Housatonic Museum of Art facts for kids

The Housatonic Museum of Art is a cool art museum located at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut. You can find its amazing collection of artworks all around the college campus. It also has special galleries called the Burt Chernow Galleries, where new art shows often visit.

Exploring the Art Collection

The museum has a fantastic collection of art from the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s. It also features special cultural objects from places like Africa, Oceania (islands in the Pacific Ocean), and the Americas. These objects help us learn about different cultures and their history.

Art from Around the World

The museum's collection includes art from many different parts of the world. For example, from Africa, you might see a clay head from Ghana or a drum figure from Zaire. There are also cool headdresses and wood carvings from Nigeria and Guinea.

From other places, you can find wood carvings from New Guinea. India has a bronze sculpture, a stone carving from the 1300s, and a painting from the mid-1700s. The museum even has an ancient Mayan stucco head, an Inca storage bottle, and a beautiful marble sculpture of Kuan Yin from China.

Famous Artists and Their Works

The museum is home to many artworks by well-known artists. Here are some examples:

Sculptures You Can See

• Bronze Sculptures:
  • Alexander Archipenko created Egyptian Motif.
  • Leonard Baskin made a sculpture called John Donne.
  • Lee Bontecou has a piece named Seated Couple.
  • Doris Caesar sculpted Portrait Study and Wadchen.
  • Charles Despiau made Untitled Head I and Untitled Head II.
  • Aristide Maillol created Seated Nude.
  • Marisol has a sculpture called Tower.
  • Auguste Rodin has several works, including Movement of the Dance and L'eau.
• Other Sculptures:
  • Isamu Noguchi created Alpii, a sculpture made of marble and iron.

Paintings to Discover

• Ferdinand Bol painted Admiral de Ruyter in 1653.
• Giorgio de Chirico created Voyage of the Poet.
• Alex Katz painted a piece called Incident.
• Philips Koninck painted Portrait of a Man between 1655 and 1660.
• Reginald Marsh painted The Chorus.
• Abraham Storch created a painting called Seaport.

Drawings and More

• Drawings:
  • Milton Avery has a flatbrush drawing called Sketch Class.
  • Larry Rivers drew Humes.
  • Saul Steinberg created an ink drawing called Autobiography.
• Other Art Forms:
  • Ansel Adams took a photograph called Wood Stump.
  • Marc Chagall made a colorful print called Esther.
  • Christo created a unique piece called Wrapped Modern Art Book.
  • Roy Lichtenstein made a silkscreen print called The Melody Haunts My Reverie.
  • Claes Oldenburg created Study: Soft Red Drainpipe using paint and crayon.
  • Alfonso Ossorio made Blow in the Face from different materials put together.

The museum also has two works by American abstract painter Stanley Boxer. These include a painting called Lafayette Night Bloom and a tall wood sculpture called Beach Figure No. 3.

More Amazing Artists

The collection also includes works by many other famous artists. You might find pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Mary Cassatt, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Gustav Klimt. There are also works by photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and sculptors like Alberto Giacometti.

History of the Museum

The Housatonic Museum of Art was started in 1967 by Burt Chernow. He was an artist, a professor, and the head of the college's art department. From the very beginning, the museum's collection grew thanks to gifts. Artists, private collectors, art galleries, and even the college's student government donated artworks. By the time Chernow finished his career at the college, the museum had collected 4,000 objects!

For its first 14 years, the museum didn't have paid staff or a special budget for buying art. It relied on volunteers and used spaces already available at the college. Burt Chernow believed that students should be able to see real art every day. He felt that seeing art up close, with its true colors, size, and texture, was much better than just looking at pictures or slides.

Later, Robbin Zella became the director in the late 1990s. Since 2000, the museum has hosted exciting traveling exhibits. These have included prints by Rembrandt, photographs by Ansel Adams, and even postcards from Frank Warren's "PostSecret" project.