Sound & Sense: Poetic Musings in American Art

Sound & Sense: Poetic Musings in American Art will explore the connections between American poetry and painting, sculpture, and decorative arts from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. The exhibition presents a diverse landscape of masterpieces from the museum’s collection that incorporate poetic inscriptions in their composition or have direct relationships to America’s rich poetic traditions.

Featured artworks include paintings by Albert Bierstadt, Rockwell Kent, and Georgia O’Keeffe; sculpture by Daniel Chester French and Isamu Noguchi; as well as ceramics, furniture, and tableware. Throughout the exhibition, objects are paired with verses by celebrated poets such as Herman Melville, Lydia Sigourney, Walk Whitman, and Robert Frost.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated booklet written by Alyce Perry Englund, former Richard Koopman Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and current Assistant Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Preview the exhibition below | The Top Five Exhibitions Opening This Week

The Days (1884–86), Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Gift of the Estates of Louise Cheney and Anne W. Cheney

Toward the Setting Sun (1862), Albert Bierstadt. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. J. Harold Williams in memory of Edith Russell Woolley

Chambered Nautilus (1956), Andrew Wyeth. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, From the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Montgomery © Andrew Wyeth

Tankard (c. 1760-74), Paul Revere II. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Gift of Harold C. Lovell, Jr. and Lulu K. Lovell, In Memory of Harold C. Lovell, Sr

Goose Bowl (1914), Paul Revere Pottery of the Saturday Evening Girls’ Club, decorated by Albina Mangini. Glazed earthenware, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Bequest of Stephen Gray

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