Calendar of Events

Presented in celebration of the exhibition By Her Hand, this comic opera in four scenes tells the story of two sorceresses and their competition to own the body and soul of the warrior Ruggiero. Written by Italian composer, singer, and poet Francesca Caccini (1587–1640), a contemporary of Artemisia Gentileschi. For information and tickets, visit ctlyricopera.org.

*Opera is preceded at 1pm by a docent-led tour of By Her Hand. The tour is free with admission to either the opera or the museum. Tour attendees will be asked to present their opera or general admission tickets. Space is limited and registration is strongly encouraged.

Eavesdrop on Christina Forrer in conversation with contemporary poet and fairy tale writer Sabrina Orah Mark, whose imaginative tales describe our fears, much like Forrer’s visual narratives in her tapestries. Free virtual program. 

Image: Christina Forrer, Sepulcher, 2021. Wool, cotton and linen. 97 in. x 162 in. © Christina Forrer; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York, and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago. Photo: Joshua White

1pm Gallery talk with curator Oliver Tostmann
2pm Sunday Serenades Concert with Hartford Symphony

This performance by the Hartford Symphony chamber musicians takes inspiration from two artists on view, Artemisia Gentileschi and Alice Neel, who were making art four hundred years apart. Hear musical works by female composers spanning four centuries, including Isabella Leonarda, Fanny Mendelssohn, Lili Boulanger, and Kaija Saariaho.

Tickets: $30 each; $25 for HSO subscribers and Wadsworth members. For tickets and information, visit hartfordsymphony.org or call (860) 987-5900.

Image: Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, 1620-25. Oil on canvas. Venice Fondazione Musei Civici, Palazzo Ducale on long-term loan from a private collection. Photo by Dominique Provost Art Photography – Bruges, Belgium

The Sunday Serenades Chamber Music Series is made possible, in part, by the Saunders Foundation Music Endowment at the Wadsworth Atheneum and Nancy D. Grover in honor of Leonid Sigal, Concertmaster, Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

This program is postponed to Tuesday, April 19. 
In advance of the Pennington Lecture, join poet and English professor Antoinette Brim-Bell and a panel of faculty and students from Capital Community College for an open discussion of Sarah Lewis’s book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. Free with admission.

The Sunday Serenades Chamber Music Series is made possible, in part, by The Saunders Foundation Music Endowment at the Wadsworth Atheneum and Nancy D. Grover in honor of Leonid Sigal, Concertmaster, Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

5pm gallery viewing & reception
6:30pm conversation
The American artist Tony Smith occupies an important place in the history of twentieth-century art and design. Best known for his large-scale sculptures—inventive polygonal forms made of steel, most painted black—Smith left behind a body of work that continues to defy easy classification and whose fertile breadth is yet to be fully explored.

The Wadsworth Atheneum’s decisive role in the development of Tony Smith’s artistic career serves as the historical context for a conversation between the art historian and curator James Voorhies and artists Tom Burr and Torkwase Dyson who, in separate bodies of work, have referenced Smith’s art and the modernist ideologies out of which it evolved. Matrix: On the Art of Tom Burr, Torkwase Dyson, and Tony Smith will inaugurate a new series of nomadic programs called “In Dialogue,” presented by the Tony Smith Foundation, which is committed to placing the legacy of the artist in context and in conversation with the contemporary arts.

Join us in the galleries before the event to view a selection of works by Tony Smith and the collection of abstract expressionist paintings donated to the Wadsworth by the artist in 1967. Free and open to the public with required registration. Learn more about our theater vaccination requirements.

Presented in partnership with the Tony Smith Foundation.

Join the Hartford Gay Men’s Chorus for their 10th Anniversary Concert Singing from the Heart of Hartford. For the past decade, HGMC has journeyed through songs from Broadway, popular artists, holidays music, and classics from many cultures and decades. The evening features some of the chorus’s favorite songs in a celebratory performance to remember. $30-45. For tickets and information, visit www.hgmc.org.

Join the Hartford Gay Men’s Chorus for their 10th Anniversary Concert Singing from the Heart of Hartford. For the past decade, HGMC has journeyed through songs from Broadway, popular artists, holidays music, and classics from many cultures and decades. The evening features some of the chorus’s favorite songs in a celebratory performance to remember. $30-45. For tickets and information, visit www.hgmc.org.

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. 

Stigmatized by its associations with cannabis, flameworked glass has been almost completely left out of the broader discussion surrounding the contemporary glass art movement. Recent public policy shifts and greater inclusivity within the glass art community are turning the tide, bringing long-overdue recognition to the contributions of flameworkers. Brandy Culp, curator of Fired Up: Glass Today, moderates a discussion between artists David Colton, Kim Thomas, Carmen Lozar, and Curator of Postwar and Contemporary Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass Susie Silbert about the history, artistry, and ever–advancing technology of flameworking to shed light on this historically under-appreciated technique. Listen as some of the major voices in contemporary flameworking reflect on the art form’s journey from scientific laboratories and underground studios to the mainstream art world. Free with required registration.