LEGACY FOR THE FUTURE

WADSWORTH ATHENEUM MUSEUM OF ART

Winter Antiques Show at the Park Avenue Armory

January 22, 2016–January 31, 2016

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is honored to have been featured as the loan exhibition at the 2016 Winter Antiques Show. Legacy for the Future: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art paid tribute to the diversity and forward-thinking vision of the museum’s collection, with highlights that ranged from antiquities and Baroque masterworks to Hudson River School landscapes and contemporary sculpture. The exhibition was on view during the Winter Antiques Show, January 22-31, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

The exhibition title was adapted from a 1936 public lecture given in New York City by former museum director A. Everett “Chick” Austin Jr.: “For we must have the great things of the past to enjoy and to study, but with that valuable experience and pleasure as guide and criterion, we must surely seek to live in the present and to try to create the new forms which are to be our legacy to the future.”

Thanks to the enormous gifts of predecessors, the Wadsworth Atheneum’s collection is brimming with pivotal works. It was the first museum in the United States to purchase works by Caravaggio, Frederic Church, Joseph Cornell and Salvador Dalí, and was the first to exhibit major surveys of works by Italian Baroque masters, Surrealists and Picasso. Highlights of the collection include a strong holding of Baroque masterpieces, such as Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Self-Portrait as a Lute Player,” and a vital collection of contemporary art, including significant works by Ellsworth Kelly, George Segal, Kiki Smith and Kara Walker.

The Wadsworth Atheneum completed a major, five-year, $33 million renovation in 2015, restoring the museum campus to its historical splendor and reinstalling major collections of Post-War and Contemporary art, as well as European art and decorative arts. Roberta Smith of The New York Timesproclaimed the effort, “a Masterpiece of Renovation,” and Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe lauded the results as, “stunningly deft,” and, “wonderful.” The museum’s revived facilities and programming were brilliantly featured through the objects presented in Legacy for the Future.

In January 2016 the Winter Antiques Show celebrated its 62nd year in as America’s most distinguished art and design fair, with 73 specialists in American, English, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts exhibiting exceptional objects from Antiquity through the 1960s, all vetted for authenticity.

Loan Exhibition Curator Lectures
Wadsworth Atheneum curators delivered lectures about the museum’s history and collections at the Winter Antiques Show. Those lectures were:

  • Saturday, January 23, 2pm
    MATRIX Mash-Up: Contemporary Artists and Storied Collections
    Patricia Hickson, Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art
  • Sunday, January 24, 2pm
    The Atheneum Goes for Baroque: In the Vanguard of Collecting Italian Baroque Paintings
    Oliver Tostmann, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art
  • Monday, January 25, 2pm
    Wisdom Begins in Wonder: The Cabinet of Art & Curiosities
    Linda Roth, Senior Curator and Charles C. and Eleanor Lamont Cunningham Curator of European Decorative Arts
  • Tuesday, January 26, 2pm
    Benefactors and Their Buildings: The Distinctive Architecture of the Wadsworth Atheneum
    Eugene Gaddis, William G. Delana Archivist and Curator of the Austin House
  • Thursday, January 28, 2pm
    Nature Made Strange: Inventing the American Landscape
    Erin Monroe, The Robert H. Schutz, Jr. Assistant Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture
  • Friday, January 29, 2pm
    Cellophane, Spectacle, and Sex: The Theatrical Impulse in American Art
    Robin Jaffee Frank, Chief Curator and Krieble Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture

Winter Antiques Show Honorary Host Committee

Honorary Chairs
Mr. and Mrs. David W. Dangremond

Grand Patrons
Veronica Alvarez
Duffield Ashmead, IV and Eric D. Ort
Susan R. Chandler
Mr. and Mrs. David W. Dangremond
Vincent J. Dowling, Jr.
Mary Peyser Gibbons
Drs. Marian Kellner and Timothy McLaughlin
Henry and Sharon Martin

Connoisseurs
The Cheryl Chase and Stuart Bear Family Foundation
Augustus W. E. Dangremond
Samuel P. C. Dangremond
Marianne S. Donahue
Jared and Clare Edwards
Robert S. Frank and Robin Jaffee Frank
Laura R. Harris
Karen Ann Kelleher
Lee G. Kuckro
Linda and David Roth
Susan and Joel Rottner
Mr. and Mrs. Hy J. Schwartz
Karen Cronin Wheat and John H. P. Wheat

Collectors
Susan and Rick Copeland
Lily deJongh Downing and David Yudain
Pam and Peter Flaherty
Alva G. Greenberg
Kelly Jarvis
Irving and Marguerite Kuznetzow
Dr. Leena K. Langeland
Jim Lyon
Kathy Marr
Mrs. Elliott B. Pollack
Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Smith, Jr.
Linda Bland Sonnenblick
Frank Travis and Sharon M. Rizikow
Marie-Claire and Jean-Pierre van Rooy
Barbara G. Ward and Thomas P. Ward
Henry M. Zachs

Donors
Mrs. Mary Crary
Mr. and Mrs. William V. Philip
Marguerite and Robert Rose

Images (left to right):
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, The Duchesse de Polignac Wearing a Straw Hat, 1782, Oil on canvas, The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, acquired in honor of Kate M. Sellers, Eighth Director of the Wadsworth Atheneum, 2000–2003, 2002.13.1; Birdcage, c. 1740-50, German, Meissen Porcelain Factory, Hard-paste porcelain, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.1247; Elie Nadelman, Dancer, 1918, Cherry and mahogany, The Philip L. Goodwin Collection, Gift of James L. Goodwin, Henry Sage Goodwin, and Richmond L. Brown, 1958.224; Ellsworth Kelly, Red Orange (Maya), 1959, Oil on canvas, Gift of Susan Morse Hilles, 1992.11