1636 and 1638, respectively, by English Puritans whose interests, in addition to work and faith, included learning, literature, music and the visual arts as well as good government and town planning. We are very fortunate to be traveling again with architectural historian Steven Horsch and art historian Brian Allen who know this area intimately and will guide us on our foray to New England. After a short flight to Bradley Airport, serving the Hartford area, we will devote our first day to Hartford, where we will visit the Wadsworth Atheneum, the oldest public museum in the country and Hartford’s crown jewel; known especially for its cutting edge exhibitions and fine collection of Hudson River School paintings. We will also visit the Atheneum’s largest art object, the former home of the legendary and innovative “Chick” Austin, the museum’s director from 1927 to 1944. Modeled on a grand 16th century villa near Venice, the house, 86 feet wide and only 18 feet deep, is decorated in spectacular and varied styles. In the 1930s it was a gathering place for leaders of the international art world.  If time permits, we will tour the State Capitol building, an 1879 wedding cake of a building known as the world’s “most beautiful ugly building”. Then we are off to New Haven to check-in at our hotel, The Study at Yale, followed by a group dinner. Thursday will be devoted to New Haven and include tours of the Yale Center for British Art, housed in an elegant, brutalist, 1977 building by Louis Kahn which completed a major restoration in 2016 and houses America’s finest collection of British art; the Yale University Art Gallery (three historic structures, each of architectural interest, one by Louis Kahn in modernist style, all open and renovated) with a new roof-top sculpture garden and a fine encyclopedic collection from ancient to the contemporary. Our day will conclude with a tour of the art and architecture on the Yale campus and a tour of the New Haven town green.   

Members only; trip description and reply form to be distributed following the release of the Fall newsletter.