The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

On Saturday, January 31, 2015, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, will unveil its reinstalled collections of post-war and contemporary art. Featuring work from 1945 to the present, the collections will be housed in three dedicated galleries that have been newly renovated and refurbished over the past year.

The Wadsworth’s illustrious post-war and contemporary holdings will be divided between the Huntington Gallery, where mid-century abstract painting and sculpture by artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Tony Smith will be displayed; the Hilles Gallery, which will feature works by Robert Rauschenberg, Kara Walker, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and Richard Tuttle; and the Colt building’s mezzanine gallery, where one of Sol LeWitt’s famed wall drawings will be on view as well as works by other minimalists and conceptualists. The LeWitt work was the first wall drawing to enter the museum’s collection and has been off-view to visitors for fifteen years. For the inaugural installation, the drawing will be complemented by a selection of LeWitt sculptures from the Wadsworth’s collection as well as an installation by Tara Donovan.

The reopening and reinstallation also marks the fortieth anniversary of the Wadsworth’s MATRIX series of contemporary art exhibitions. Initially funded in 1974 as an experimental pilot project with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, MATRIX has shown more than 1,000 works of art by over 160 artists, including Kelly, de Kooning,  Sherman, Warhol, LeWitt, and Close. For many celebrated artists, including Tuttle, Barbara Kruger, and Gerhard Richter, their MATRIX show was their first one-person exhibition in the United States. The MATRIX program was originally conceived to help the public garner a better understanding of contemporary art. A genre often thought of as impenetrable, the series uses small-scale exhibitions, lectures, publications, and gallery talks to make contemporary art seen less intimidating. 

The upcoming opening is the first of many pivotal events for the Wadsworth, which has been undergoing a major renovation since 2010. The $33 million project entails renewing 32 galleries and fifteen public spaces to improve the museum experience for visitors. The undertaking also includes the restoration of the Wadsworth’s historic Beaux-Arts Memorial Building and the first complete reinstallation of its European art collection in over twenty years. The Wadsworth’s grand reopening is slated for September 19, 2015.

Founded by Hartford art patron Daniel Wadsworth in 1842, the Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest public art museum in the United States. A luxury once reserved for the wealthy, Wadsworth set out to make art accessible to all social classes. Using his own collection as the foundation, Wadsworth quickly expanded the museum’s holdings, accepting works from Samuel Colt’s wife, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, and financier, J. Pierpont Morgan. Many works remain in the museum’s permanent collection.