Please join us for a night of dinner, dancing, spirits, and great company including a rare opportunity to celebrate inside the historic house! All proceeds will support our magical museum and grounds.
For more information and tickets, click here.
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Hill-Stead Museum’s 75th Anniversary Party on May 20th
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Tupelo Press Announces Sunken Garden Chapbook Poetry Award
Tupelo Press is especially delighted to announce that our judge, Kimiko Hahn, has selected Why Misread a Cloud by Emily Carlson of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as winner of the 2022 Sunken Garden Chapbook Poetry Award.
Emily Carlson is a mother, a teacher, and the director of Art in the Garden, a liberatory, anti-racist, LGBTQA+ welcoming, and joy-centered program that addresses the impacts of childhood adversity and trauma. She’s the author of two chapbooks, Symphony No. 2 (Argos Books, 2015) and I Have a Teacher (The Center for Book Arts, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Aufgabe, Bloom, Denver Quarterly, Fence, jubilat, and other journals. With friends, she runs the Bonfire Reading Series. Emily lives with her partner and their three children in an intentional community centered around an urban garden in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Here’s what our contest judge, Kimiko Hahn, had to say about the winning chapbook:
In brief paragraphs that are neither prose nor prose poems, we meet a witness. A speaker who is not in her country of origin. A woman living in the air of violence. Militarization. And very occasionally, a mundane gesture–adding sugar to tea. The spareness creates a poetics that is, at once, elegantly stark and akin to journalism. We read between the lines because what is unsaid, makes this a poetry of image and association. What was once a broom for sweeping a kitchen, is used by a woman to sweep propaganda leaflets off the street. I find myself engaged in a place–to a place, really–where there are ballistic helmets. Yes, strange and strangely familiar. This is how art and dreams work: with the familiarity of knowing and the dissassociation that can allow insight.
Our sincere congratulations to Emily Carlson, whose book will be out in time for her debut reading this summer at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival.
The Windsor Hotel Fire
On St Patrick’s Day 1899, while people were gathered below to watch the parade, a fire destroyed the Windsor Hotel located in the Midtown area of Manhattan in New York City. The Pope family was one of the many families affected by this tragedy.
The photo on the right shows Claude Money’s Fishing Boats at Sea (1868) being rescued from the Popes’ rooms.
The Popes maintained a residence at the hotel, where they spent a considerable amount of time, as they frequently traveled to New York from Cleveland where they were living at the time, since Hill-Stead was not yet completed. Mrs. Pope was an opera fan and part of the reason for the March 1899 trip was so that she could attend various performances.
Mr. Pope acquired many of the Impressionist pieces in his collection through art dealers in New York City, such as Durand-Ruel. For this reason, on the day of the fire, three paintings Mr. Pope had considered selling back to Durand-Ruel, but his wife had convinced him to keep were at the hotel. As soon as he heard of the fire, Mr. Pope, who was out for lunch with friend and fellow art collector Harris Whittemore, rushed back to the hotel. As soon as police allowed him through, he paid hotel workers to go save the paintings from his room.
If you want to learn more about the Pope’s experience in the fire, Click to read the letter that Mrs. Pope wrote to her sister two days after the fire.
Director’s Message – March 1, 2022
Dear Friends,
Hello March! In like a lion…
We at Hill-Stead, and I as an astrological Leo, are roaring with delight to announce that Kathanne Fowler has joined our team as Chief Philanthropy Officer!
In addition to her work in corporate and private banking, Kathanne brings us decades of experience in knowledgeable and successful stewardship. Since returning to the area from the United Kingdom in 2002, she has faithfully supported the development and strategic planning of many important local institutions, from Hartford Hospital to schools including Ethel Walker, Kingswood Oxford, and Hartford Art School. She has even devoted her time and talents to Hill-Stead, having served on the museum’s Board of Governors from 2004 to 2010. And her work in the field extends far beyond Connecticut to the 1990 Institute in San Francisco, the National Collegiate Equestrian Association, and her alma mater, Williams College in Massachusetts.
We simply could not be happier about her serving Hill-Stead in this critical role. Kathanne beginning now, in this special 75th year and at this incredible moment of exciting growth, is perfect! (those who know me know that I almost never use that “p” word.) Continue reading
Director’s Message – February 2, 2022
Dear Friends,
We love February 2nd at Hill-Stead. Not because it is groundhog’s day, but because it is our founder’s birthday! This year, 2/2/22 is doubly special because the museum turns 75 – our diamond anniversary!
We’ve used the hunkered-down past few weeks to make big plans for celebrating this milestone…
Director’s Message – December 28, 2021
Dear Friends,
During the short days and long nights of late, as many best-laid plans have gone kerfluey again, my mind keeps returning to the power of choices and how grateful I am to have them.
I think also about the ways Hill-Stead has chosen to respond to the ever-changing circumstances of our pandemic-era lives: our team’s decision, again and again, to turn Why into Why Not, openly and bravely facing whatever that brings; and our survivor’s refusal to throw in the towel despite the seemingly endless waves of challenge.
Director’s Message – November 27, 2021
Dear Friends,
Sometimes I don’t make it, but I try hard to count my blessings every day. This includes the many –no, better– countless quiet words of thanks for the people who also believe Hill-Stead is incredible and worthy of our love and support.
Three of these people are stepping forward now, to collectively fund a matching gift of $7,500 for this year’s Giving Tuesday. An artist, a professor, and a local parent of school-aged children – perfectly aligned with our annual fund pillars of art, education, and the future – are each donating $2,500 to inspire our donors to match their support this upcoming Tuesday, November 30. I find their leading gesture, in line with the “in it together” spirit of our times, beautiful and humbling. And now I say more quiet words of enormous thanks. Continue reading
Director’s Message – November 1, 2021
Dear Friends,
The day after Halloween is usually slow-moving, as we shake out the cobwebs and off the candy hangover. But this November 1, I’m feeling energized, and slightly giddy, thinking ahead to the holiday season before us: a chance to gather in counting our blessings and to rejoice. Finally.
This season at Hill-Stead also brings our most important fundraising, the Annual Fund. For the Herculean task we face, of raising 90% of our operating budget every year, these donations are critically important. They are the biggest gear in our Hill-Stead engine, without which we simply could not run.
“The Tub” Featured in The Washington Post
Degas’ pastel The Tub is included in “Great Works, In Focus,” a series in the Washington Post featuring art critic Sebastian Smee’s favorite works in permanent collections around the United States
[The Tub] by Edgar Degas in the collection of the Hill-Stead Museum, a little-known museum in Farmington, Conn., is one of my favorite works in any American collection. At the most basic level, it is just a wonder to me that one human would respond to another by making something like this.Sebastian Smee
Photo by Anne Day
Read the article in the Washington Post
Great Works in Focus, Sebastian Smee (Washington Post, November 17, 2021)
100 Great Works, In Focus, Sebastian Smee (Washington Post, February 22, 2022)
Visit Our Collection to learn more about Hill-Stead’s exceptional collection, including Impressionist masterpieces by Monet, Degas, Manet, Whistler & Cassatt; Japanese woodblock prints; and decorative arts that reflect the Pope family’s travels
Carriage Barn Renovation Wins AIA Award
Our Carriage Barn renovation won the AIA Connecticut 2021 Elizabeth Mills Brown Excellence Award!
We are thrilled to update this story with joyous news: Hill-Stead’s renovation has won the 2021 Elizabeth Mills Brown Excellence Award from the Connecticut Chapter of the American Institute of Architects!
We believe that our founder, the architect Theodate Pope Riddle (1867–1946), who was an AIA member, would be exceptionally pleased by this recognition of design excellence in the adaptation and reuse of the historic carriage barn structures.
Hill-Stead is grateful to our partners, Centerbrook Architects and Planners, and collaborators who joined this successful team, including BVH/Salas O’Brien, George Sexton Associates, and PAC Group. Further, we appreciate the crucial support of the Connecticut Department of Economic Community Development and the State Historic Preservation Office. Together, we proudly – using the words of the jury – “…made an already exciting place even more exciting.”
For a summary of the renovation, told in compelling fashion through concise description and a beautiful combination of before and after photographs, please see the publication created by Centerbrook.