November 2014
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
“Firsts”
Founded in 1842, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is the oldest continuously operating public art
museum in the United States. The museum opened to the public in 1844—three decades before the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The Wadsworth Atheneum is on the
Register of National Historic Places.
The Wadsworth Atheneum was the first museum in America to present exhibitions of:
Italian Baroque paintings, Italian Paintings of the Sei- and Settocento (1930)
Neo-Romanticism, Five Young French Painters (1931)
Surrealism, Newer Super-Realism, paintings by Dali, Ernst, et. al. (1931)
Retrospective on Pablo Picasso (1934)
Minimalism, Black, White, and Gray (1964)
Caravaggio, Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness from the Palazzo Corsini in Rome (1998)
Caravaggio, Saint John from the Capitoline Museum in Rome (1999)
The Wadsworth Atheneum was the first museum in America to acquire works by:
Frederic Church, Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness From Plymouth to Hartford (1846)
Salvador Dalí, La Solitude (1931 - also the first to enter any museum collection)
Joan Miro, Painting (1933)
Alexander Calder, Little Blue Panel (1935)
Piet Mondrian, Composition in Blue and White (1936)
Joseph Cornell, Soap Bubble Set (1938)
Max Ernst, Europe after the Rain (1942)
Caravaggio, The Ecstasy of St. Francis (1943)
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Firsts
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Other Notable Firsts for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art:
1929 - Screens movies seven years ahead of the Museum of Modern Art, and presents the first major American
retrospective of film in 1934 with The Motion Picture, 1914-1934
1934 - Avery Memorial Building is the first U.S. museum to have a modern International Style interior and one of
the first U.S. museums to house a theater
1934 – Hosts world premiere of Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson, the first
American opera with an all-black cast
1934 - First public performances of The American Ballet, directed by George Balanchine, including the premiere
of Serenade
1936 - American premiere of Socrate, a symphonic drama by Erik Satie with a mobile set by Alexander Calder
1936 - Premiere of Balanchine’s Serenata
1938 - Premiere of Filling Station, music by Virgil Thomson and choreography by Lew Christensen, danced by
Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan
1938 - Theater murals by Dutch neo-romantic artist Kristians Tonny (now the only remaining examples of his
work as a muralist)
1939 - Premiere of Eight-Column Line, music by Ernst Krenek and choreography by Alwin Nikolais (his
choreographic debut) with Truda Kashmann
The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art was the first to present solo U.S. museum exhibitions of many
contemporary artists, including:
Janine Antoni
Judy Baca
Gene Beery
Blythe Bohnen
Jon Borofsky
Daniel Buren
Guy de Cointet
Joe Coleman
Douglas Davis
Stan Douglas
Sam Durant
Benni Efrat
Ian Hamilton Finlay
Jane Freilicher
Jacqueline Gourevitch
Keith Haring
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Christian Jankowski
Neil Jenney
Patrick Killoran
Byron Kim
Komar and Melamid
Myron Krueger
Barbara Kruger
Moshe Kupferman
Louise Lawler
Annette Lemieux
Sherrie Levine
Glenn Ligon
Lee Lozano
Sylvia Plimack Mangold
Richard Meier
Lorraine O’Grady
Cady Noland
Ellen Phelan
Adrian Piper
Edda Renouf
Gerhard Richter
Peter Rose
Lorna Simpson
Michael Singer
Karen Shaw
Alan Sondheim
Nancy Spero
Fiona Tan
Jonathan Thomas
Richard Tuttle
UN Studio
Paul Wynne
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