The William Benton Museum of Art is a public
fine arts
museum located on the
University of Connecticut's main campus in
Storrs, Connecticut
Storrs is a village and census-designated place (CDP) in the New England town, town of Mansfield, Connecticut, Mansfield in eastern Tolland County, Connecticut, Tolland County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 15,344 at the 2010 Unite ...
, US. The Benton houses a permanent collection of over 6,500 artistic works and hosts special exhibitions, concerts, campus art walks, and other events. The museum is named in honor of the prominent U.S. senator and university trustee
William Benton. The Benton has a
cafe (The Beanery) and a gift store. Admission to the museum is free for all.
Constructed in 1920 and used for twenty years as University's main dining hall, the Benton opened officially as an art museum in 1967. The museum building is designed in the
Collegiate Gothic
Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europ ...
style and is one of the core campus buildings in the
, which is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places.
The Benton's collection originated with former
Connecticut Agricultural College president Charles Lewis Beach, who began the college's art collection, bequeathed his personal collection of American art to the college in 1933, and left a trust fund for the college to continue acquiring art. Developed over the ensuing decades, the museum's permanent collection includes works by
Childe Hassam,
Henry Ward Ranger,
Emil Carlson,
Charles Harold Davis
Charles Harold Davis (7 January 1856 – 5 August 1933) was an American landscape painter.
Biography
He was born at Amesbury, Massachusetts. A pupil of the schools of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he was sent to Paris in 1880. Having studi ...
,
Ernest Lawson,
Ellen Emmet Rand
Ellen Emmet Rand (née Ellen Gertrude Emmet; March 4, 1875 – December 18, 1941) was a painter and illustrator. She specialized in portraits, painting over 500 works during her career including portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, artis ...
,
Guy Wiggins,
Mary Cassatt,
Thomas Hart Benton,
Fairfield Porter,
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 – January 8, 1925) was an American realism, American realist painting, painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art ...
,
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's prim ...
,
Rembrandt Peale,
Georges Braque
Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...
,
Edward Burne-Jones,
Reginald Marsh,
Käthe-Kollwitz,
Arthur Bowen Davies
Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1862 – October 24, 1928) was an avant-garde American artist and influential advocate of modern art in the United States c. 1910–1928.
Biography
Davies was born in Utica, New York, the son of David and Phoe ...
,
Maurice Prendergast and
Kiki Smith. The collection is strongest in modern and American art, but some works date to the
Renaissance, and exhibits are highly diverse.
References
External links
*
Connecticut Art Trail
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Mansfield, Connecticut
Art museums and galleries in Connecticut
University of Connecticut
University museums in Connecticut
Museums in Tolland County, Connecticut
Art museums established in 1967
1967 establishments in Connecticut
School buildings completed in 1920
Historic district contributing properties in Connecticut
Collegiate Gothic architecture in the United States