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{"id":6441,"date":"2012-10-30T15:20:01","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T19:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=6441"},"modified":"2012-10-30T15:20:01","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T19:20:01","slug":"hidden-gem-in-hartford-the-wadsworth-athenaeum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2012\/10\/hidden-gem-in-hartford-the-wadsworth-athenaeum.html","title":{"rendered":"Hidden gem in Hartford: the Wadsworth Athenaeum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Before the storm hit, Ratty and I visited the Wadsworth Athenaeum<\/a>, a really terrific art museum in Hartford, CT. The selection is great: Dali, Degas, Chagall, an unusual Munch landscape, a fun painting of \u201cGossiping Women\u201d by none other than Goya, etc. There are little delights like a porphyry bathtub from ancient Rome, an ostrich ewer made from an ostrich egg, and for some reason a stuffed gar. There are depictions of scenes and people I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve seen before in art: a statue of Sappho, an intense statue of two women giving the thumbs-down to a condemned gladiator in the arena, a painting of \u201cThe Disenchantment of Bottom,\u201d another of a Christian Science reading room, a sculpture of a daddy faun dandling his little son faun on his knee.<\/p>\n

The big gallery on the first floor is especially well-curated. Lots of big, strange pictures, arranged by instinct rather than by chronology. There\u2019s a sublime \u201cMystic Marriage of St. Catherine\u201d by Bassano, in which none of the sharp-featured characters look at the \u201ccamera\u201d; the painting has a humility and tenderness, a kind of low-rent atmosphere, which I loved. There\u2019s a striking, sunny and scary illustration by Joseph Wright of Derby of Aesop\u2019s fable of \u201cThe Old Man and Death\u201d\u2013in fact, maybe I was just in a Halloween mood, but I felt like you could put together a terrific exhibit of spooky art here. I\u2019d include a couple of abstract works, like Graham Sutherland\u2019s \u201cPalm Palisades,\u201d in which palm trees become spiked clubs, and the one with the gray slats with shivery red light shining through. (I didn\u2019t get the artist\u2019s name for that one.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just great stuff here. Cranach the Elder\u2019s \u201cFeast of Herod,\u201d with these terrific knowing, cat-eyed faces; an old woman telling scary stories to her grandkids; Gustave Dore\u2019s \u201cVirgin of the Apocalypse\u201d; a soft, longing, very sensitive portrait of a \u201cBoy with a Hat\u201d by Michael Sweerts.<\/p>\n

Admission was $10 for a non-student adult. Highly recommended. We walked until we were footsore and still hadn\u2019t seen quite all of the museum\u2019s gems, but we felt totally satisfied because, again, the museum is really well set up for browsing. You see a really wide range of artwork even if you stay on the first floor.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"