New Britain Museum of American Art

New Britain Museum of American Art Review

An important stop for art lovers in a small industrial city 8 mi west of Wethersfield, this museum more than doubled its exhibit space with the opening of a new building in 2006. The 100-year-old museum's collection of more than 5,000 works from 1740 to the present had seriously outgrown the turn-of-the-20th-century house that held it. Among the treasures are paintings by artists of the Hudson River and Ash Can schools; by John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, and others on up through op-art works and sculpture by Isamu Noguchi. Deserving of special note is the selection of Impressionist artists, including Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, and John Henry Twachtman, as well as Thomas Hart Benton's five-panel mural The Arts of Life in America. The museum also has a café, a large shop, and a library of art books.