New Britain Museum of American Art

Art Museum · New Britain, Connecticut

The first museum in the United States founded solely for American art, started in 1903 in a factory city that had the money and no particular reason to spend it this way. It holds around ten thousand works covering three centuries, and the surprise is the quality: Hudson River School landscapes, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia OKeeffe, Sargent, Whistler, Cassatt, Hopper, a strong twentieth century holding and serious contemporary acquisitions still coming in. The set piece is Benton The Arts of Life in America, five murals painted for the Whitney in 1932 and bought by New Britain when the Whitney let them go - they are worth the trip by themselves. The building is a modern glass wing grafted onto an older house beside Walnut Hill Park, so the galleries are bright and the circulation is easy. It is chronically under-visited and you will often have rooms to yourself. It is the kind of collection that would have a queue outside it in a larger city and here has a free car park and an empty gallery.

56 Lexington Street, New Britain, New Britain, Connecticut, 06052, United States

Open most days with at least one weekday closure, commonly Monday, and later opening one evening a week. Closed on major holidays. There are free or reduced-admission periods on announced days and certain evenings - these change, so check before planning around them. Exhibition galleries occasionally close between shows while the permanent collection stays open.

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