19 Art Destinations in the U.S
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#6 Isabella Stewart The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is something different. A Gardner Museum socialite who attended regular lectures at Harvard after her marriage, Gardner 25 EVANS WAY got the inspiration from time spent BOSTON, MA 02115 in Venice at the Palazzo Barbaro, which had become a kind of ex-pat artist hangout where one could find As beautiful as this faux Venetian James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Palazzo’s intricate interiors are Singer Sargent, and Ralph Curtis. (Moorish, Medieval, Gothic, and Her collection got off to an auspicious Chinese), visitors are inevitably drawn start: Two of her earliest purchases to something it doesn’t have: specif- were Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, Age ically, 2 Rembrandt paintings and a 23 and Titian’s Europa. Gardner lived Vermeer, which were cut out of their in private quarters on the fourth frames and stolen in a bold, daytime floor overseeing the installation of robbery in 1990, by thieves dressed as her constantly growing collection policemen. The Dutch Room displays of paintings, sculptures, and entire the empty frames. The robbers also interiors imported from Europe. scored 5 Degas drawings, a Manet, While we can’t imagine the rooms and others. The unsolved crime is one as lived in in a normal household, we of the biggest art thefts of all time, can imagine Gardner letting Sargent and the Gardner Museum’s way of take over the Gothic Room as a painting keeping the wall warm for the works’ studio one year, or dancers and singers eventual return is both tribute and performing for friends on balconies true-crime story. and in hallways. The collection, which Part of the thrill when visiting has managed to securely hold onto grand, historical revival homes and its Fra Angelico, Benvenuto Cellini, museums is imagining what life was Sandro Botticelli, and Piero della like there. When the site is truly the Francesca paintings, is matched by the artist’s or collector’s home, (such as incredible craftsmanship of its rooms. Frederic Edwin Church’s Olana, say, or The museum is forbidden from sell- even William Randolph Hearst’s castle), ing or acquiring any objects, ever; but we imagine the salons, the dinner par- it didn’t stop the successful organiza- ties, and walking among the beautiful tion from adding a handsome addition objects in our bathrobes. Other re- by Renzo Piano, connected by glass creations are less satisfying: The walkways to the original building, Getty Villa is modeled after Roman which houses performance halls, space ———————— homes but was always meant to house for temporary contemporary exhibi- COURTYARD, ISABELLA STEWART J. Paul Getty’s collection of antiquities tions, and a place for scholars to study GARDNER MUSEUM, BOSTON, MA. down the hill from his real home. Gardner’s library of 7,000 rare books. PHOTO: SEAN DUNGAN 24 25 101ADUS_interior14 BLUES.indd 24-25 8/14/18 2:56 PM #9 Wadsworth the United States. Wadsworth kicked Continuing the architectural off the collection in the beginning Disneyland factor, the museum Atheneum with paintings by John Turnbull, John also boasts one of the first Inter- Singleton Copley, and the Peale family. national Style interiors in the Museum of Art But the museum never rested on its U.S., in the upstairs of the otherwise laurels; it acquired the best collection Neo-Palladian Goodwin House. 600 MAIN STREET of Hudson River School paintings The museum is known for many HARTFORD, CT 06103 anywhere, including Thomas Cole’s firsts: It’s the first American institu- Mount Etna from Taormina and Frederic tion to collect Caravaggio, Anthony Edwin Church’s Hooker and Company van Dyck, Francisco de Zurbarán, The Wadsworth is a major American Journeying through the Wilderness from Paul Gauguin, Joan Miró, Balthus, museum that may be lesser known Plymouth to Hartford in 1636. and Salvador Dalí. It staged the first because of the Latin addendum to its The Wadsworth expanded through- American show on Surrealism and name, which speaks to its founder out the early 20th century with the country’s first ever Pablo Picasso Daniel Wadsworth’s desire to create gifts from Samuel Colt’s widow and retrospective, in 1934. a center for learning. Its iconic, J. P. Morgan that resulted in adding In 2015, a major renovation was castle-like building gives a hint to its Tudor and Renaissance Revival completed, rehanging all of the per- age: Opened in 1844, it’s the oldest buildings. Morgan’s gift included the manent collection. It’s regarded as one continuously operating museum in bulk of his collections in antiquities. of the most successful reconceivings of a museum ever, and its highlight is collection’s decorative-arts collections deface. Ultimately, local artists and the double-height Grand Hall of the and obsession with European painting: the leadership of the Atheneum stood Morgan Memorial building—hung to Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt’s up to the desecration and started to mimic the collection’s 1749 painting incredibly complex and gorgeous stoke a certain fondness in town for by Giovanni Paolo Panini, Interior of The Lady of Shalott from the late 1890s. “the Rocks,” as they became known. a Picture Gallery with the Collection of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, with NEARBY: In 1978, the city of Hartford paintings everywhere. commissioned Minimalist sculptor ———————— OPPOSITE: INSTALLATION VIEW OF Critics note the new layout’s power Carl Andre to create a public pier near THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM MUSEUM throughout to mix less famous works City Hall (on the corner of Main Street OF ART, HARTFORD, CT. with blockbuster pieces like Caravaggio’s and Gold Street, around the corner ABOVE: SOL LEWITT, WALL DRAWING Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, or from the Wadsworth). Andre was at the #1131, “WHIRLS & TWIRLS” (WADSWORTH), even major postwar abstraction pieces peak of his fame for his steel-plate floor 2004, 2004, INK AND PAINT ON WALLS, by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and pieces (you can see them at Dia:Beacon, 18 FT. 9 IN. X 113 FT. 9 IN. THE ELLA GALLUP Barnett Newman, or contemporary p. 42), but for Hartford, he gathered SUMNER AND MARY CAITLIN SUMNER COLLECTION FUND, 2004.12.1 superstars like Kara Walker, Cindy 36 local rocks, arranged them in a triangle, Sherman, and Bill Viola. and called it a day. The piece, titled The most popular painting, Stone Field Sculpture, became a lightning according to staff, is a fusion of the rod in the city: easy to ridicule, easy to 30 31 101ADUS_interior14 BLUES.indd 30-31 8/14/18 2:56 PM #15 Storm King an old farm wall. It’s his biggest work that would later reemerge after visits ever and winds in and around the to Monhegan Island in Maine, as Art Center trees, disappears into a pond, and well as ephemera, like Christmas reappears on the other side for a final cards he made for his family. The 1 MUSEUM ROAD run right into the New York State house also presents strong temporary NEW WINDSOR, NY 12553 Thruway. Isamu Noguchi embedded exhibitions, such as a recent solo show a 40-ton stone at the top of a hill, by up-and-coming painter Mercedes creating a space meant to be played Helnwein and the winner of the first When the owners of the Star Expansion in. And Maya Lin built Wave Field, New York State–sponsored Edward Company—makers of steel fasteners— in which 11 acres of grass covering Hopper Citation for Visual Artists, conceived of their museum, they a former gravel pit seem to roll like Carrie Mae Weems. hoped to build a collection of Hudson ocean waves. (She has said she was Around town you can see the River School paintings. But within inspired by Native American mounds butcher shop that inspired Seven A.M. 5 years of opening the building and around her hometown in Ohio, (now in the Whitney Museum, p. 60); adding more acreage, they found Japanese culture, and 1970s Land the site of the family’s dry-goods store they’d bought 13 David Smith sculp- Art.) Other standout pieces are by where Hopper worked as a teen; and tures—very stern, abstract bronzes Forrest Myers, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Hopper’s gravesite. (The house will and steel assemblages—and a new Louise Bourgeois, Anthony Caro, provide a map.) Halfway between direction was underway. Ursula von Rydingsvard, Kenneth Nyack and Storm King on Route 9W, Eventually the place grew to 500 Snelson, Richard Serra, and Menashe in Haverstraw, you’ll find the house acres, and 2,500 acres were donated Kadishman. he painted in House by the Railroad to New York State to preserve the Storm King is closed for a good part in 1930—it was Hopper’s painting views that are framed by some of the winter, so check the website to of this house that Alfred Hitchcock of the biggest sculptures—a giant, plan ahead. used as a model for the one in Psycho, orange Mark di Suvero; a set of and Terrence Malick used for Days Alexander Libermans inspired by NEARBY: Back down the New York of Heaven. Chartres Cathedral; a 212-foot Robert State Thruway toward New York City Grosvenor built to match the curve is Edward Hopper’s home and studio of the Schunnemunk Mountain ridge in Nyack (82 North Broadway). Once ———————— ALEXANDER LIBERMAN, ILIAD, 1974 –76, a bustling, ship-building place on the beyond. The landscape, left largely PAINTED STEEL, 36 FT. X 54 FT. 7 IN. GIFT natural with native plants, provides Hudson River, Nyack was a perfect OF THE RALPH E. OGDEN FOUNDATION. settings for work of many different laboratory for Hopper’s quiet spaces © THE ALEXANDER LIBERMAN TRUST.