Would you like to know more about the ins and outs of collecting in the contemporary art world?
Join the board, administration and members of the Connecticut River Museum Thursday, April 18, at the Old Lyme Country Club when Jeffrey Whitman Cooley of The Cooley Gallery in Old Lyme presents “Outs & Ins: The Art in the Life of an Art Dealer.” The event runs from 6 to 9 p.m. and includes dinner.
Cooley, a Hartford native trained at Harvard, apprenticed in the American Painting Department of Christie’s Auction House and graduated to the American Paintings Department at the Wadsworth Athenaeum will share his stories.
In 1981, Cooley established The Cooley Gallery in a yellow storefront on Lyme Street. There he continues to identify, gather, exhibit and interpret American paintings and painters to numerous different audiences.
He serves as an enthusiastic and committed advisor to the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury and the former Lyme Academy College of Fine Art, where he was awarded an honorary degree. Cooley is a board member at the Florence Griswold Museum and an Elector at the Wadsworth Athenaeum. He has been an influential guide to young, talented artists helping many to emerge as professionals.
Proceeds from this evening support the Brenda Milkofsky Curatorial Fund. Organized in 2009 to recognize the work of the Connecticut River Museum’s Founding Director, the fund is restricted to the acquisition and conservation of objects and manuscripts that enhance the historical focus of the Connecticut River Museum’s collections.
Purchases from this fund have included the portrait of a Middletown merchant mariner; a landscape of the oft-painted view of the Ox Bow below Mount Holyoke; the stern board of a Portland-built stone schooner; an Old Lyme hunting scene, and a model of a Blue Line tug-boat.
For more information or to make a reservation, visit this link or call the Connecticut River Museum at 860-767-8269. Tickets are $100 per person.
The Connecticut River Museum is located in Essex, Conn., and is the only museum dedicated to the study, preservation and celebration of the cultural and natural heritage of the Connecticut River and its Valley. The Connecticut River Museum is located at 67 Main Street, Essex and is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.