{"id":372708,"date":"2025-11-12T00:25:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T00:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372708\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T00:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T00:25:15","slug":"wadsworth-atheneum-museum-names-new-president-and-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372708\/","title":{"rendered":"Wadsworth Atheneum Museum Names New President and CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art<\/a> in Hartford, Connecticut, named Allison Blais as its new president and CEO starting in January 2026. <\/p>\n

\n\tBlais, who will replace Jeffrey N. Brown after five years in the role, is currently executive vice president and chief strategy and operations officer of New York\u2019s 9\/11 Memorial & Museum, both of which she worked on from early planning stages, including a stint at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, Duffield Ashmead IV MD, chair of the Wadsworth\u2019s board, said, \u201cAllison has had great success overseeing large-scale capital projects in New York City while demonstrating her ability to work with a broad range of stakeholders at an institution of national relevance. We look forward to her partnership with museum director Matthew Hargraves, and a bright future here at the Wadsworth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tBlais said, \u201cGrowing up outside Hartford, I came to know the Wadsworth as a place where timeless masterpieces live alongside timely discoveries. Under Jeff Brown\u2019s leadership and the board\u2019s guidance, the museum is embracing a renewed\u00a0sense of identity and purpose, and museum director Matthew Hargraves is advancing a compelling vision that both honors its history and energizes it in powerful ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Wadsworth was founded in 1842 by Daniel Wadsworth, one of the first American patrons of art, and stakes a claim as the oldest continuously operating public art museum in the U.S. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn a 2024 Washington Post roundup<\/a> of the 20 best American art museums (in which the Wadsworth ranked #18), art critic Sebastian Smee wrote, \u201cIts baroque, surrealist and Hudson River School holdings are tremendous. It boasts the Serge Lifar collection of Ballets Russes drawings and costumes, the Samuel Colt firearms collection, a terrific\u00a0\u201cWunderkammer\u201d display, great costumes and textiles, and destination paintings by, among others,\u00a0William Holman Hunt, Caravaggio,\u00a0Joseph Wright of Derby\u00a0and\u00a0Norman Rockwell.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tSmee also praised the museum\u2019s Matrix program for contemporary art, which is currently presenting an exhibition<\/a> by Sof\u00eda Gallis\u00e1 Muriente\u00a0that includes a video about a Puerto Rican nationalist who pulled off a major bank heist in Hartford in 1983.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, named Allison Blais as its new president and CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":372709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,67,132,68,179422],"class_list":{"0":"post-372708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-wadsworth-atheneum-museum-of-art"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115533888447110368","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}