The Modern Painting Gallery will be closed through January 25, 2013
for the reinstallation of our modern collection.

The Mattatuck Museum reinstalled the permanent collection of its Early American Painting Gallery in the summer of 2012. The gallery update offers a mix of old favorites and new pieces that have rarely been on display.

Though the museum will maintain a focus on Connecticut art and artists, the new mission supports its goal of collecting and exhibiting all American art. This shift in focus offers the opportunity to present works from the collection not previously on view.

The museum's revised mission statement created an opportunity to draw from the very fine Seymour R. Thaler and Mildred Thaler Cohen Collection in reinstalling the gallery, including a delightful work by artist Edward Potthast entitled Bathers on a Beach.

The Thayer-Cohen Collection is a group of works donated to the museum by Mildred Thayer Cohen in 1999 and previously viewed only by appointment because it fell outside of the museum’s mission statement.

The Mattatuck Museum's fine arts collection includes paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints and etchings, and sculpture. Historically, the collection relates to the city of Waterbury through numerous portraits of prominent Waterbury families and in representative landscapes of the city. Connecticut subjects - persons, events, landscapes and seascapes - and Connecticut artists became the focus of the collection. The Collection now provides a visual record of the region's history as well as illustrates that Connecticut was, and is, the home of many artists. The Museum holds the most comprehensive compilation of works of artists who have lived or worked in Connecticut from the earliest Colonial times to the present day.

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists represented in the collection include John Trumbull, William Jennys, John Kensett, Frederick Church, Charles Ethan Porter and John Ferguson Weir among others. Twentieth-century and contemporary artists include Milton Avery, Anni and Josef Albers, Abe Ajay, Ashile Gorky, Cleve Gray, Robert Cottingham, Hans Richter, and Peter Poskas. One of the Museum's most significant holdings is the extensive collection of the works of surrealist artist Kay Sage. Included in this collection are art works and archival materials from Kay Sage and her husband Yves Tanguy, Naum Gabo and Alexander Calder.

The museum’s collection of more than 2,000 works of art may be viewed on-line at www.mattatuckcollections.org and at the museum in our second floor galleries. Also accessible on-line is the Seymour R. Thaler and Mildred Thaler Cohen Collection of American Paintings. If you are planning a visit to the Mattatuck Museum, please note that not all artworks are on view at all times.

Publications about works in the collection are available at the Museum and on-line.