About Us:
The sheer quality and range of fine and decorative arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum place it among the dozen greatest art museums in the United States. Its world-renowned collections include Old Master paintings, modernist masterpieces, 19th-century French and Impressionist paintings, Meissen and Sèvres porcelains, costumes and textiles, American furniture and decorative arts of the Pilgrim Century through the Gilded Age, and the vanguard of contemporary art. The Wadsworth Atheneum is named for its founder, the arts patron and philanthropist Daniel Wadsworth (1771-1848), and after the Athenaeum in Rome (itself named for Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom). Established in 1842, the Wadsworth Atheneum is Americaâ?Ts oldest public art museum, preceding the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston by three decades. It was the first American museum to acquire works by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Frederic Church, Salvador DalÃ, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Balthus, and Joseph Cornell. As it has always done, the museum collects work by contemporary artists in a variety of media.
Where we're located:
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
600 Main St.
Hartford, CT 06103