Wethersfield Academy for the Arts

The Academy embraces several art disciplines where students, working directly with professional artists, are guided and encouraged to develop their unique gifts and talents. We provide opportunities in art classes, workshops, and art lectures for the novice through the professional to benefit from study, apprenticeship, exhibition and performance, and to promote the arts in the best classical tradition for enjoyment and inspiration.

 2022 Biennial Fine Art Competition Show

Realism 2022 Wethersfield

October 1 - November 13 at the Watson Gallery, Keeney Memorial Cultural Center

Join us at the Gala Dinner Celebration September 30, 5:00 - 8:00pm for this remarkable Biennial Competition Show with a Realist theme. We begin the evening with a catered dinner, music by Jazz pianist Alex Nakhimovsky and during dessert, a talk by our adjudicator, Peter Trippi;

Against the Grain: American Realist Painters in the 60s and 70s

The 1960s and 70s were challenging times to be a figurative painter in America, let alone a realist. What were the best artists in this arena making, how did they fare in the marketplace, and what is their standing today? Fine Art Connoisseur editor-in-chief offers a survey of such gifted painters as Nell Blaine, John Koch, Gabriel Laderman, Alfred Leslie, Philip Pearlstein, Fairfield Porter, Priscilla Roberts, then proposes how they could be better appreciated by practitioners and the public now.

Peter will then announce the $7,000 in prizes for the competition, and we will proceed to the premiere showing of the Realism Art Show in the Watson Gallery; to be celebrated with bubbly!

$100/person donation. VENMO*, check or the donation button below. This is our Biennial Fundraising event to support artists who are achieving remarkable artwork. Please join us.

If you have any questions, info@wethersfieldarts.org

*VENMO = wethersfieldacademyforthearts

Wethersfield is a State Cultural District Destination

Department of Economic and Community Development’s Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) officially established Wethersfield as a Cultural District in Connecticut. Wethersfield is the fourth municipality to receive such a designation. A Cultural District is a specific area of a city or town identified by the municipality that has a number of cultural facilities, activities and/or assets–both for profit and nonprofit. It is a walkable, compact area that is easy for visitors to recognize.

Wethersfield Academy for the Arts is proud to have had a part in helping Connecticut to recognize what we have known all along; that Wethersfield has a rich abundance of cultural resources to share with visitors from our state and the wider world.