Connecticut Arts Alliance continues a series of posts spotlighting its CAA members. The Membership Program, begun in 2019, joins together arts organizations, artists, and arts patrons throughout Connecticut to collectively raise our voice and increase recognition of the important role the arts play in building and inspiring an equitable, vibrant, and connected Connecticut.

The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, an independently incorporated and managed not-for-profit organization located in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, owns and exhibits a vital collection of nearly 7,000 works of art, artifacts, and popular culture objects that document the experience, expressions, and history of people of African descent in America.

Its latest exhibit, Freedom & Fragility, by guest curator Amy Sailor, is now on view through June 21.

Freedom, 1863-2020….Are we there yet?

The promise of “Freedom” for all, though a cornerstone of American values, remains largely fraught to this day. While the Union’s victory over the Confederacy would secure the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States, African Americans continued to face recurring challenges aimed at preserving the former racial hierarchy.

Resiliency would characterize the struggle of the African diaspora who survived the middle passage and earned their freedom in the United States of America. In the works of artists Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence, and Sheila Pree Bright is an enduring spirit that portrays the challenges and risks African Americans face in exercising their rights. Despite new liberties given to the formerly enslaved and their descendants, the notion of freedom in America is fragile, as continued struggles towards equity define the Black experience.

See the exhibition, join the conversations! Learn more at www.amistadcenter.org.

PHOTO: Eartha Kitt by Philipe Halsman – 1954 – Gelatin Silver Print

If you agree that the advocacy efforts of Connecticut Arts Alliance on behalf of arts and culture in our state are important, please consider becoming a Member today!

Connecticut Arts Alliance has begun a series of posts spotlighting its CAA members. The Membership Program, begun earlier this year, joins together arts organizations, artists, and arts patrons throughout Connecticut in building a strong arts and culture sector that benefits the arts and all Connecticut residents.

Founded in 1842 with a vision for infusing art into the American experience, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford is home to a collection of nearly 50,000 works of art, spanning 5,000 years and encompassing European art from antiquity through Modernism as well as American art from the 1600s through today. The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is the oldest continuously-operating public art museum in the United States, opening its doors to the public in 1844.

The Wadsworth Atheneum has paved the way for encyclopedic museums across the country, presenting engaging and groundbreaking exhibitions that explore every era of art history while consistently being at the forefront of collecting works by diverse artists. Today, visitors to the Wadsworth galleries find captivating and innovative programs mining the iconic holdings and offering new stories that illustrate the breadth and quality of the collection.

Highlights include the Morgan collection of Greek and Roman antiquities and European decorative arts; world-renowned Baroque and Surrealist paintings; an unsurpassed collection of Hudson River School landscapes; European and American Impressionist paintings; Modernist masterpieces; the Serge Lifar collecton of Ballets Russes drawings and costumes; the George A. Gay collection of prints; the Wallace Nutting collection of American colonial furniture and decorative arts; the Samuel Colt firearms collection; costumes and textiles; African American art and artifacts; and contemporary art.

CAA is Connecticut’s ONLY statewide arts advocacy organization. If you agree that the advocacy efforts of Connecticut Arts Alliance on behalf of arts and culture in our state are important, please consider becoming a Charter Member today!

Connecticut Arts Alliance has begun a series of posts spotlighting its CAA members. The Membership Program, begun earlier this year, joins together arts organizations, artists, and arts patrons throughout Connecticut in building a strong arts and culture sector that benefits the arts and all Connecticut residents.

Artreach, an Arts & Health Agency based in Norwich, has been supporting mental health and wellness through the creative and performing arts since 1985. Second Step Players comedy troupe has been a mainstay since the company’s inception, and the group performs original sketch comedy about mental health issues throughout Connecticut and in tours around the country.

The Players touring performances reach audiences from all walks of life: providers of mental health services, students in nursing and psychology programs, family members, and other people who have experienced psychiatric issues. Other programs include Artreach Heals Coffeehouse, Comedy Alchemy stand-up comedy troupe, artistic development programs, and wellness programs.

The Artreach community is supportive and fun. Artreach’s innovative approaches to wellness use the creative arts to help adults who have experienced psychiatric disorders achieve sustainable recovery. Performing educational theater and stand-up comedy locally and nationally enables Artreach to touch the hearts of audience members.

CAA is Connecticut’s ONLY statewide arts advocacy organization. If you agree that the advocacy efforts of Connecticut Arts Alliance on behalf of arts and culture in our state are important, please consider becoming a Charter Member today!

Connecticut Arts Alliance has begun a series of posts spotlighting its CAA members. The Membership Program, begun earlier this year, joins together arts organizations, artists, and arts patrons throughout Connecticut in building a strong arts and culture sector that benefits the arts and all Connecticut residents.

The Greater New Britain Arts Alliance promotes the creative, performing, and visual arts in New Britain, Berlin, Newington, Plainville, and Southington. The Arts Alliance provides a unified voice for arts organizations, serves as a catalyst for arts-related collaborations, nurtures individual creative abilities, and advocates the arts as vital to the economic health and quality of life in the region.

Its website and weekly Happening Here newsletter promotes events and performances in the region.

GNBAA also operates the STOCKMAN Gallery, a staffed gallery space where artists’ work can be experienced and marketed.

CAA is Connecticut’s ONLY statewide arts advocacy organization. If you agree that the advocacy efforts of Connecticut Arts Alliance on behalf of arts and culture in our state are important, please consider becoming a Charter Member today!

Connecticut Arts Alliance has begun a series of posts spotlighting its CAA members. The Membership Program, begun earlier this year, joins together arts organizations, artists, and arts patrons throughout Connecticut in building a strong arts and culture sector that benefits the arts and all Connecticut residents.

Thrown Stone Theatre Company in Ridgefield presents new and reimagined plays that spark reflection, emotion, and conversation. The company cultivates artists and audiences through opportunity, education, and mentorship, emphasizing new work and unconventional approaches to repertoire. They are committed to integrity, inclusiveness, and using technology to serve the region with theater of distinction.

The company members of Thrown Stone believe that work is inseparable from the place where it grows. They honor and celebrate local character, culture, and history. All theater is site-specific, and Thrown Stone will highlight local facilities and resources in our productions.

Thrown Stone is named after an allegory by the 17th-century philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza. Opposing Descartes’ conception of free will, he argued that like thrown stones, we are set in motion by “the impulsion of an external cause” and are “necessarily determined by some external cause to exist and operate in a fixed and determinate manner.” It also sounds cool. Read more on the company’s About page.

CAA is Connecticut’s ONLY statewide arts advocacy organization. If you agree that the advocacy efforts of Connecticut Arts Alliance on behalf of arts and culture in our state are important, please consider becoming a Charter Member today!

Connecticut Arts Alliance has begun a series of posts spotlighting its CAA members. The Membership Program, begun earlier this year, joins together arts organizations, artists, and arts patrons throughout Connecticut in building a strong arts and culture sector that benefits the arts and all Connecticut residents.

For almost 60 years, the Rowayton Arts Center (RAC) has been a community cultural hub providing an accessible environment for the exchange of arts-related ideas. RAC’s open and airy building on the scenic banks of the Five Mile River is the setting for exhibits and receptions, along with classes and workshops for artists at all levels, attracting participants and visitors from the area and beyond. RAC now has more than 200 members, including nationally-recognized professionals, talented amateurs, beginners, and non-artists from Fairfield County and beyond.

RAC is dedicated to providing access to the arts through opportunity, education and outreach. RAC’s programs are supported by membership dues, class and workshop fees, commissions on sales, state grants, and donations from generous individuals, foundations, and civic-minded businesses.

Moving beyond our own membership, RAC reaches out to the community through arts-related activities, sometimes in cooperation with other organizations such as local libraries, historical societies, schools, environmental groups and the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County. Each June, RAC invites everyone to join in a community plein-air painting competition and show with an opening reception that features live music and refreshments.

CAA is Connecticut’s ONLY statewide arts advocacy organization. If you agree that the advocacy efforts of Connecticut Arts Alliance on behalf of arts and culture in our state are important, please consider becoming a Charter Member today!

Connecticut Arts Alliance has begun a series of posts spotlighting its CAA members. The Membership Program, begun earlier this year, joins together arts organizations, artists, and arts patrons throughout Connecticut in building a strong arts and culture sector that benefits the arts and all Connecticut residents.

Oddfellows Playhouse Youth Theater is a Middletown-based non-profit which offers classes, productions and special events in theater, dance, music, circus and visual arts to kids ages 4 to 20 and their families. Founded in 1975 by a small group of college students, Oddfellows remains Connecticut’s largest and most active year-round youth theater, an independent, not-for-profit organization that annually serves over 1,200 young people.

Oddfellows believes that access to high-quality arts experiences is a fundamental right. Throughout its history, Oddfellows has remained committed to artistic excellence and social change. The Playhouse’s mission has three parts: 1) an artistic dimension to provide high-quality theater by and for young people; 2) an educational dimension to promote the growth of young people–in skills, knowledge, and self-confidence–through the performing arts; and 3) a social action dimension to offer opportunities especially to underserved and at-risk youngsters to promote the development of a genuinely multiracial, multicultural society. Individual Playhouse programs must address at least one of these broad goals; Playhouse activities as a whole must address all three.

Signature programs include the Teen Repertory Company, Circophony Teen Circus, Oddbridge After-School Program, and the Children’s Circus of Middletown. For more information about Oddfellows Playhouse and current programs, contact info@oddfellows.org or call (860) 347-6143.

If you agree that the advocacy efforts of Connecticut Arts Alliance on behalf of arts and culture in our state are important, please consider becoming a Charter Member today!