Cultural Icons
Discover the celebrated personalities, historic sites and significant artworks that have left their marks on Connecticut.
When you’re 375 years old, the past informs everything you do. Our arts scene, for instance, features big names from the past who set the stage for the top talents of today. Some of our most important art institutions thrive in our most impressive historic structures. Spring and summer in Connecticut are the perfect seasons to enjoy the arts and explore our magnificent heritage sites. Here, they go hand in hand.
Start at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford. One of Connecticut’s most famous citizen wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, among many other American classics, in one of the state’s most extraordinary homes. His neighbor? Author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As you’ll discover, cultural icons have been influenced by Connecticut for centuries.
Built in 1876 in Haddam, the Tony Award-winning Goodspeed Opera House has long enjoyed international acclaim as the Home of the American Musical. The Victorian structure stages classics along with the country’s best new musicals. See Broadway-bound productions here first.
One of our most unusual historic structures is in East Haddam. The Gillette Castle, home of actor, director and playwright William Gillette (also known as the original Sherlock Holmes), overlooks the Connecticut River. The three-story, 24-room mansion reminiscent of a medieval castle was constructed over five years from local fieldstone. It now anchors one of Connecticut’s most visited state parks.
Clearly, historic does not always mean traditional or playing by the rules. Starting in the late 19th century, Florence Griswold opened her home to a group of painters who would become known as the Lyme Art Colony. Griswold’s boardinghouse hosted the likes of Childe Hassam, Henry Ward Ranger and Willard Metcalf, and became the center of Impressionism in America. Visit the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme to track the evolution of this colorful period.
Established in 1842, Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest continuously operating public art museum in the country. In the 1930s, museum director Chick Austin debuted the nation’s first Surrealist show here, as well as a Picasso exhibition. The first modern museum in the United States has supported avant garde painters, sculptors, playwrights and musicians for decades.
New Britain Museum of American Art
, established in 1903, is the first museum in the country dedicated entirely to American art. More than 10,000 works in the permanent collection include Colonial and Federal portraits, Hudson River School landscapes, Thomas Hart Benton murals and other important American contributions ranging from Social Realism to Pop Art.
Seminal figures of modern art live and work in Connecticut, including Helen Frankenthaler and Jasper Johns. Their spirit of innovation and risk-taking informs the collection at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, another cultural institution that all art aficionados should add to the agenda.
Connecticut’s landscape embraced a stark addition when architect Philip Johnson built his Glass House in New Canaan in 1949. This famous residence, where the architect lived and worked for more than 50 years, is open to the public. Modern architecture flourished during the second half of the 20th century, as a core of imaginative architects from New Canaan, including Elliot Noyes, Marcel Breuer and Landis Gores, influenced a nation of eager designers.
During your tour of Connecticut, make time to see the historic sites and the significant works that have shaped our cultural landscape and inspired the nation.
Ancient Pathways
18,000 years of the region’s Native American and natural history are preserved in one of the area’s most striking contemporary structures. Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center features ethnographic collections as well as commissioned works of art and traditional crafts by Native Americans. Get all the details at www.CTvisit.com.
