“Picasso to Pop,” intriguing art at Hartford art museum

Wesleyan’s wonderful art galleries provide ample opportunities to see exhibitions and art shows. But, what do you do if you’ve already seen “Robert Boyd: Xanadu” at Zilkha or the “Etching Since 1950” in the Davison Art Center?

If you have access to a car, you’re in luck. While many students are aware of the great artistic offerings in New York City or Boston, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in nearby Hartford often goes unnoticed. However, the museum features many exciting exhibitions of some the world’s greatest artists.

“Picasso to Pop: Aspects of Modern Art,” on display through Nov. 2007, displays works by many of the 20th century’s greatest artists, including Picasso, Dali, Ernst, Pollock, Lichtenstein, and Warhol. The exhibition rediscovers aspects of the Atheneum’s extensive collection of modern art and explores how this art has evolved over the past 100 years.

The exhibition begins in the airy, spacious Avery Court and moves through three small interior rooms. Within Avery Court, pieces are roughly grouped together into stylistic movements, such as Surrealism, Fauvism, Cubism, and the Abstract Expressionism. This assemblage according to style continues, more or less, into the interior rooms. However, some pieces hang next to each other, encouraging comparison of disparate movements: Picasso’s neo-realistic style placed next to a Surrealist painting. In the “Pop Art” room, works by Rauschenberg, Warhol, and Lichtenstein cover the room in an appealingly straightforward manner.

Though the exhibition’s arrangement led to some confusion for this viewer, the holdings of the museum proved quite impressive.

For art history majors, art lovers, and students just looking to break outside of the Wesleyan bubble, the Wadsworth Athenaeum can be a welcome escape.

General Info:

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
600 Main St.
Hartford, CT 06103
(860) 278-2670
www.wadsworthatheneum.org
Admission: $5 with WesID

Hours:
Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; First Thursday of each month open until 8 p.m.