There is a common belief in the Hartford area that if you’ve been inside the Hill-Stead Museum once, you never need to go back in. This stems from the Farmington house’s designer and owner, Theodate Pope Riddle, whose will stipulated that nothing ever could be added to or subtracted from the house’s collection.
Susan Ballek, the house’s director, wants to shake things up and lure people back. In the Hill-Stead’s library, 3,000 books owned by Riddle have sat in their shelves for about a century. But the center of the library rooms have been turned into a temporary gallery to exhibit works by — appropriately — artists who work with books.
It is the first time contemporary art has been shown at the historic museum. Ballek said she chose books for a summer exhibit to coincide with the house’s Sunken Garden Poetry Festival.
“The poetry audience always has been a challenge. They are interested in poetry. I want to make the connection between that and the literary interests of the [Pope] family,” Ballek says. “Alfred Pope collected the contemporary art of his time. This is very different from French impressionism, but this is our contemporary art.”
Hartford Art School graduate Carole Kunstadt curated “Boundless: Altered Books in Contemporary Art” and contributed 14 pieces, all from her “Sacred Poem” series. She chose six works by Chris Perry of Ridgefield and 11 by Erin Walrath of Roxbury to complement her own creations.
Each artists has an individualistic approach to books. Kunstadt cut out pages from two 19th-century books of psalms and cut and glued them to create delicate constructions, often enhanced with gold leaf. Walrath removed the spines from old discarded books and molded them into swirling wall sculptures that somewhat resemble little multicolored wasp nests. Perry builds his own books, with slivers of pages cascading like waterfalls from the bindings.
Melanie Bourbeau, the museum’s curator and director of interpretation and programs, helped Kunstadt organize the exhibit. She said after this exhibit, another one is planned, for throughout the house: a collection of costumes from Goodspeed Musicals, that were used in shows that made their debuts on Broadway between 1901 and 1946, the years that the Popes lived in the house.
“These are other aspects to their lives and what they enjoyed,” Borbeau said.
BOUNDLESS: ALTERED BOOKS IN CONTEMPORARY ART is at Hill-Stead Museum, 35 Mountain Road in Farmington, until Sept. 4. The exhibit can be seen on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. or by appointment. hillstead.org.
