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The real prize in taking advantage of theConnecticut Art Trail is the chance toexperience a marvelous array of venues,

with the freedom to select and encounter theirobjects at your own pace. Each art collectionalong the Trail has a particular, often idiosyn-cratic artistic enthusiasm at its core, awaitingyour fresh discovery. It is your Art Trail.

With the museums embroidered intoConnecticut’s varied landscape, the Trail cre-ates a perfect add-on to vacation plans, flexibleArt Pass in hand. Since it couples the experi-ence of art with getaways to locations asdiverse as the shoreline beaches and the rollingLitchfield hills, college towns and hamlets thattruly are bucolic, the Art Pass vastly enriches avacation or a day trip. A virtual golden ticket, itenables you to see art "in situ,” in every man-ner of showcase, formal and informal— frompaintings applied directly to door panels ofquirky bohemian enclaves to more moderninstallations gracing sleek contemporary spaces.

Each institution along the Trail bears theindelible stamp of its own history and perspec-tive. Viewed in combination, institutional con-trasts are chatty and engaging. Most grew fromlovingly amassed personal collections (“homesfor art”) that since have become public and areenlarged with new curatorial research and out-reach. Getting to know these cultural personali-

ties up-close and in-person is not only educa-tional, it's half the fun.

One enlightening element about exposure tothese various institutions is the profoundlyhuman character of curatorial scholarship—ringing with stories of friendship and connec-tion, influence and affiliation. Originally a ten-member institutional partnership launched in1995 as the Connecticut Impressionist ArtTrail, the present Art Trail comprises a broad-ened consortium. The expansion sought andsuccessfully gained increased visitation.

One delightful take-away is just how oftenart was, in the context of its own time, consid-ered edgy and challenging. So many ofConnecticut’s original collectors were vision-ary and venturesome. Consider TheodatePope Riddle (1867-1946), who instituted theHill-Stead Museum in Farmington. Thiswealthy and privileged, strong-willed pro-gressive, who refused to accept the confiningexpectations the Gilded Age consigned tothose of her gender, became a practicing archi-tect and an influential art collector. Her friend-ship with Mary Cassatt gave her an insidetrack on the acquisition of gorgeous FrenchImpressionist works which now grace her for-mer home, which she stipulated in her willwas to be preserved as a public museum, withthe proviso that its contents be kept intact and

unchanged. The Hill-Stead Museum thereforeconstitutes a time-capsule of turn-of-the-centu-ry forward-thinking, and challenging goodtaste: among the gleaming dark furniture andposh Oriental rugs, a visitor can find Degaspastels side-by-side with the romantic litho-graphic imaginings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi,landscapes by Claude Monet, and a greatEdouard Manet seascape alone worth the trip.

There is also the example of FlorenceGriswold (1850-1937), the enterprising daugh-ter of a successful ship captain in Old Lyme,Connecticut, who, as family fortunes reversed,scraped together a living as a teacher, mentorand friend to artists, renting out rooms in thefamily mansion to a lively, somewhat bohemiancrew. These globe-trotting, nature-imbibing freethinkers, who included Childe Hassam, WillardMetcalf and Frank DuMond, spent their sum-mers en plein air on the park-like grounds of theGriswold House, which became a de-facto cen-ter of the Lyme Art Colony, the core of thegroup known as the "ConnecticutImpressionists."

Preserved intact (inscribed with an extraor-dinary array of paintings done directly on thewood paneling and doors by Florence's board-

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inghouse artists), Florence’s home is the anchorof the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme.The beautiful Kreible Gallery, added to thegrounds in 2002, creates an up-to-date exhibi-tion space for changing exhibitions, yet themost remarkable aspect of this museum is thatit is maintained within the same natural contextthat inspired the paintings on display—a wonder-ful and informative juxtaposition.In the capital city of Hartford, an Art Pass

holder has access to one of the most compre-hensive museums in the state, the WadsworthAtheneum Museum of Art, founded in 1842 byDaniel Wadsworth, with the distinction ofbeing the oldest public art museum in theUnited States. The collection of nearly 50,000works of art encompasses decorative as well asfine arts. It also houses a rich collection ofAmerican colonial furniture, the Samuel Coltfirearms collection, the Serge Lifar collection ofBallet Russes drawings and costumes and theAmistad collection of African American art. Amuseum that prides itself on a history of col-lecting "contemporary art" from the get-go(Wadsworth bought works by Thomas Colestill wet, right off the artist's studio easel), it isalso the home of MATRIX, a showcase of chal-lenging contemporary art set within the context ofa traditional museum. MATRIX was the first of itskind, a model for such programs nationally.The New Britain Museum of American Art,

founded in 1903, collects only American artists,including the must-see Arts of Life in Americamural by Thomas Hart Benton. Additionally ithas a distinctive collection of graphic arts, andhas energetically embraced contemporary forms.

In each corner of the state—from the urbancenters to picturesque hills to the shoreline andthe magnetic tug of a seafaring past—themuseum trail accents local flavor while provid-ing global perspective. Even the AldrichContemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield man-ages to couch its artists' probing and unconven-tional approaches sensitively into the beautiful

context of a dappledNew England village.The Art Trail also invites trail blazing of

urban sanctuaries for the modern, representedby New Haven's newly renovated and expand-ed Yale University Art Gallery, and, across thestreet, the Yale Center for British Art, thathouses the largest collection of British art out-side the United Kingdom—both designed byacclaimed American modernist architectLouis I. Kahn. Here, the architecture itself cre-ates the ambience, serene and light-filled, aslucid and soul-filling as the mood of perfecttwilight. These museums are works of artthemselves, products of a master's hand, pro-viding a complimentary poetic ambience forexperiencing their cultural treasures and con-sidering the dialogues of modern/contem-porary forms, all awaiting your close encounter.

—Patricia Rosoff

Note: An Art Trail Pass, priced at $25, is avail-able at each of the participating museums, orvia arttrail.org, where a printable brochure isalso accessible.

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Bridgeport Opposite left: The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT. Opposite right:Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT, featuring work by Mary Cassatt.Above: Map of the Connecticut Art Trail, highlighting Art Trail loca-tions across the state. Below: Mattatuck Museum’s 19th CenturyGallery, Waterbury, CT.