JANUARY 22–31, 2016, PARK AVENUE ARMORY, NEW YORK CITY

The Winter Antiques Show’s 2016 loan exhibition will celebrate the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. Legacy for the Future: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will pay tribute to the diversity and forward-thinking vision of the Museum’s collection, with highlights ranging from antiquities and Baroque masterworks to Hudson River School landscapes and contemporary sculpture. The exhibition will be on view during the run of the Winter Antiques Show, January 22-31, 2016 at the Park Avenue Armory. The 2016 Loan Exhibition sponsor is Bessemer Trust. Presenting Sponsor Chubb Personal Insurance provides support for the 20th consecutive year.

The title of the exhibition is adapted from a 1936 public lecture given in New York City by former museum director Everett “Chick” Austin: “For we must have the great things of the past to enjoy and to study, but with that valuable experience and pleasure as guide and criterion, we must surely seek to live in the present and to try to create the new forms which are to be our legacy to the future.”

Founded in 1842, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is the oldest continually operating public art museum in the United States. The museum’s nearly 50,000 works of art span 5,000 years, from Greek and Roman antiquities to the first museum collection of American contemporary art. Thanks to the enormous gifts of predecessors, the Wadsworth Atheneum’s collection is home to many significant works. It was the first museum in the United States to purchase works by Caravaggio, Frederic Church, Joseph Cornell, and Salvador Dalí, and was the first to exhibit major surveys of works by Italian masters, Surrealists, and Picasso. Highlights of the collection include a strong holding of Baroque masterpieces, such as Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as a Lute Player, and an important collection of contemporary art, including works by Ellsworth Kelly, George Segal, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker.

“We at the Wadsworth Atheneum are profoundly honored to have been chosen by the Winter Antiques Show Committee to present this year’s loan exhibition,” said David W. Dangremond, President of the Board of Trustees. “We hope that visitors to the Armory are surprised and delighted by the highlights from our collection and as a result will endeavour to visit the museum to see our offerings in their entirety.”

The Winter Antiques Show celebrates its 62nd year as America’s most distinguished art and design fair, with 73 specialists in American, English, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts exhibiting exceptional objects from Antiquity through the 1960s, all vetted for authenticity. The net proceeds from the Show benefit East Side House Settlement (ESHS), which provides access to quality education and technology training as gateways out of poverty to students in the South Bronx, one of the nation's poorest congressional districts. The goal of ESHS is to help motivated students graduate from high school, enroll in college, and build the skills necessary to secure good jobs. In 2016, ESHS will celebrate its 125th year.