Review: Wadsworth Atheneum Scenic Daguerreotypes Exhibition: A Gem of Early American Photography

I haven’t been to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford since 2021. Why? It’s one of my favorite museums, with a superb collection of European, American, and Modernist art that rivals our biggest, richest cities. What happened? I wrote a series of pointed, direct stories about its board of trustees and their cultic worship of DEI — the diversity, equity, and inclusion fable and deceit — and their overall incompetence.

In 2021, William Peelle, the chairman of the board, told the Hartford Courant, the local newspaper, that the Atheneum “looks like an old museum that hasn’t changed in decades” and “isn’t an engaging and wonderful experience.” Ouch. With friends like that, who needs enemies? Trustees never, never knock their institutions in public. In private, sure, but if you go public, you need to quit first. Peelle wanted race to be the museum’s focus. So did the rest of the trustees. They forced the very good director out and replaced him with a fellow trustee — no search — who’d never worked in a museum and wasn’t an art historian. He came from a job at Newman’s Organics. He wasn’t even making the cookies and stirring the tomato sauce. He was a paper pusher.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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I haven’t been to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford since 2021. Why? It’s one of my favorite museums, with a superb collection of European, American, and Modernist art that rivals our biggest, richest cities. What happened? I wrote a series of pointed, direct stories about its board of trustees and their cultic worship of DEI — the diversity, equity, and inclusion fable and deceit — and their overall incompetence.

In 2021, William Peelle, the chairman of the board, told the Hartford Courant, the local newspaper, that the Atheneum “looks like an old museum that hasn’t changed in decades” and “isn’t an engaging and wonderful experience.” Ouch. With friends like that, who needs enemies? Trustees never, never knock their institutions in public. In private, sure, but if you go public, you need to quit first. Peelle wanted race to be the museum’s focus. So did the rest of the trustees. They forced the very good director out and replaced him with a fellow trustee — no search — who’d never worked in a museum and wasn’t an art historian. He came from a job at Newman’s Organics. He wasn’t even making the cookies and stirring the tomato sauce. He was a paper pusher.