Current Exhibits

Opened in 2003, The Mark Twain Museum Center offers guests an opportunity to learn more about Mark Twain, his family, the historic house, and the author's legacy. This state-of-the-art facility houses our ticket desk; the Aetna Gallery with a permanent exhibition on Twain's life and work; a rotating exhibition hall, The Hartford Financial Services Theatre, showing a Ken Burns mini-documentary on Twain; classroom space; the lecture hall-style Lincoln Financial Auditorium; The Mark Twain Store; entertaining spaces like the soaring Great Hall and the sunny second floor café/patio area.

In addition, the Museum Center houses our research library, which is open by appointment only. Featuring walls etched with some of his most famous quotations, this LEED-certified green museum is a treasure-filled way to begin and end your visit to The Mark Twain House.

The Gilded Age of Hartford

Through September 2

Open during regular museum hours. Exhibit included with admission.

In the title for their novel of Washington corruption and crooked land deals, Mark Twain and his Hartford neighbor Charles Dudley Warner gave a name to the time they lived in -- The Gilded Age.

Gilding, the painting of cheap materials to look like gold, was Twain's and Warner's metaphor for a time when ornament and riches masked a troubled society. The novel's characters dream "a blissful dream of the coming of great wealth," but many of them find, like one, that "I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars."

Our exhibition, "The Gilded Age of Hartford," treats this turbulent, dynamic era. Many see the wealth, poverty and energy of the Gilded Age reflected in our own recent history. Twain's own ideas and life reflected and demonstrated the dramatic contrasts of the time.

"Mark Twain not only named the era," says Patti Philippon, Chief Curator at the museum. "He was one of the Gilded Age's most celebrated and influential public figures, so it is particularly appropriate that the museum produce this exhibition. We want to tell the story of Hartford's important role in American history and culture, a role which is not known to many people."

--The exhibition explores the major cultural, social and economic trends of the Gilded Age era, and Hartford's pivotal role in those trends. Rarely seen items from the museum's and other institutions' collections are on view. Artwork and artifacts include historic paintings of Hartford of that era, including the classic Hartford Government and Hartford Industry by William Getty Bunce; examples of the city's industrial production such as an 1879 Pope Columbia Ordinary bicycle built by Hartford's Pope Manufacturing Co.; and even a section of trolley car track that ran in front of the Mark Twain House, recently excavated in an MDC project.

-- Sections of the exhibit will portray the manufacturing, banking, insurance and small-business worlds of a city that was called the wealthiest in the nation, in terms of wealth produced in relation to the size of the population.

-- At the same time, below Hartford's gilded surface, great poverty existed, and part of the exhibition highlights the institutions formed to aid the poor and infirm.While the wealth of the Gilded Age led to conspicuous consumption, it also led to significant philanthropy, as the wealthy funded libraries, universities, hospitals, museums, cultural organizations, and social welfare institutions. Art thrived along with industry in Hartford.

-- One aspect of the exhibition portrays Hartford's international importance in the era -- it was home to an educational experiment by the Chinese government that brought 120 boys to New England to study in the Chinese Educational Mission, China's first organized program for overseas students.

-- A related exhibit in the museum stairway, "Hartford Then & Now," features views of the city in the Gilded Age contrasted with present-day views by photographer Jack McConnell.

-- Events include a talk in "The Trouble Begins at 5:30" series by Dr. Andrew Walsh of Trinity College on "Hartford in the Gilded Age" (Wednesday, July 10, reception at 5:00 p.m.)

"The Gilded Age of Hartford" is on display in the galleries of the Museum Center through September 2. It is open during regular museum hours for a special $5.00 museum-only admission -- or free when you purchase a ticket to tour the Mark Twain House.

"The Gilded Age of Hartford" is sponsored by Tauck, The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation and Hartford Steam Boiler. Additional support is provided by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts; and the Greater Hartford Arts Council.

Twain Store
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Upcoming Events
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