Current Exhibitions
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Profiles: Ruth McIntosh Cogswell and Dorothy Cogswell
On view through December 2023
New Haven’s vibrant art scene has a long and storied history, and the New Haven Museum’s newest exhibition, “Profiles: Ruth McIntosh Cogswell and Dorothy Cogswell,” highlights two remarkable women at the heart of it a century ago. Using works by the Cogswells and the students they inspired, “Profiles” illustrates a small portion of a pivotal time in the Elm City. The exhibition will remain on view through December 30, 2023.
Ruth McIntosh Cogswell (1885-1944) grew up in New Haven and attended the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1905-06. She was an art educator and artist renowned for her intricate silhouette work. Her daughter, Dorothy Cogswell (1909-2008), was the first woman to earn an MFA from the Yale School of Fine Arts and later served as chair of the Department of Art at Mount Holyoke College. The exhibition’s photographs, watercolors, pencil drawings and silhouettes give a glimpse of the New Haven arts scene in the early 20th century and allows present-day audiences to consider the role women played in establishing the New Haven arts community that exists today. Learn More
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FACTORY
On view through fall 2023
A post-industrial alternative history of a New Haven manufacturing icon, this new exhibit documents the underground history of the former New Haven Clock Company factory on Hamilton St. that survived urban renewal to house a variety of visual and performance artists, punk bands, skateboarders, and music and adult-entertainment clubs, such as the Brick N’ Wood International Café and Kurt’s 2, from the 1970s to the 2000s. Including original and archival video and photography and artifacts, the exhibit highlights some of the people, personalities and artistic endeavors once present in the building.
World-class industry, mimes, R&B, hardcore punk, avant garde local artists. If you ask around, practically everyone in New Haven knows a story about the old Clock Factory.
Signs of the Time
Ongoing
On view in the Museum’s upper rotunda, this exhibit features 19th– and 20th-century signs from Elm City businesses, selected from the permanent collection by Collections Manager Mary Christ. The assemblage will appeal to long-time residents and history buffs alike, prompting memories and eliciting comments on New Haven’s storied past.
From Clocks to Lollipops: Made in New Haven
Ongoing
Elm City Pins Company Trade Card, circa 1876, lithograph on cardboard, Collection of New Haven Museum
From the Colonial era to the present day, New Haven has produced an astonishing variety of goods, including hardware, carriages, automobile parts and accessories, firearms, corsets, clocks, carpeting, rubber overshoes, clothing, musical instruments, silver-plated wares, candy, and more. Guest Curator Elizabeth Pratt Fox selected more than 100 objects, advertisements, trade cards, photographs and other items for this fascinating look at the production of consumer goods in New Haven over the past 300+ years.
Form and Function: Decorative Arts from the Collection
Ongoing
Form and Function: Decorative Arts from the Collection highlights a small selection from the renown collections of historic design and decorative arts at The New Haven Museum. Currently celebrating its 150th anniversary, the New Haven Museum has long been a repository for some of Connecticut’s decorative arts treasures. If aficionados are familiar with the magnificent colonial furniture, silver, and paintings in the Museum’s collection, its important holdings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century objects are less well known. In curating a new installation, guest curator Benjamin Colman wanted to create unexpected dialogues between objects made at different times in different media. Spanning from baroque-furniture to contemporary design, the pieces on view are arranged into four thematic groups: Politics, Childhood, Business, and Eclectic Homes. These objects were made with functional forms to serve a useful purpose. Yet in their exuberant designs and bold style, they also demonstrate the spirit of the individuals who created them, and the generations of people who used them.
Mr. Colman is Assistant Curator of the Florence Griswold Museum
