Art Discoveries
Each New England state offers visitors the chance to experience top-notch art museums, including some that have achieved international acclaim. It’s certainly no surprise that famous universities such as Harvard and Yale boast stunning collections, or that Boston’s venerable Museum of Fine Arts is a world-class institution. You won’t want to skip these marquee attractions, of course—but you may also find a special thrill in discovering great art in less well-known places.
VERMONT
With a population of just over 15,000, the southern Vermont town of Bennington is hardly a metropolis, but stepping inside the Bennington Museum may make you forget that for a while. Serving up equal parts art and history, it holds an impressive collection of Revolutionary War artifacts, as well as the largest collection of 19th-century Bennington ceramics to be found anywhere. What really stands out, though, is the generous display of “outsider” artists, highlighted by the world’s biggest collection of art and ephemera of legendary American folk artist Grandma Moses.
A true one-of-a-kind art experience can be found in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, in the small town of St. Johnsbury. In 2000, artist Stephen Huneck created a chapel devoted to dogs and decorated it with his whimsical artwork atop what would come to be known as Dog Mountain. Envisioned as a place where people can go to “celebrate the spiritual bond they have with their dogs,” Dog Mountain has also become a mecca for art enthusiasts, who come to marvel at Huneck’s stained glass, paintings, and sculptures. In addition, visitors often leave mementos of their own dogs on the chapel’s walls, creating a massive, emotional piece of public art.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
No one should miss the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, a gleaming, multistory showcase that recently underwent $50 million in renovations and expansions. But while on the Dartmouth campus, art lovers should seek out a hidden gem, located on the lower level of nearby Baker Library. There waits The Epic of American Civilization, a sprawling 1930s masterpiece by the Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2013, the mural’s 24 panels cover nearly 3,200 square feet (297m²) of wall space, with recorded audio available to help you take it all in.
A former ski area has been transformed into a garden of cultural delights at the Andres Institute of Art, located on Big Bear Mountain in Brookline. Engineer and innovator Paul Andres, who first began placing sculptures in the landscape around his home in the 1990s, joined forces with master sculptor John Weidman to establish the institute in 1998 and populate the mountain with artwork—more than 100 in all, representing artists from over 40 countries. The trail through what is now the largest sculpture park in New England is free and open to the public every day from dawn until dusk.
CONNECTICUT
In New Britain, just a 20-minute drive from the capital city of Hartford, you’ll discover the first U.S. museum ever to be devoted to American art. Founded in 1903, the New Britain Museum of American Art boasts a permanent collection that gives a definitive overview of major American artists and movements, while also featuring notable commercial illustration art by Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, and Maxfield Parrish.
Not far away, tucked into a Colonial Revival mansion in Farmington, is an unexpected treasure trove of Impressionist masterpieces. Built in 1901, the former country estate of industrialist Alfred Pope has been preserved as the Hill-Stead Museum, and highlights of its 19-room collection include not just original furnishings but also paintings by Manet, Degas, Cassatt, and Monet, still hung as they were in the Pope family’s time.
Nestled in Connecticut’s famous Litchfield Hills, the American Mural Project bills itself as the largest indoor collaborative artwork in the world, at 120 feet (36.5m) wide and five stories tall. Founder Ellen Griesedieck believed she could inspire children by involving them in the mural’s creation, and—through partnerships with schools and other organizations—more than 15,000 students and adults have participated so far. Housed in a building that literally had its roof raised to accommodate the project, the mural is a visualization of a century of American history as lived by its workers, from surgeons to steel workers to farmers.
MAINE
A magnet for visitors to the southern Maine coast, Ogunquit is a popular beach town, drawing summer crowds to its long stretches of white sand. Yet it’s also home to one of Maine’s loveliest small art museums, the waterfront Ogunquit Museum of American Art. Founded by Lost Generation artist Henry Strater in 1953, the seasonally open museum offers visitors the chance to appreciate the talents of Ogunquit Art Colony figures such as Edward Betts, Charles Woodbury, and Hamilton Easter Field, as well as browse significant American paintings, sculpture, photos, and other works from the late 1800s to the present.
Created in 1811, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick is one of the nation’s oldest university art museums. In the years since, this off-the-beaten-track destination has put together an impressive collection of 25,000 objects spanning 5,000 years of human history, ranging from Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Chinese antiquities, to paintings by American and European masters.
Amid the little coastal villages scattered across the MidCoast Peninsulas is Cushing, where noted Maine artist Bernard Langlais once lived and worked. In the final years of his life, he erected monumental wooden sculptures around his 90-acre homestead, now open to the public as the Langlais Sculpture Preserve. Among the standouts: a 13-foot (4m) horse and a depiction of former president Richard Nixon, mired in a marsh.
MASSACHUSETTS
History reigns in the Revolutionary War towns of Lexington and Concord, but just down the road you can explore the thoroughly contemporary world of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, in Lincoln. Located on the former 30-acre estate of businessman Julian deCordova, it was established in 1950 and typically showcases about 60 large-scale outdoor sculptures—many of which are on loan, so the landscape here changes often. The on-site museum houses a permanent collection focused on works in all media, with particular emphasis on photography and works by New England artists. Don’t miss the stunning view of the sculpture park from the rooftop terrace.
At Brockton’s Fuller Craft Museum, meanwhile, the focus is on furniture and jewelry makers, woodworkers, basket weavers, glassblowers, and ceramicists. Founded in 1946 by geologist Myron Fuller, the museum today is regarded as the home of contemporary craft in New England. Function and form may coexist here, but it’s all art—whether it’s a graceful woven-grass basket or a showstopping double rocking chair.
The former mill town of Clinton, in central Massachusetts, is the unlikely home of not just the only museum of Russian icons in the U.S., but also the largest collection of such works outside Russia itself. The Museum of Russian Icons was the brainchild of local businessman Gordon Lankton, who in 1989 happened to buy an icon at an open-air market in Moscow. That first purchase led to another, and another, and things snowballed from there: Today the museum that he founded boasts more than 1,000 Russian icons and related artifacts, dating from 1450 to the present day.
Finally, for those who like true serendipity in their art explorations, the coastal city of Salem—best known for its 17th-century “witch trials”—invites visitors to wander the street murals of the El Punto neighborhood. Launched in 2017 as an effort to support the arts and build neighborhood pride, the Punto Urban Art Museum features more than 75 vibrant, large-scale murals within its three-block radius—and you’ll want to be sure to catch them all.
RHODE ISLAND
Countless travelers flock to the seaside town of Newport to marvel at its mansions, a collection of Gilded Age jewels built as summer homes for some of America’s wealthiest families. But inside one of these architectural beauties lies another attraction: the National Museum of American Illustration. Here, inside a circa-1900 American Renaissance mansion called Vernon Court, the golden age of magazines is celebrated in the illustrations of such master artists as Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish. If history, architecture, art, and social commentary sound like an appealing combination, you’ll find plenty to ponder on these ornate walls.
Rhode Island’s largest city, Providence, is an essential destination for art students and art lovers alike, thanks to the presence of the acclaimed Rhode Island School of Design. The school’s namesake RISD Museum, first established in 1877, has a staggering 100,000 items in its collection, spanning ancient carvings and Native American textiles to video installations and contemporary abstract paintings.
