Join the Mattatuck Museum for the opening reception of its summer exhibition, Haven and Inspiration: The Kent Art Colony on Sunday, June 22, 2014 from 2:00-4:00 p.m. The exhibition features works by founding members of the Kent Art Colony.

Haven and Inspiration, on view through August 24, 2014, explores the wide range of artistic styles and subjects produced by the art colony’s founding members. Of all the villages in Connecticut, Kent attracted the most permanent colony of artists and developed the only artists’ organization that exists to this day. It remains, until now, however, the one least examined.

Building upon the scholarship of Robert Michael Austin, whose publication, Artists of the Litchfield Hills devotes a chapter to the Kent Art Colony, this exhibition focuses on the period of 1910 to 1930. Robert Nisbet moved to Kent in 1910; shortly after, like-minded artists who started as visitors became neighbors. By the summer of 1922, there were enough artists in Kent for them to consider organizing into a group. While landscape was the primary subject, they also painted portraits, genre scenes and still lifes. Artists featured in the exhibition include Rex Brasher (1869-1960) Eliot Candee Clark (1883-1980), Carl Hirschberg (1854-1923), Francis Luis Mora (1874-1940), G. Laurence Nelson (1887-1978), Spencer Baird Nichols (1875-1950), Robert Nisbet (1879-1961), Willard Paddock (1873-1956) and Frederick Judd Waugh (1861-1940).

The Mattatuck Museum is offering community programs in conjunction with the exhibition. For details on these and other events, visit www.mattatuckmuseum.org/events. The opening reception is free and open to the public; RSVP is requested. Please register in advance at www.mattatuckmuseum.org or by calling (203) 753-0381 x 130. Join the museum to immediately qualify for member benefits.

Visit www.MattatuckMuseum.org or call (203) 753-0381 for more information on all of the museum’s adult and children’s programs, events and exhibits. The Mattatuck Museum is operated with support from the Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development, CT Office of the Arts which also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and is a member of the Connecticut Art Trail, a group of 16 world-class museums and historic sites (www.arttrail.org). Located at 144 West Main Street, on the green in Waterbury, CT the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. Free parking is located behind the building on Park Place.