Sprouting a New Wing

A year ago, Hartford's venerable Wadsworth Atheneum--which claims to be the U.S.'s oldest public museum--closed its doors to the public. It had to. Since its opening in 1844 with 53 art objects, its collection had grown to some 50,000 pieces, and in the five years before it began closing down, attendance had more than doubled to an annual total of 255,000. Expansion was desperately needed; some of the 60 staff members had been working out of converted coatrooms.

Last week the Atheneum reopened after undergoing a $4,700,000 renovation and sprouting a new wing. The new building, nondescript modern in style, projects out from the Atheneum's original Gothic Revival castle and connects it with a 1930s addition of equally indeterminate character.

Down with Ceilings. In this clash of styles, the original building comes off best--at least the architecture carries the authority of uncompromising anachronism. But internally, the Atheneum has gained 15 new galleries, a new restaurant, library, bookshop and sculpture court.

The crowds of schoolchildren and official visitors that trooped through the older galleries found an even greater change. To make maximum use of space, museum architects had installed balconies within the old high-ceilinged galleries, creating a more human scale.

In the new building Director James Elliott gave Staff Designer Lawrence Channing a free hand to house the Atheneum's distinguished pottery and ironwork. Channing devised pyramidal plastic enclosures which permit the pottery to be viewed from every side and eliminate light reflections--a vast improvement on the standard flat, glass-topped case. Ironwork is mounted on open, tentlike forms. To show off the unique collection of ballet costumes, triangular booths were set in surrealist space across wide expanses of floor. Thus the viewer can wander around and encounter each costume-clad dummy individually, each as isolated and unexpected as a presence on a darkling plain.

The Exhibitionist. Director Elliott, 44, who took over when Charles Cunningham moved on to the Art Institute of Chicago three years ago, is proud of the basic collection for which the museum is famed--a small but distinguished selection of baroque paintings, classical bronzes, Meissen porcelain, 17th and 18th century furniture, antique firearms. But even before the shutdown, he set energetically to work to bring the Atheneum more up to date in art history. Conspicuously displayed in the new galleries and elsewhere were some of his acquisitions: Tony Smith's Amaryllis, Cezanne's Portrait of a Child, an important group of five Abstract Expressionist paintings, plus works by Pissarro, Schiele and Manet.

Even before the museum closed for its renovation, Elliott had displayed a showman's flair for lively, avant-garde exhibitions. In the museum's auditorium, courageous Hartford patrons have been exposed to the underground films of Bruce Conner, the dances of Merce Cunningham, the electronic music of Karl-heinz Stockhausen. But Elliott does not think of himself as primarily an exhibitionist. "I think there are too many special exhibitions going on," says Elliott with a trace of exasperation. "You exhaust your public with temporary shows and they never get upstairs to see your permanent collections."

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