Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

The Wadsworth is more than just the first public art museum in the United States. The museum was the first in America to begin collecting contemporary American art – resulting in a world-renowned Hudson River School collection.  The Wadsworth staged the first retrospective of Pablo Picasso in America, and was the first museum to both exhibit and purchase works by Surrealist artists – today almost every exhibition about Surrealism includes works borrowed from our collection. The Wadsworth was also the first art museum to also have a theater – and was the first to show Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints & 3 Acts.