Tag: Wadsworth Atheneum

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The Chick Austin Years: a Window into Hartford’s Cultural Legacy and Potentiality

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Through what mechanism is the cultural landscape of a place understood? What assurances or warnings about its capacity for forward movement have already been issued for those who would listen? How can these insights be of value to those who would later inherit the place?  During the years 1927-1944, Arthur Everett Austin, Jr. stood at the cultural center of a small, conservative city, and called the winds of change to blow through it. As director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut during this period, he served as a nexus point, bringing artists and thinkers from around… read more

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In the RAW: an Alternative for Hartford

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I. Prologue “The past is prologue.” True, but one cannot linger all one’s life over the introduction any more than one can linger too much over the art of the past. …  Such nostalgia only conceals a lack of sympathy with, a lack of knowledge of, or worse, panic over the now.  Art must always struggle to build onto the past, to break it down if necessary, to free itself from convention and rule as to create newly, vigorously, venturesomely with imagination and individuality. (Wagstaff 2-3) ~Sam Wagstaff When engaging my teenaged dance students in movement improvisation, I often encourage… read more