The Next Best Thing to Being There...

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte -- 1884
Georges Seurat

Google Art Project
Art lovers will surely appreciate Google's latest collaboration with museums from around the world and the endeavor to make great art more accessible to real people. The images are delivered in super high resolution; so much so that you can often use a 'zoom' function to see a master painter's brushwork details.

Featured museums include The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée d’Orsay (Paris). For some museums, you can even take a virtual tour, similar to the street view feature used on Google Maps.

Though online comments indicate not everyone loves virtual reproductions and there is surely a little cumbersome clunk in the project's search engine, truth is many of us won't be flying to Paris anytime soon. Have some fun with this one.

Regional Museums
Good news is the MetMuseum, MOMA, the Whitney, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum are not that far away.

Connecticut Art Trail and Library Passes
Also good news is you can enjoy the Connecticut Art Trail. The library offers discount admission passes to three museums on the Trail: Florence Griswold Museum, New Britain Museum of American Art, and Wadsworth Atheneum. These plus discount passes to the nationally renowned homes of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe...

Passes are funded by the Friends of the Library. Join the Friends today for as little as $5 to keep the program going.

For Your Little Museum Goer

Art and Artists for Kids
The library circulates passes to three area art museums: the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the Florence Griswold Museum. Each provides discounted admission. If you have a little artist in your home, here's a short list of titles about art, artists, and museum going.

Picture Books and Easy Readers
Babar's Museum of Art by Laurent de Brunhoff
You Can't Take a Balloon to the Metropolitan Museum by Jacqueline P. Weitzman
Matthew's Dream by Leo Lionni
Bridget's Beret by Tom Lichtenheld
Art & Max by David Wiesner
Artist Ted by Andrea Beaty

Maisy Goes to the Museum by Lucy Cousins
The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum by Kate Bernheimer
Fancy Nancy at the Museum by Jane O'Connor
Katie's Sunday Afternoon by James Mayhew
Art's Supplies by Chris Tougas
Fancy Nancy, Aspiring Artist by Jane O'Connor
Ready to Dream by Donna Jo Napoli and Elena Furrow
There Was an Old Man Who Painted the Sky by Teri Sloat

More About Artists
Franz Marc : The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle
Ed Young : The House That Baba Built : an Artist's Childhood in China
Mark Chagall : A Picture for Marc by Eric A. Kimmel

Diego Rivera : Diego Rivera : His World and Ours by Duncan Tonatiuh
Allen Say : Drawing From Memory
Claude Monet : Katy & the Waterlily Pond by James Mayhew
Andy Warhol :  Fabulous : A Portrait of Andy Warhol by Bonnie Christensen
Piet Mondrian :  Coppernickel Goes Mondrian by Wouter van Reek
Leonardo : Leonardo, Beautiful Dreamer by Robert Byrd
Pablo Picasso : Just Behave, Pablo Picasso by Jonah Winter
Modern Artists : Mousterpiece by Jane Breskin Zalben
Dadaism : Mimi's Dada Catifesto by Shelley Jackson
Artist's Childhoods : Before They Were Famous : How Seven Artists Got Their Start by Bob Raczka

The Greatest Show

After the Fire
On July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Conecticut, a Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Baily big top went up in flames.  One hundred and sixy eight people were killed and it would be more than three decades before the circus was allowed to return to the city.

Michael Downs' new story collection, The Greatest Show, is less about the fire than the interconnected lives of people affected by the tragedy.  Downs is a Hartford native; this is first fiction book.

Related Books
Masters of Illusion by Mary Tirone Smith
The Circus Fire : a True Story by Stewart O'Nan
Women and Children First : the Horrible Hartford Circus Fire by Donald Roy

Museum Pass Tie-in
The author will read from his new book at the Mark Twain House and Museum on Friday, July 6th, beginning at 5 p.m.  The event is FREE.  Don't forget : a pass to the Mark Twain House is one of twenty passes offered by the library.

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