ADAM LENZ
producer . curator . educator . artist

Avery 90

a celebration of the 90th Anniversary of the 

Avery Memorial Building 

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Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

February–November, 2024

In 1934, the Avery Memorial building at the Wadsworth Atheneum opened as the first museum building in the United States with an International Style interior. It also placed the presentation of visual art, film, and performance on equal footing through its inclusion of a theater and related programming. Avery 90 is a suite of programs celebrating and reflecting on the building’s 90th anniversary, its architectural importance, and its forward-thinking history of programming and performance.

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The series opened with a public lecture, What Was The International Style?, with Martino Stierli, chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Stierli positioned the Wadsworth’s Avery Memorial Building within the context and trajectory of the movement, examining its emphasis on open space, repetition, and its rejection of ornamentation. Author Hugh Eakin discussed his new book Picasso's War, highlighting the 1934 Picasso exhibition at the Wadsworth, the first comprehensive museum retrospective of Picasso's work in this country. Members of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra performed works inspired by composers from the archives of the Avery building in the museum's Avery Court gallery. Choreographer and dancer Emily Coates participated in an artist residency and public program, developing a new work that responds to the afterlife of George Balanchine's legacy in New England and that reflects on the history of the Wadsworth's sponsoring of Balanchine's immigration to the United States. Artist Peter Cusack led a drawing course at the Austin House, the historic home of Arthur Everett "Chick" Austin, Jr. in Hartford's West End neighborhood. Two films from the Wadsworth's 1934 season, Jean Cocteau's

The Blood of a Poet (1932) and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930), were screened in the museum's historic theater. Emily Coates and Adam Lenz led visitors on a tour of artworks connected to the Avery Memorial Building's history of dance. Director of Facilities, Cecil Adams, illuminated the architectural history of the Avery Memorial Building on an architecture tour, sharing his knowledge of the structure garnered over his four decades at the museum. Choreographer and pioneer of postmodern dance Deborah Hay presented a lecture and performance in the galleries reflecting on her career and her decade long relationship with the museum that included a realization of her Ten Circle Dances in Avery Court in 1973.

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Support for Avery 90 provided by the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation Fund at the Wadsworth Atheneum with additional support provided by the Design and Decorative Arts Council for the Martino Stierli lecture and by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation for the Tremaine Lecture in Contemporary Art. 

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