The Lyman Allyn Art Museum welcomes visitors from New London, southeastern Connecticut and from all over the world. Established by a gift from Harriet Allyn in memory of her seafaring father, the museum opened the doors of its beautiful neoclassical building in 1932. Today it houses a fascinating collection of over 17,000 objects from ancient times to the present; artworks from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe, with particularly strong collections of American paintings, decorative arts, and Victorian toys and doll houses.
Complementing the eye-opening American Perspectives galleries, which display works drawn from the permanent collection, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany in New London exhibition, which explores the rich and varied work of artist, craftsman, and designer, Louis Comfort Tiffany, the Lyman Allyn presents a number of changing exhibitions each year. These special shows highlight creativity in its fullest definition – encouraging visitors to experience the pleasures of art through many lenses of discovery, history, social, and cultural phenomenon with focus on the character and strengths of Southeastern Connecticut. Throughout each year, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum offers special programming including exhibition openings, lectures, educational opportunities, and musical events for families and the general public.
Art After Dark
Friday, March 1, 2024
Lyman Allyn’s Art After Dark combines art and entertainment!
Time: 6 – 9 pm
Cost: $20 members / $25 non-members
(21+ event, includes two drink tickets & art materials)
Purchase tickets online or RSVP to 860.443.2545 ext. 2129.
Norma Morgan in Context
Through April 7, 2024
A visionary African American artist from New Haven, Connecticut, Norma Morgan (American, 1928–2017), approached landscape with a sense of awe and a reverence towards nature.
Her evocative prints and watercolors depict powerful and expressive landscapes filled with texture, atmosphere, and a focus on geology and rock formations. Inspired by the Romantic tradition and the history, literature, and art of the British Isles, Morgan spent several years in the United Kingdom rendering the wild beauty of its landscapes.
This scenery continued to inspire Morgan after her return to America. Based in New York City, Morgan worked episodically in the Catskills for many years, drawn to the region’s beautiful forests and waterfalls and to the artists’ colony in Woodstock, New York. The rich history of this area, which attracted the Hudson River School artists in the mid-19th century, also appealed to Morgan, who portrayed sites such as Kaaterskill Creek and Falls in her distinctive style.
Louis Comfort Tiffany in New London
Ongoing
This Gilded Age permanent collection gallery includes stained-glass windows, lamps, favrile glass vessels, silver, jewelry, paintings, archival photographs, and other objects, many of which come from Tiffany family descendants. Louis Comfort Tiffany’s parents hailed from Killingly, CT, and although they lived in New York City, the family often visited relatives in Norwich and New London. Louis’s first wife, Mary Goddard, was from Norwich, as was Louis’s brother-in-law Alfred Mitchell, who married his sister Annie. The Mitchells acquired a home in New London overlooking the Thames River, and Louis and his family were frequent visitors there in the mid-to-late 1870s and 1880s.
Poetry of the Wild Installation
Ongoing
Poetry of the Wild is an environmental art project designed to engage communities with their landscape through poetry, art and activity.