WADSWORTH ATHENEUM ANNOUNCES $16 MILLION RENOVATION PROJECT

The New York Times reports that the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, which has emerged from several years of financial struggle and staff upheaval, has announced plans for a sixteen-million-dollar renovation project that will result in the addition of eight thousand square feet more gallery space, a 14 percent increase, and the complete reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collection, according to Susan L. Talbott, the museum’s director.

In 2003, the Wadsworth had planned an ambitious expansion that would have cost $120 million and required the museum to close for two years, but that plan was abandoned, along with a later plan that would have spread the museum into the former Hartford Times building. The museum—American’s oldest public art institution, opened in 1842—operated with budget deficits for several years and went through five directors and three acting directors in a decade as it tried to find its footing in a city with a high poverty rate.

The museum—composed of five separate but contiguous buildings built over more than a century—will remain open during the renovation, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year.