The Wadsworth Atheneum Under Construction

Much of the art at the Wadsworth Atheneum is old and precious.  So, too, are the five buildings that house it and those buildings are failing.  WNPR’s Jeff Cohen tells us about the museum’s $16 million project to keep the water out and keep the buildings up.

 

There’s a fair amount of respect that comes along with being the nation’s first public art museum.  There’s also a fair amount of maintenance.

 

That’s the sound of water, dripping slowly but consistently from the ceiling into a now vacant room where there used to be art patrons, and there used to be art.  The roof is leaking, and water is art’s enemy. 

 

“We’re on the second floor of the Morgan building, so what we call Morgan two; and this is one of the main galleries that’s been closed. This really represented one of the major sort of failure points of the roof…” 

 

The museum’s Kimberly Reynolds points out the plaster bubbles on the ceiling.  The watermarks on the wall - they're the kind of thing that would make an art historian shake.  And that’s just this room.

 

“So this is our Morgan Great Hall…”

 

If you’ve ever been to the museum, you’ll know the hall -- it's a 10,000 square foot, red, sunlit gallery that houses some of the huge historical paintings, like John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence.

 

Today, all that’s left on the red walls are hanging hooks and shadows where the paintings used to be. They were moved in March.

 

“If you look up in the arched windows there you can see some of the plaster bubbling and flaking and that’s really the visual evidence of the leakage problems with the roof.  This space will be one of the more obvious differences when people come back.”

 

The Wadsworth is one of the institutions that anchors Hartford’s downtown, and it has since Daniel Wadsworth opened the museum in 1842.  Over the decades, the museum added four more buildings, and earlier this decade it was considering adding another – the old Hartford Times building just across the street. 

 

But that plan was eventually scrapped, and the museum says it’s a good thing it was.  Expanding would have brought with it a higher price tag and that’s not good in a down economy.  So, instead of expanding and looking out, the museum decided to look in. That’s when Susan Talbott became its director.

 

“We’re talking falling ceilings, we’re talking plaster falling down on your head when you walk into the space. We’re talking actual drips that fall into buckets. Just really a very, very dangerous environment for art.”

 

So in March, Talbott and the Wadsworth began a $16 million dollar project to shore up the leaking, replace the roofs, fix the facades, and reopen gallery space that was either closed because of water or closed because it had to be used for storage.  That work has meant closing a third of the available gallery space. Still, Talbott says visitors who come will see the best of the museum’s best on prominent display. 

 

“There’s less to see, but the response that we’re getting from the public is, ‘Oh it’s so wonderful to walk in and see all of your Hudson River School masterpieces.’ Now, what they’re really seeing is about half of our Hudson River School collection. And when we, again, do our grand opening in 2012, we hope to have the majority of those paintings on view.”

 

And then, Talbott says she'll eventually be able to put the renovation behind her.

 

“I’m just so anxious to get back to the art.  And I have to say that before we started the renovation project, my first year here, I curated two or three exhibitions.  I haven’t done any this year.”

 

But that will only happen once the dripping stops.

For WNPR, I'm Jeff Cohen.