New Britain Museum of American Art

Over the years, I have driven to Connecticut numerous times to explore its remarkable collection of art museums and historic houses. Connecticut is particularly rich in places where art, architecture, and history come together, and these became trips I enjoyed making on my own. The New Britain Museum of American Art was one of those discoveries.

Founded from collections begun by the New Britain Institute, the museum has the distinction of being the first museum in the country devoted exclusively to American art. Its collection spans centuries, allowing visitors to follow the changing American experience through the work of its artists.

The galleries include everything from early portraits and Hudson River School landscapes to American Impressionism, Modernism, and contemporary art. Works by artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, and many others make it possible to move through different periods of American history simply by walking from gallery to gallery.

That is one of the things I have always enjoyed about visiting art museums. A painting can be much more than something beautiful hanging on a wall. Landscapes show us how people once viewed the country around them. Portraits preserve faces, clothing, status, and personalities. Later works reflect changing ideas about cities, industry, race, immigration, politics, and everyday American life. Art becomes another way of reading history.

The experience at New Britain begins outside, where sculpture is incorporated into the grounds and architecture. Inside, the galleries continue that conversation, bringing together works created across different periods but all connected by the museum’s focus on American art.

These solo drives through Connecticut gave me the freedom to stop at museums and historic houses that caught my interest and spend as much time as I wanted exploring them. The New Britain Museum of American Art was one of those places.  Here is a museum I might have driven past had I not deliberately gone looking for what Connecticut had preserved.

For me, that is what Curated History is about. Someone has chosen what to collect, preserve, study, and place before us. Then we can walk through those collections and discover the stories for ourselves.