Slater Memorial Museum to Open Mondays

By VIVIAN F. ZOE 

Approaching 125 years of operation, the Slater Memorial Museum will add a day of public visiting hours, at least through the summer.  Recognizing the expanding needs of the community and alumni and following a National trend led by New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Slater Museum on the campus of Norwich Free Academy will be open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Mondays through September 1, 2013. An atrium completed in 2011 offers universal access through an elevator and a series of ramps, plus ample and beautiful new restrooms and gathering spaces. The Slater Museum holds a treasure of objects with immense significance to Norwich and its surrounding towns.  The Slater Museum’s iconic Cast Gallery (1888) presents plaster copies of the canon of World sculpture, including Egyptian, Archaic, Greek, Roman and Renaissance marbles and bronzes.  To guide visitors through the exhibitions, including the hall of sculpture, the museum has published new handguides for most galleries In the Lewis and Grace S. Sears Gallery, the former Peck Library, Around the World on the Yacht Eleanor: The Slaters’ Grand Tour includes personal objects from the Slater family, and objects collected by other Norwich Grand Tourists of the 19th century.  In addition, the museum’s gift shop makes available for purchase items that reinforce the visit including publications produced by the Slater Museum.  To the rear of the Slater’s cast gallery level in the Gualtieri Gallery, lie two exhibitions, one of African art and artifacts and one of artwork by Connecticut artists of the 20th century each with its own handguide. Few American cities can trump Norwich with an art school and museum-based Saturday art classes that have trained children and adults continuously for 123 years, producing artists like Charlotte Fuller Eastman. The work of several former Norwich Art School Directors of the early 20th century, Ozias Dodge, Margaret Triplett, Charlotte Fuller Eastman and Irene Weir is presented through a breadth of creative expression reflected through printmaking, painting, ceramic sculpture, glass and jewelry. On the museum’s mezzanine, Crocker’s Norwich: Art and Industry in the Nineteenth Century includes work by John Denison Crocker and Alexander Hamilton Emmons reflecting the zenith of Norwich’s important 19th century industrial history. Also on the mezzanine is Maritime Norwich, which uses objects from the museum’s collections to present the august history of Norwich’s shipbuilding, whaling, sea- and war-faring.  In the museum’s temporary exhibitions space, the Converse Art Gallery, through August 18, 2013 is Journey: The Stonington Printmakers’ Society. The gift shop is housed in the Museum’s Visitors’ Center where all guests first arrive, whether they use the elevator, or elect to come up the old fashioned way – up the stairs.  Stock in the shop includes affordable works of art by local and Connecticut artists and artisans as well as mass-produced and custom cards, books, prints, T-shirts, hand bags and jewelry, most fair-trade certified. Finally, the Slater Memorial Museum may be one of the last great entertainment bargains.  Admission fees are $3 for adults; $2 for Senior Citizens and College Students with ID; $1 for children 12 to 18 and children under 12 are admitted free of charge. The Slater Memorial Museum and Converse Art Gallery are part of Norwich Free Academy, 108 Crescent Street, Norwich 06360.  Housed in an exemplary Romanesque Revival building (1886), the museum features full scale plaster casts of Egyptian, Archaic, Greek, Roman and Renaissance sculpture; fine and decorative Art representing 350 years of Norwich History, Ancient artifacts; contemporary fine art and ethnographic material.  The museum annually presents up to six temporary exhibitions in its Converse Gallery and is open year round.  Revised hours open the Slater to visitors seven days each week:  9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., Saturday and Sunday. For more information, please visit www.slatermuseum.org.

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