WDS Museum Opens Season With Two New Exhibitions

Press release

The Webb Deane Stevens Museum Announces Two New Exhibitions for Public Opening on May 1

WETHERSFIELD, CT — The Webb Deane Stevens Museum re-opens to the public on May 1, unveiling new exhibitions that foreground personal narratives and reveal the history and practice behind some of our most beloved objects and architecture.

Every object tells a story. Many objects together form history. Out of the Attic: A Century of Collecting, surfaces long-forgotten personal histories tied to individual objects that, when experienced together, form a variegated and intimate narrative of American decorative arts and material culture.

How to build a Georgian House literally exposes 18th-century architecture from the inside out, detailing the architectural process from conception through construction. Examining materials and process, rather than finished product alone, will offer visitors a broader understanding of the conditions and human activities behind our museum’s distinctive Connecticut River Valley homes.

Executive Director Brenton Grom notes, “our interpretive philosophy across the Webb Deane Stevens Museum—whether we’re leading a house tour or detailing historic preservation methods—seeks to turn every experience on our campus into an exercise in ‘active looking,’ where people think critically about the material details in front of them in order to draw conclusions about the past human behaviors that have shaped these
spaces and been shaped by them.”

EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW
NEW | Out of the Attic: A Century of Collecting
Out of the Attic: A Century of Collecting explores how the Museum’s treasured objects accumulated over time as the result of individuals’ efforts, ideas, and generosity. From furniture to silver to portraits large and small, it showcases a dazzling array of pieces, some of them family heirlooms, that allow us to ask: “What is a collection” and “why is a gathering of objects significant?” How a collection is built over time not only gives us an entrée into specific stories the collectors are trying to tell but also gives us clues about the collectors themselves. Amassed over more than a hundred-year period by the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in The State of Connecticut (NSCDA-CT), the Webb Deane Stevens Museum collection has been curated to reflect changing ideas and attitudes about American history and decorative arts that demonstrate pride, perseverance, and purpose.

According to curator and Director of Preservation & Collections TR Revella-Hamilton, “These stories carry a vital local impact and also emphasize the important place that the Webb, Deane, and Stevens buildings and objects occupy in national history. This collection is a testament to the impact the NSCDA-CT has had in preserving our cultural past for future generations.”

Some of the exhibition’s furnishings, personal objects, and artworks are on display for the first time in a generation. They help us explore the personal stories and unique perspectives of the women of the NSCDA-CT and Museum staff who have worked to cultivate this unique and important collection.

NEW | How to Build a Georgian House
How to Build a Georgian House offers a fascinating step-by-step explanation of 18th-century construction techniques through architectural fragments and interpretive panels. Visitors will discover who built the Webb Deane Stevens Museum’s historic houses, where their design elements originated, how raw materials were transformed into building products, and how these assemblies have endured over the centuries.

ONGOING | Preservation in Action: Architectural Photography from Wallace Nutting to Peter Brown
Preservation in Action: Architectural Photography from Wallace Nutting to Peter Brown is a testament to the camera’s enduring ability to capture that which cannot be expressed by preservation scholarship alone. Through light, color, and composition, photographs by early-twentieth-century antiquarian Wallace Nutting and contemporary architectural photographer Peter R. Brown document Wethersfield’s preservation efforts from 1916 to the present. Beyond showing the existence and configuration of architectural elements and furnishings, they evoke moods and sensory experiences in the spaces they depict. Brown’s images belong to Preservation in Action: Ten Stories of Stewardship, a recent publication by the late Anne Crofoot Kuckro that chronicles a long-running collaboration among museums, private homeowners, shopkeepers, and public officials in Wethersfield to preserve and protect Wethersfield’s historic structures. Preservation in action is a publication by The Webb Deane Stevens Museum and Wesleyan University Press. Copies of the book can be found in the Museum’s gift shop.

HISTORIC HOUSE TOURS: Four Houses, One American Story
Our campus at the center of Connecticut’s oldest and largest historic district interprets four National Historic Landmark and National Register houses and their outbuildings, acquired between 1919 and the 1950s by The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in The State of Connecticut. Together these houses represent a series of significant milestones in the military, political, social, and economic history that saw America’s transformation from a series of colonies into a concerted nation.

• The 1752 Joseph Webb, Sr., House hosted the pivotal 1781 Wethersfield Conference where Washington and Rochambeau planned the Yorktown campaign that would help win American independence.
• The circa-1770 Silas Deane House was home to America's first foreign diplomat, whose efforts secured crucial French support during the Revolutionary War. Deane's subsequent downfall through false accusations provides insight into early American political discourse
• The 1789 Isaac Stevens House illustrates the "radicalism of the American Revolution," showing how a leatherworker could rise to become a bank proprietor, embodying the new social mobility of the early republic.
• The 1711 Buttolph-Williams House, shown to the public on behalf of Connecticut Landmarks, whose restoration with leading architects and decorators in the 1950s inspired the setting of the Newbery-winning novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

Together, these interconnected places tell a multidimensional story of the uncertain decades that gave birth to American nationhood.

GUIDED TOURS
May – October
Wednesday – Saturday: 11 am | 1 pm | 3 pm
Sunday: 1 pm | 3 pm

About the Webb Deane Stevens Museum
Located in the heart of Connecticut’s largest historic district, the Webb Deane Stevens Museum consists of three furnished historic houses, the new state-of-the-art Holcombe Education Center, and period outbuildings on an 8-acre campus which includes the Amy Cogswell Colonial Revival Garden and the historic Webb Barn. The Museum's campus serves as a place for community gatherings, recreation, and cultural enrichment. For more information, visit wdsmuseum.org.

MUSEUM HOURS
May – October
Wednesday – Saturday: 10AM – 4PM
Sunday: 1PM – 4PM
And by appointment