On December 15, the Wadsworth Atheneum hosts a special theme tour: By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi & Women Artists in Italy. This docent guided tour is limited to 15 people, for those more comfortable without crowds. The following day there will be a performance of music in the exhibit space, performed by Petra Jenkinson.
Special Theme Tour
A docent guided tour of the special exhibition By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi & Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800. Availability is limited to 15 participants and advance registration is required.
Wednesday tours provide opportunities for visitors who are more comfortable touring without crowds. The ticket price is reduced, as the museum is not open for general admission. Museum entry is limited at this time to guided groups only and visitors must remain with the group for the duration of the tour. Visitors are required to wear a face mask/covering and encouraged to observe a safe social distance from others.
Music in the Galleries:
December 16, 2021 @ 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm
Listen to live period music performed on the lute by Petra Jenkinson during your visit to By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800. Free with museum admission.
By Her Hand
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI AND WOMEN ARTISTS IN ITALY, 1500 – 1800
Women artists played a vibrant yet overlooked role in Italy around 1600. The first exhibition solely dedicated to Italian women artists at the Wadsworth, By Her Hand explores how important women artists succeeded in the male-dominated art world of the time. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–after 1654), one of the most fascinating seventeenth-century Italian painters, takes center stage.
The Wadsworth’s Self-Portrait as a Lute Player is compared with a related painting from the National Gallery, London—a rare opportunity to see these paintings side by side. Gentileschi’s pioneering depictions of strong women, such as her Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes from the Detroit Institute of Arts, will also be on view.
Beyond Gentileschi, the accomplishments of a diverse and dynamic group—from the court painter Sofonisba Anguissola (1532–1625), to the Venetian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), among other talented and virtually unknown Italian women artists—are introduced and celebrated.
This exhibition is a collaboration between the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Detroit Institute of Arts. By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800 will be on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts February 6 – May, 29 2022.
By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800 is generously supported by the Cheryl Chase and Stuart Bear Family Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., the National Endowment for the Arts, The David T. Langrock Foundation, the Robert Lehman Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Tavolozza Foundation, the Private Art Dealers Association, Linda Cheverton Wick and Walter Wick, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Dau Family Foundation.
Sustaining support for the Wadsworth Atheneum provided by the Greater Hartford Arts Council’s United Arts Campaign with support from the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts.
About the Atheneum
Founded in 1842 with a vision for infusing art into the American experience, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is home to a collection of nearly 50,000 works of art, spanning 5,000 years and encompassing European art from antiquity to contemporary as well as American art from the 1600s through today. The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is the oldest continuously-operating public art museum in the United States, opening its doors to the public in 1844.
The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art was founded by Daniel Wadsworth, one of the first major American art patrons. Daniel Wadsworth originally planned to establish a “Gallery of Fine Arts,” but he was persuaded to create an atheneum, a term popular in the 19th century used to describe a cultural institution with a library, works of art and artifacts, devoted to learning history, literature, art, and science.
The Wadsworth Atheneum has paved the way for encyclopedic museums across the country, presenting engaging and groundbreaking exhibitions that explore every era of art history while consistently being at the forefront of collecting works by artists such as Caravaggio, Frederic Church, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí, and Joan Miró. Today, visitors to the downtown Hartford, Connecticut galleries find captivating and innovative programs mining the iconic holdings and offering new stories that illustrate the breadth and quality of the collection.
Highlights include the Morgan collection of Greek and Roman antiquities and European decorative arts; world-renowned Baroque and Surrealist paintings; an unsurpassed collection of Hudson River School landscapes; European and American Impressionist paintings; Modernist masterpieces; the Serge Lifar collecton of Ballets Russes drawings and costumes; the George A. Gay collection of prints; the Wallace Nutting collection of American colonial furniture and decorative arts; the Samuel Colt firearms collection; costumes and textiles; African American art and artifacts; and contemporary art.
The Wadsworth Atheneum underwent a major renovation from 2010 through 2015. The $33 million project renewed the museum’s historic structures and added 17 new gallery spaces—nearly 16,000 square feet of exhibition space—to the building’s existing footprint for an improved visitor experience.
The Grand Reopening on September 19, 2015 was a seminal moment in the museum’s storied 175-year history. Major exhibition openings and newly refurbished collection galleries dazzle patrons while new interpretive content and interactive technology encourage deeper engagement with the artwork. Completion of the project means that now, for the first time in nearly 50 years, all galleries are simultaneously open for public exploration.