The New Britain Museum of American Art, acknowledged as the first museum in the U.S. to concentrate exclusively on American art, began in 1903 when Jon Butler Talcott established an endowment to buy an art collection for public enjoyment and education. In 1935, Grace Judd Landers bequeathed her turn-of-the-century stone mansion on the edge of Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Walnut Hill Park as a permanent home for the collection, then numbering only 26 works, and the newly renovated Art Museum of the New Britain Institute opened to the public on July 1, 1937. Expanded by numerous added wings and especially by the opening of the Chase Family Building in 2006, the museum grew into a renowned institution whose collection numbered more than 11,500 works as of May 2014, with exhibitions traveling across the U.S. and abroad. Its holdings include works such as Thomas Hart Benton's mural series Arts of Life in America and a 9/11 memorial by Graydon Parrish, while its programs and events combine visual art, education, music, performance, and community gatherings. Walnut Hill Park also links the work of Frederick Law Olmsted with that of Frederic Church, founder of the Hudson River School, whose careers were closely intertwined. Both men grew up in Hartford, influenced each other, and pursued related goals in different mediums: Church and other Hudson River School painters such as Thomas Cole, George Inness, Albert Bierstadt, and Asher B. Durand created ordered, tranquil American landscapes on paper, while Olmsted translated a similar natural aesthetic into three-dimensional landscapes meant for people of different social classes to enjoy together. Church served as a Parks Commissioner in New York City during the construction of Central Park, which Olmsted designed, the two men worked to build support for preserving Niagara Falls, and Olmsted later designed the landscape of Church's estate, Olana, in the Hudson River Valley. Their work coexists at New Britain, where examples of Church and other Hudson River School painters hang in the museum and Olmsted's park lies outside, while the Chase Family Building was intentionally designed in 2000 by Ann Beha Architects to appear as an extension of the park and provide sweeping vistas of the landscape.

Photo: Napoleon Sarony; via National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (PD)

Photo: T. Johnson engraving of J. Notman photograph; via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Div. (PD)

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller