The Wyeths: Three Generations | Works from the Bank of America Collection
The New Britain Museum of American Art
By: New Britain - Oct 16, 2026
The New Britain Museum of American Art presents The Wyeths: Three Generations | Works from the Bank of America Collection from November 20, 2026, through March 21, 2027.
The exhibition features remarkable paintings, drawings, and illustrations spanning the early 1900s through the early 2000s, highlighting the Wyeths’ creative legacy and distinct artistic styles. Notably, these generational works invite museumgoers to explore the Wyeth family's creative legacy.
For more than a century, the Wyeth family has created art that enraptures the imagination. The Wyeths: Three Generations | Works from the Bank of America Collection presents more than sixty paintings, drawings and illustrations by N. C. Wyeth, his son Andrew and his grandson Jamie, along with works by N. C.’s daughter Henriette and her husband Peter Hurd. The works—from the early 1900s to the early 2000s—reveal the breadth of the Wyeths’ creative output and illuminate the artists’ distinctive styles, stories, and subjects, as well as shared themes across their careers.
“Few artistic families have shaped the story of American art as profoundly as the Wyeths," says Lisa Hayes Williams, Head of Curatorial Affairs at the New Britain Museum of American Art. "By bringing three generations into dialogue, this exhibition reveals how each artist forged a singular vision while contributing to a shared legacy that continues to influence our understanding of American identity, place, and imagination.”
“Bank of America is thrilled at the opportunity to partner with the New Britain Museum of American Art to bring this incredible exhibition as part of our Art in our Communities program, playing an important role in connecting our community to great art," said Joe Gianni, president, Bank of America Greater Hartford. “Alongside the museum, we share a commitment to making the arts more accessible.”
The exhibition presents a selection of the work of five of the family's artists. N. C. Wyeth (1882–1945), the family's founding artist, has long been considered one of the nation's leading illustrators at the turn of the twentieth century. Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) remains one of the United States’ most popular artists, yet his paintings defy easy categorization, straddling the boundary between mundane and magical. Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), like his father and grandfather, has painted the ambiguity and strangeness of everyday reality in rural Pennsylvania and the Midcoast of Maine. Through her paintings, Henriette Wyeth captures the fragility nature of life, and her husband, Peter Hurd, was a student of the patriarch.
Interspersed between the three sections that introduce N. C., Andrew, and Jamie individually are three more sections, which present the Wyeths in conversation. These thematic groupings underscore a common sensibility across generations yet also reveal how the Wyeths produced strikingly different pictorial worlds through their parallel range of artistic processes.
In their portraits, through close study and an intimate sense of connection, the Wyeths capture the psychological intensity and individuality of their sitters. In their shared fascination with the ocean and the coastal culture of Maine, they combine careful observation with creative intuition to produce visionary views of seaside life. In images of the actual or imagined past, the Wyeths suggest their place within a history that is continually unfolding and the resolution of which is uncertain.
Across these groupings, we find a world of heightened realism that is simultaneously familiar and distant, approachable and fantastical. Each generation of Wyeth painters seems always mindful of their inheritance, whether artistic, familial, or historical. Their work is visual lore: a collage of knowledge and lingering memory, shared and passed down over time, rooted in places and people, teetering on the threshold of the visible and unseen.
This exhibition has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in our Communities® program, which provides fully curated exhibitions from the bank's collection to museums and nonprofit galleries at no cost. Since launching the Art in our Communities® program in 2008, investments in museums, like the New Britain Museum of American Art, have driven engagement, promoted cultural sustainability, and made the arts more accessible and inclusive in local communities.
This exhibition is part of a broader partnership between the New Britain Museum of American Art, Bank of America, and the Greater Hartford community. Bank of America is supporting the Museum's Among Friends: Mary Cassatt and Her Circle exhibition from November 7, 2026, through February 14, 2027. Past investments have also supported The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art, 2020/20+ Women @ NBMAA Initiative in 2021, and the Group f.64: Revolutionary Vision: Works from the Bank of America Collection in 2014.
Related Programming:
Members Opening Reception
Thursday, November 19, 5:30-7 p.m.
Wyeth Lecture Series | Sponsored by Bank of America
- “The Worlds of the Wyeths” with William Coleman | Saturday, January 16, 2-3 p.m.
- “The Wonders of Wyeth: Materials, Techniques, and Conservation Issues Through Generations” with Dr. Kristin de Ghetaldi and Professor Brian Baade | Sunday, February 21, 2-3 p.m.
- Wanda Corn in Conversation | Friday, March 19, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Walk-In Tour | The Wyeths: Three Generations
Sundays at 1 p.m. December 6 - March 21
Learn more at https://nbmaa.org/exhibitions/the-wyeths
About the New Britain Museum of American Art:
The New Britain Museum of American Art is the first institution dedicated solely to acquiring and presenting American art. Spanning four centuries, its collection reflects the richness and complexity of the American experience, bringing established narratives into conversation with new voices and perspectives. From the colonial era to the present, the collection traces significant developments in American art through painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, and illustration, and includes Thomas Hart Benton’s celebrated mural series The Arts of Life in America. Through its growing collection, dynamic exhibitions, and engaging programs, the Museum creates meaningful experiences with American art that foster curiosity, creativity, and lifelong learning.
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