Art Escape First Thursday
Wadsworth Atheneum
Hartford
Jan, 4, 2024
“Excuse me, what kind of camera is that?”
I looked up to see a fresh face bracketed by overflowing curly hair. I told him that it’s a Canon Rebel.
The stranger followed up with a more technical question.
“I have no idea,” I answered while laughing. “I’m just a writer with a camera. I have no clue how it works.”
Art doesn’t always offer the opportunity to be social. Many art exhibits demand our complete attention, if not our silence, to fully enjoy them.
So it was refreshing to visit the Wadsworth Atheneum with the explicit intent to be social about art. Yesterday was the beginning of an Atheneum series called “First Thursdays for 2024.” January’s event was billed as an “Art Escape,” a chance to get away from regular life for a few hours.
The young man who asked me about the camera is named William, a 19-year-old with quite the collection of passport stamps already. He was born due south of Mexico City, where he went to a private arts school and gained an appreciation for music, especially jazz. He moved to Toronto recently for college. He found himself in Hartford with his family to visit his grandfather, who has been a native of the city for 60 years.
I asked him which of the places he’s lived in did he like the most. “Toronto, definitely,” he said. “It’s big and it’s clean and there’s always something to do. The government puts a lot of time and money into supporting the arts and different events around the city.”
“But Hartford has some nice stuff too,” he said. “This museum is one of my favorite places in the United States. It’s huge and always has something different going on.”
As he talked, the Nat Reeves Trio played jazz in the background. The Wadsworth has always been one of my favorite places in the city, and I felt a twinge of pride to hear someone so well-traveled say that it’s one of their favorite places in the entire country.
We stopped talking for a moment to listen to the music.
“Jazz is incredible to me. The improvisation is so cool, the way they synchronize and harmonize without knowing exactly what each other are going to play,” William said. I glanced back at the trio, on piano, cello and guitar. They flowed together like parts of a musical machine, responding to each other’s cues with wordless communication.
William doesn’t just love music; he’s into all of the arts. He gave me a few pointers about my camera from a photography class that he’s taken. He told me that his dream is to work in the culinary arts, although he’s already had a bit of a wake-up call about that.
“I worked in a restaurant, and it was tough,” he admitted. “It made me think if I wanted to dedicate 12 or 14 hours a day doing that job to run my own restaurant.” He’s now considering business classes so that he can still be involved in the restaurant world, but from the funding and management side.
The Wadsworth continues to draw me back because I always find new experiences every time I return. It feels good to know that I’m not the only one, and that its offerings even make a kid who has seen more than someone twice his age feel a sense of wonder and appreciation.
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First Thursdays occur the first Thursday of every month at the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Jamil indulges his inner child and goes to see Disney on Ice.
