Sol LeWitt’s “Wall Drawing #352,” 1980 Credit Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
In 1844, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art’s inaugural exhibition included Thomas Cole’s “Mt. Etna From Taormina,” completed the year before. Two years later, the fledgling institution purchased Frederic Edwin Church’s first painting, the brand-new “Hooker and Company Journeying Through the Wilderness From Plymouth to Hartford, in 1636.”
Now an encyclopedic museum with a collection of 50,000 items, the Atheneum has maintained its commitment to show and acquire contemporary art.
There are 70 works on view by a roster of eminent artists, including Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. Some of the pieces haven’t been shown in decades; others have never been exhibited.
Making its debut is Tony Smith’s “New Piece,” a dramatically distorted cubic form from 1966. The sculpture is on view in the Huntington Gallery, which is devoted to postwar art.
“New Piece” is surrounded by seven paintings that Smith donated to the Atheneum in 1967. They include one of Barnett Newman’s “zip” paintings, “Onement II,” with its vertical brick-red stripe slicing through a scarlet field; Mark Rothko’s 1949 “Untitled,” an arrangement of abstract forms that foreshadows his iconic imagery of the 1950s; and Clyfford Still’s “Number 5,” a vivid yellow canvas with splashes of color that seem to leap off its surface.
Its continuing Matrix series, which has presented solo exhibitions by more than 170 cutting-edge artists, marks its 40th anniversary this year.
And this weekend, the museum is opening two permanent galleries dedicated to contemporary art. As part of a five-year, $33 million renovation scheduled to conclude in the fall, the galleries — covering more than 7,000 square feet — have been refurbished and reinstalled with significant objects from the collection.