September 27, 2025–January 4, 2026

Inside Out: Contexts for American Art

  • Museum Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10am to 5pm

  • Alice Mather (1762–1842), Sampler (Norwich, CT), 1774. Silk on linen with printed chintz border, 13 x ¾ x 11 ½ in.  Florence Griswold Museum, Purchase with additional funds provided by Jane Rapport, Barbara and Wayne Harms, Anonymous, Sally and Larry Lawrence, Julie and James Alexandre, The Paul Foundation, Lee and John Pritchard in memory of Paul Holt, Elizabeth Webster, David W. Dangremond, Kay Knight Clarke, Jeb and Dianne Embree in memory of Robert Webster and Paul Holt, John Noyes, Stephen and Susan Bates, Deborah Butler, Jeff and Betsey Cooley, and Elizabeth Frame 

  • Charles Ethan Porter (1847–1923), Strawberries, 1888. Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in. Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, 2002.1.109

  • John Rogers (1829–1904), The Town Pump, 1862, Painted plaster, 13 ½ x 10 ¾ x 7 ½ in. Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of Hilda Regier & Wayne and Barbara Harms, 2023.18

  • Irving N. Leveton (1916–1997), Millinery Shop, 1938. Tempera on Masonite, 38 x 32 in. Florence Griswold Museum, Purchase, 2024.39

The Florence Griswold Museum is a unique institution rooted in the context of its site-specific environment. Visitors immerse themselves in history and art by exploring the Griswold Boardinghouse for Artists. By walking some of the same landscapes the Lyme artists painted, they can also take in similar sights, scents, and sounds that the artists experienced some 120 years ago.

Inspired by the multi-sensory setting that contributes to the FloGris experience, Inside Out: Contexts for American Art investigates the powerful circumstances that surround the creation of an artwork by diving deeply into five distinctive examples from the Museum’s collection. We aim to foster a richer understanding of the past by turning these Connecticut artworks “inside out”:

a schoolgirl’s sampler (1774, by Alice Mather)

a plaster sculpture (1862, by John Rogers) 

a still life painting (1888, by Charles Ethan Porter) 

a watercolor miniature on ivory (1914, by Lydia Longacre) 

and a tempera painting (1938, by Irving N. Leveton) 

These objects offer a range of identities, subjects, social circumstances, and audiences, showing how such factors as gender, race, and economy affected how context has been preserved and remembered, or not.

The “focus objects” are placed in conversation with supporting art, archives, and artmaking tools, alongside interactive activities. The dialogue among these elements helps us to reconstruct the five historical contexts for the artworks and flesh out their respective narratives.

This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of HSB, Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, Foundation for Advancement in Conservation, as well as donors to the Exhibition Fund and the Annual Fund.