My Story on New England Art Finds in the March/April Issue of Yankee Magazine

Blame it on the majestic scenery in New England that lured artists to its shores and mountains, or savvy collectors who had the foresight to purchase the preeminent works of their time. The result is undeniable. The bounty of art found in this region is mind-boggling, from the American art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to the Hudson River School paintings hanging at Hartford’s Wadsworth Athenaeum to the Impressionist gems located at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Add university collections like Harvard’s Fogg and the recently reopened Yale University Art Museum that could rival the finest art museum in most mid-range cities, and you understand how spoiled we are. 

 
Even with this gluttony of art, there are some hidden treasures to be found. I was fortunate last summer to be hired by Yankee Magazine to describe six of my favorite art gems in New England, often overlooked: the Cushing, Maine house that inspired Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World; Winslow Homer’s studio in Prouts Neck, Maine; Albert Bierstadt’s 10-by-15-foot work, Domes of Yosemite, found in the back of the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont; Jose Clemente Orozco’s 24-panel mural at Dartmouth University’s Baker Library, now seen under new lighting; the WPA murals of a whaling scene created by Thomas LaFarge in 1938 at the New London Post Office; and the only National Park System site dedicated to an American painter, the Weir Farm in Wilton, Connecticut. All are worth checking put. You can find the story the old fashioned way, in the magazine at newsstands. It’s not online.