It isn’t just the inside of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art that is bursting with artworks. The front lawn’s collection of outdoor artworks is growing. On June 21, the first day of summer, a new sculpture — the 25-foot-tall “Monolith (Optic)” — was added. During the week of July 4, a second sculpture — titled “30” — was installed.
Tom Loughman, CEO of the Atheneum, likes the variety of works and of styles.
“We’ll have a traditional bronze statue next to a colorful abstract sculpture, next to a major work of conceptual art, next to a work by an artist interested in the confluence of the aesthetic and scientific,” Loughman says.
And that’s not counting Alexander Calder’s “Stegosaurus” in Burr Mall next door and Carl Andre’s meditative “Stone Field Sculpture” across the street. Neither is owned by the Atheneum, but Loughman says the museum keeps a protective neighborly eye on both.
Hank Martin, Wadsworth’s board chairman, says outdoor works have a practical use, as well.
“You’ve heard the adage that the Atheneum looks like a castle and people don’t know what goes on in there,” he says. “If we put a few sculptures out here, people will know what goes on in there, that it’s a museum.”
An exhibit inside the Atheneum, up until Sept. 9, tells the histories of the outdoor artworks. In the meantime, here’s a mini lesson until you can get there to see for yourself.
Monolith (Optic) And 30
The new 20-feet-tall “Monolith (Optic)” is a smaller-scale version of a 160-feet-tall piece Conrad Shawcross created in London, which was used to hide an unsightly factory smokestack. “Monolith,” which seems opaque or transparent depending on the time of the day, is meant to evoke “a sense of wind blowing through it, the dappled light of the sun, like sitting under a tree in serenity,” Shawcross says. The work is on loan to the Atheneum from a private collection for three years.
“Monolith” also is meant to lure visitors inside to see the new Shawcross MATRIX exhibit, which is dominated by the fascinating “Slow Arc X.” That piece is made up of a two-layer cage with two lights inside that spin in patterns. In the darkened gallery, the shadows of the cage’s mesh walls shift, grow, shrink and flow over the walls, ceiling and floor, like rippling water.
Shawcross says “Slow Arc X” was inspired by the “Plato’s Cave” allegory. “If you could only see the walls, could you work out the shape from what you see?” Shawcross says. “Imagine trying to work out the structure of a tree by only seeing its shadow. You never can, with all the bark and twigs and all the life it supports and the insects that sit upon it.”
Other artworks in the show are attempts to visualize harmonic sounds – “A Picture of a Chord Falling Into Silence” – and to create “irrational spirals” using stacks of tetrahedrons.
The second newest outdoor artwork is Sean Scully’s 30-layered aluminum sculpture, which is part of his “Stack” series. Titled “30,” it is about eight feet wide, 8 feet deep and 20 feet tall and painted with automotive paint. It sits beside “Amaryllis” and Nathan Hale. The work is an artistic musing on the layers of the world and how they appear to the human eye along the horizontal landline. The sculpture is considered a sneak peek of an exhibit titled “Sean Scully: Landline,” which will come to the museum in February. The sculpture will be on display through May 19, 2019.
Nathan Hale
Enoch Woods’ statue honoring Nathan Hale started out as an also-ran, Loughman says. It was the runner-up in an 1874 competition for a statue that would grace the State Capitol building. The Atheneum took the bronze work under its wing in 1889. Since the 1920s, Hale has stood sentry as visitors entered the museum.
The piece honoring the Coventry native, who was executed as a spy by the British at age 21 during the American Revolution, stands near the museum’s castle-like main entrance. Hale’s hand rests on his heart, presumably saying his famous quote “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
Amaryllis
Tony Smith had a one-man indoor-outdoor show at the Atheneum in 1966, with 13 oversized sculptures in the general vicinity of the museum. In 1967, the museum bought his large geometric “Amaryllis.” It has been in three different places outside the museum, with one nine-year absence.
Not all of the outdoor placements have been advantageous. For a while, “Amaryllis” was on the sidewalk in front of the Atheneum, next to a curved, ramp-like Lila Katzen sculpture. Skateboarders became fond of rocketing off the Katzen and caroming off the Smith, and a skater once smashed a window. Now the Smith sits serenely and uncaromed on the lawn, where skateboarding is a nonstarter.
The indoor exhibit features a history and a charming photo of Smith’s daughters constructing the little cardboard maquette of “Amaryllis,” designed as a stack of black tetrahedrons.
Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus, 50-feet tall and bright red, is impossible to hide. But the massive Alexander Calder sculpture in Burr Mall, between the Atheneum and City Hall, sits behind temporary chain-link fencing as workers install a fountain to flow under the sculpture.
The Ella Burr McManus Trust, set up to honor McManus’ father Alfred E. Burr, a 19th century publisher of the now-defunct Hartford Times, originally intended to develop the Burr Mall into a resting place for horses. But when horses gave way to cars, that goal was no longer useful so the Trust funded the creation of the sculpture. Calder’s abstracted dinosaur was installed in 1973 to much fanfare.
When UConn Hartford opened last year, Stegosaurus was there to greet the new students across the street. So was a reproduction of a self-portrait by Daniel Wadsworth’s friend Thomas Sully, which can be seen peeking out of a window on the Prospect Street side of the Morgan Wing of the museum.
Stone Field
Carl Andre’s Stone Field Sculpture is a collection of 36 large stones from a Bristol quarry, arranged artistically in a triangular pattern on the lawn next to Center Church, The configuration is designed to mimic the vibe of the headstones in the adjacent Ancient Burying Ground. It was built in 1977, financed by the city of Hartford, which used $100,000 in grants from Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Then-Mayor George Athanson, no fan of minimalist art, expressed scorn at the time.
“It’s just a bunch of rocks. Little kids could do that,” he said. Since then, the peaceful work has become what Andre intended: a place to think, eat lunch, or just get out of the office during the noon hour and sit in the sun.
Every now and then someone vandalizes one or more of the rocks with a splash of paint. Once in 2015, it was mistakenly defaced by workers putting in utility lines. When such things happen, Loughman says, the museum acts as a “good Samaritan caretaker” and cleans up the piece.
