New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut

Just off of Interstate 84 in central Connecticut, a turn of the century mansion houses the country's first museum devoted solely to American Art. Founded in 1903, the New Britain Museum of American Art has upheld a rich tradition of presenting some of the most important American artistic achievements.

The museum began as the New Britain Institute, a cultural center with a library, reading room and gathering place for public lectures. In 1901, the center created an art room and began acquiring American art including portraits of local art patrons.

At the turn of the century, New Britain was known for its industry. The cultural center became a conduit for successful businessmen to enrich the community with endowments. One such man, John Butler Talcott, had found overwhelming success in New Britain and passed along some of his fortune to the New Britain Institute in the form of gold bonds.

The gift established the Talcott fund and enabled the center to begin investing in contemporary art, a choice that would gain both monetary and cultural value over time. At the time, European art was much more expensive than American art so under the advice of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the trustees of the New Britain Institute made their first purchases from the Macbeth Gallery, a New York City archive of American art.

The center's collection grew slowly over the next two decades. Then in 1935, a local resident named Grace Judd Landers bequeathed her stone mansion to the institute. The Landers estate bordered Walnut Hill Park and offered one of the most beautiful vistas in the city. The mansion, which had been design by Frederick Law Olmstead, became the permanent home to the center's art collection. In July of 1937, it opened its doors as the Art Museum of the New Britain Institute.

By 1940, the museum changed its name to the New Britain Museum of American Art cementing its role as a presenter of cultural exhibits that focused on American work. The museum's collection grew steadily and in 1953 acquired one of its central pieces, a celebrated five-panel mural series called The Arts of Life in America by Thomas Hart Benton. A decade later, in 1965, the museum set another precedent by establishing the Sanford B.D. Low Memorial Collection of American Illustration. It was the nation's first museum-based illustration collection and today includes 1,460 illustrations that span a century and a half of American art.

The illustration collection and the museum's growing collection was promoted aggressively statewide and across the nation. In 1966, the museum began incorporating educational programs into its operations including gallery talks, lectures and a docent program. Throughout this period the museum acquired a strong sculpture collection and became accredited by the American Association of Museums.

In 2003, the museum celebrated its hundred year anniversary as one of New Britain's foremost cultural assets. Today its permanent works include colonial portraiture, the Hudson River School discipline, American Impressionism, the Ash Can School, and the mural series The Arts of Life in America. The museum's permanent collection now tops 5,000 works of American art: 680 oils, 1,050 drawings, 860 graphics, 160 sculptures, 25 photographs and 1,460 illustrations.

Artists in the permanent works include Thomas Cole, John Singer Sargent, Lee Krasner, Andy Warhol, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Sol LeWitt. The art includes selections of colonial and federal portraits, Nineteenth-century still lifes, Impressionist works, works by American Abstract Artists, Abstract Expressionists, Pop and Op art, Conceptual, Photo-Realism and twentieth-century sculpture.

In addition to its permanent collection, the New Britain Museum of American Art presents innovative exhibits of borrowed pieces from galleries and museums nationwide. The museum also presents on-line exhibits of its permanent works including The Arts of Life in America by Thomas Hart Benton.

Visit the New Britain Museum of art online www.nbmaa.org