Calendar of Events

The Wadsworth is pleased to host the season finale performance of the Arazzo Music Festival, a new initiative building community through musical performances here in Connecticut. Join Connecticut cellist and festival director Samuel DeCaprio as he performs an evening of string music in Morgan Great Hall with musicians from across the region. The program centers around Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s String Sextet in D minor “Souvenir de Florence”, Op. 70 (1890). Free with required registration. 

Catalan painter Francisco Ribalta vividly captured religious images at the turn of the seventeenth century, positioning himself as one of the major figures of the early Baroque. Paintings conservator Allen Kosanovich examines an in-process treatment of Ribalta’s The Ecstasy of Saint Francis: The Vision of the Musical Angel (c. 1620–1625), discussing how these efforts address the results of four hundred years of aging and numerous restoration attempts. Free with museum admission. Meet in front of the Museum Shop.

A musical instrument made of glass? Explore the contemporary glass art on view in Fired Up: Glass Today as Vera Meyer performs an informal concert on the glass harmonica, a musical instrument developed by Benjamin Franklin. Free with museum admission. 

5pm gallery viewing, 6pm conversation

Artist Matt Paweski and curator Jared Quinton discuss the new suite of tabletop and wall-mounted works made for the artist’s MATRIX exhibition. Join us in the galleries before the program for a first look at the exhibition. Free with required registration.   

In-person tickets have SOLD OUT. Register for the live stream to attend the lecture via Zoom.

5pm reception, 6pm lecture—In museum & virtual 
Jelani Cobb, PhD, is an expert on how race, politics, history, and popular culture intersect in America. Author of the highly acclaimed book The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress, Cobb also writes about police brutality, voter access, racial discord, and partisan polarization and eloquently explores how the past looms in our contemporary societal landscape and how we can collectively push toward a more equitable America. Jelani Cobb discusses the complex dynamics of race and racism in America, to clarify them and inspire his audience to collective activism with the goal of achieving equity in the form of genuine democracy. He shows us that not only are the levers of justice in our hands, but we can move them in the direction we see fit. 

The Pennington Lecture is presented in honor of the Rev. Dr. James W. C. Pennington and is part of Capital Community College’s Black Heritage Project. The project aims to surface the remarkable history of the first Black church and school for Black children in Hartford through an exhibition on Hartford’s Black community formation (now on view at the college), curriculum in a variety of courses, and programs such as this.  

This lecture is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Capital Community College Foundation and presented as a collaboration between Capital Community College, The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. 

Listen to an informal musical performance in Avery Court by the Hartford-area Oboe Duo Agosto: oboist Ling-Fei Kang and oboist/English hornist Charles Huang. Free with museum admission. 

Listen to an informal musical performance by members of the Hartford-area Azul String Quartet, cellist Pablo Issa and violist Eugenio Figueroa, while you explore the works on view in Morgan Great Hall. Free with museum admission.

In the early sixteenth century, artists in the Low Countries carved intricate miniatures from boxwood as symbols of religious devotion for their wealthy Christian patrons. Today, these carvings produce an uncanny effect on museum visitors—they stop people in their tracks and demand to be remembered.

Why do these tiny treasures from half a millennium ago have such an outsized impact today? Barbara Drake Boehm, The Paul and Jill Ruddock Senior Curator of the Met Cloisters, Emerita, explores the world of these small wonders and ponders their mesmerizing effect. Free with required reservation. 

Presented in partnership with the Design and Decorative Arts Council with additional support provided by the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation Fund at the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Image: Attributed to Adam Dircksz and workshop, Miniature coffin, c. 1500–1530. Boxwood, metal (possibly silver), ink or paint. Gift of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and The Evelyn Bonar Storrs Trust Fund

Entwyned Early Music Ensemble returns to the Wadsworth for an informal program of seventeenth-century music from the Dutch Republic. Enjoy the works on view in Chasing Rembrandt and the nearby Dutch art galleries while listening to the sounds of Rembrandt’s time. Free with admission.

Presented with support from The Saunders Foundation Music Endowment at the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Drop in for an informal performance by Chia-Yu Joy Lu, director of the Chinese music ensembles at Wesleyan University and Smith College, and Flora Gu, Wesleyan University student musician, featuring the erhu (Chinese two-string fiddle) and guzheng (Chinese 21-string zither). As you listen, view artworks from East Asia in the Wadsworth’s collection, including a porcelain “Vault of Heaven” vase dating to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. Free with admission.

Presented with support from The Saunders Foundation Music Endowment at the Wadsworth Atheneum.

”Vault of Heaven” vase (tianqiu ping), Qing Dynasty, Qianlong period (1736–95). Porcelain. Bequest of Elisha E. Hilliard, 1951.321