Slater Museum Day Trip

 One of the ladies at the gym heard the tail end of a conversation I had been having and chimed in about the Slater museum saying it really was a "must see." Never having heard of it, I was curious. It's an art museum on one of Connecticut high school's campus and I thought it might be worth checking out since Alec, Evan, and I enjoy a good art museum.

 We were having a heatwave mixed with poor air quality from the Canadian wildfires last week so we thought it might be a great day to head to a museum and beat the heat. Even from the outside we loved it! Look at that amazing architecture. Both inside and out this was a really lovely building.  

They have attached a building right to this one on the other side (not shown in the photo) so the wall for this building is the interior wall of the building next door and I just love that you can see all these old world details mixed with the glass/chrome/newness of the new building. 

Once inside we learned they were not charging admission this day as they actually DON'T have air conditioning. But the thick walls, high ceilings and many floor fans still allowed us to spend a few hours walking through and exploring everything. 

The three ladies we encountered that worked there were all just the sweetest, most passionate museum workers I have ever encountered. And, funny enough, one of them had been to Greece a few times with the exact same tour guide Alec had been with. So they had lots in common and talked extensively about the various places Ilias had taken them.

The first room on the main floor is filled with paintings from a local self-taught artist as well as some casts and marble statues of famous people  

We really loved the intricate detail work of the fireplace, the gorgeous wood ceilings, and the beautiful stained glass windows as well. 

The museum is most known for its casts. It houses one of the largest collection of plaster casts in the United States. All of these casts were made in the late 1800's taken from original sculptures like the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory just to name a few. Half the casts are Roman in nature and the other 1/2 are Greek.  

Did you know that most of these white marble statues and monuments we're used to seeing don't actually look much like their originals? I had no idea what most of them used to be painted in vibrant colors. 

Taken from the upstairs looking down

I'm really kicking myself as this is the only photo of the downstairs room I took. It was filled with a temporary display of student works of art and so many of them really blew us away. 

There was another small gallery room filled with art from Africa. I've only managed to take one photo from that gallery as well and completely forgot to take any at all of all the rooms on the second floor. 

The first floor contained all the casts, the local art from Norwich, and the African art, as well as a changing exhibit that was between viewings. Then there was a small room downstairs with the student art, and a floor above the casts that held little rooms of various themed works-- many focused on Norwich, ship trade and building, & East Asian art. But, obviously, I was far to immersed in what we were seeing and our conversations about them to take many photos. We definitely plan to go back.