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Day Art Tours
Women's Committee of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Day Art Tours 2008.
TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2008
Institute of Contemporary Art
Isabella Gardner Museum
Boston, Massachusetts
$120, $110 members (all inclusive)
You are invited to experience the juxtaposition of the new and the old with our spring visit to the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. The ICA is the first art museum to be built in Boston in nearly 100 years and is the new facility for the Institute, which has been on the cutting edge of art for the past 70 years. The interplay of the building with the ocean is an exhibit within itself. We will have a guided tour to fully experience the nuances of this remarkable contemporary edifice.
Lunch will be served at the award-winning Top of the Hub restaurant on the 52nd floor of the Prudential Building. In addition to salad, desert, and beverage, you will have a choice of pan-seared Atlantic salmon fillet, grilled breast of chicken, or a vegetarian selection of wild mushroom lasagna. Please indicate your choice on the registration form.
Our afternoon visit to the Isabella Stuart Gardner museum will provide a contrast to the cutting-edge art of the ICA. In 1917, Isabella Stuart Gardner felt that “our greatest need …was art…in our very young country”. She set out to meet that need by assembling one of the nation’s finest collections of art. The three floors of galleries, surrounded by a garden courtyard blooming with life in all seasons, reflect a visionary of her time. A docent-led tour will emphasize the highlights of this collection.
For more information visit www.gardnermuseum.org and www.icaboston.org.
BUS TIMES
7:00 a.m. Depart West Hartford
7:30 a.m. Depart East Hartford
3:30 p.m. Depart Boston
THURSDAY APRIL 10, 2008
Springtime at the Metropolitan Museum
New York, New York
$77; $67 members (includes transportation, admission, and gratuities)
There are so many exciting special exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum this April, that it will be difficult to see them all in one day.
Gustave Courbet, the first full retrospective of the French artist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) in 30 years, presents some 100 works by this pioneering figure in the history of modernism. A selection of 19th-century photographs included in the exhibition reveals the influence of photography on Courbet's oeuvre.
Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) painted some of the most influential landscapes in Western art. In Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions, nature is viewed "through the glass of time" and endowed with a poetic quality that has been admired by painters as different as Constable, Turner, and Cézanne. This will be the first exhibition to examine the landscapes of this great painter, bringing together over 40 paintings, ranging from his early, lyrical, Venetian-inspired pastorals to his grandly structured and austere works.
Jasper Johns: Gray will examine the use of the color gray by the American artist Jasper Johns (b. 1930) between the mid-1950s and the present. It will assemble more than 130 works from American and international collections, and will be the first to focus on this important thematic and formal thread in Johns' career. It will include some of the artist's best-known works, such as Canvas, Gray Target, Jubilee, 0 through 9, No, Diver, and The Dutch Wives, as well as works from the artist's Catenary series and new paintings never before exhibited.
A walk to a nearby restaurant for lunch on your own will let you enjoy springtime in New York. A list of restaurants will be provided.
BUS TIMES
7:00a.m. Depart East Hartford
7:30 a.m. Depart West Hartford
4:30 p.m. Depart New York
THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2008
Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy
Yale University Art Gallery
Yale Center for British Art
New Haven, Connecticut
$92; $82 members (all inclusive)
A day-full of art in the Elm City promises to be a feast for the eye and mind.
Making It New is a first, devoted exclusively to the influential roles played by Sara and Gerald Murphy in shaping 20th century arts and letters as focal members of the “Lost Generation” that flowered in France during the ‘20s and ‘30s. Gerald Murphy’s seven extant modernist paintings, foreshadowing Pop Art, form the centerpiece of this major exhibition that includes numerous artworks by friends like Picasso, Leger, Braque, Gris, and Man Ray. As an interdisciplinary undertaking, also featured is an extensive collection of letters, photographs, home movies, audio reminiscences, etc., connecting this charismatic couple to their frequent Riviera visitors, such literati as the Fitzgeralds, MacLeishes, and Hemingways. We will have a docent-led tour.
Following our tour we’ll walk across the street to Scoozzi Trattoria and Wine Bar for a delectable Italian luncheon. In addition to organic field green salad and dessert, we will be able to choose from a menu of five different entrees.
After lunch we’ll walk next door to the Yale Center for British Art where we’ll be able to view three very exciting exhibits. British Orientalist Painting-1830-1925 explores the response of British artists to the cultures and landscapes of the Near and Middle East in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Pearls to Pyramids-British Visual Culture and the Levant-1600-1830 looks at the British cultural interchange with the Near and Middle East through trade, tourism, archaeological exploration, and military interest. A New World: England’s First View of America features nearly one hundred watercolors by the Elizabethan artist, John White, which constitute the only surviving visual record of England’s first settlement in North America.
For more information visit www.yale.edu/museums/index.html.
BUS TIMES
8:45 a.m. Depart East Hartford
9:15 a.m. Depart West Hartford
4:00 p.m. Depart New Haven
TUESDAY, MAY 6, 2008
Spanish Art Then and Now
El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III
Antonio Lopez Garcia
Museum of Fine Art
Boston, Massachusetts
$90; $80 members (includes transportation, gratuities, admission, and audio guides)
The ground breaking El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III examines a fascinating period (1598-1621) in Spanish painting and art featuring the late works of El Greco and the early paintings of Velazquez. Discover the masterpieces of Philip III’s court and the artists who flourished in his reign. The art produced at and for the court reflected Philip’s “new style of grandeur” where gala celebrations, elaborate religious fiestas, building campaigns, picture collecting, recreation, and above all travel, were the order of the day. Self-guided headphones will be provided.
Little known outside of Spain, Antonio Lopez Garcia is one Madrid’s preeminent realist painters. The MFA has assembled approximately sixty paintings, drawings, and sculpture that demonstrate his ability as a versatile realist. His subjects range from personal portraits and landscapes to still life scenes, generally taken from life in or near his native Tomelloso or Madrid where he resides and works.
Lunch will be on your own, either at the Galleria Café, Courtyard Café, or Bravo, which strongly recommends advance reservations at (617) 369-3474.
For more information visit www.mfa.org.
BUS TIMES
8:15 a.m. Depart West Hartford
8:45 a.m. Depart East Hartford
3:30 p.m. Depart MFA
WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 2008
Historical & Architectural Tour
Ellis Island
The Tenement Museum
New York, New York
$143; $133 members (all inclusive)
Join us for a special day of history, ferries, dining, and camaraderie! Ellis Island processed the greatest tide of incoming humanity in our nation’s history. Nearly 12 million landed here in their search for freedom of speech, religion and, economic opportunity. Our host and guide is Tom Bernardin, whose association with Ellis Island began in 1978 as a National Park Service ranger. Tom is a thirty year resident of Manhattan, and he provides a memorable, interesting, fun, comfortable, and informative look back to our enlightening past. We will lunch at the museum prior to our ferry ride back to Manhattan. Please indicate on the registration form if a vegetarian meal is required.
Continuing with our theme of history today, we have found a little known museum celebrating the transition that early Americans made upon beginning their new lives here in the United States. We will tour a “living history” home of the Confino family originating from the region that is now Greece. A costumed interpreter, circa 1916, will welcome us as though we were newly arrived in the United States and lead us through an example of what our ancestors experienced in adapting to life in America! Please note that this trip is not handicapped accessible.
For more information visit www.ellisisland.com; www.tenement.org.
BUS TIMES
6:30 a.m. Depart East Hartford
7:00 a.m. Depart West Hartford
5:00 p.m. Depart NYC
TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2008
“Gilded Age” in the Berkshires
Naumkeag & Chesterwood
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
$85; $95 members (all inclusive)
Take a walk back in time to the “Gilded Age” in the beautiful Berkshire Mountains. Our day begins at Naumkeag, the summer “cottage” of prominent New York attorney, Joseph Choate. We will tour the forty-four room, shingle-style house filled with original furniture, ceramics, and artwork collected from America, Europe, and the Far East. Also included is a self-guided tour of the famous terraced gardens and landscaped grounds first designed in the late 1880’s by Nathan Barrett, transformed and expanded between 1926 and 1956 by Fletcher Steele and Mabel Choate. If Mother Nature cooperates, we may have timed this properly to view their beautiful collection of Tree Peonies. The most outstanding feature of the landscape is Steele’s Blue Steps, a series of deep blue fountain pools flanked by four flights of stairs climbing up a gentle hillside and overhung by birch trees.
Our day continues a short distance away at the 1898 country estate of famous sculptor and landscape designer, Daniel Chester French, the creator of more than 100 public monuments including the seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C and the Minute Men in Concord, MA. We will begin with a catered, boxed lunch under a tent on the lovely grounds. Lunch will feature your choice of roast beef, turkey breast, or vegetable sandwich on a sourdough baguette, Mediterranean couscous, fruit cup, and brownie. Please indicate your choice on the reservation form. We will then tour the artist’s elegantly furnished home, his studio filled with his tools and models, and the Barn Gallery, which showcases a portion of what is probably the largest collection of work by any American sculptor. Last but not least, we will enjoy a self-guided walk through the formal gardens and grounds.
BUS TIMES
7:30am Depart East Hartford
8:00am Depart West Hartford
4:00pm Depart Stockbridge
For more information please email: Amy Redfield or call (860) 838-4141
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