Exhibitions
Archive
March 2022 - January 2023
The Evocative Mark Twain Inspires the Printmakers' Network of Southern New England
Learn more about the artists
July 2021-December 2021
Community Partners in Action Prison Arts Program Annual Show 2020/21
This exhibit featured hundreds of artworks by incarcerated, and formerly incarcerated, artists in Connecticut. Artists and prison staff work all year (two years, this year!) towards this unique and extraordinary community event.
CPA Prison Arts
July 2021 - October 2021
Ekphrastic Poetry with Community Partners In Action
As part of the 2021 Neighborhood Studios Student Showcase, the apprentices worked on ekphrastic poetry. They spent time writing in the museum’s gallery spaces with the new Community Partners in Action Prison Arts Program Annual Show 2020/21 for inspiration.
read their poems here
November 2021-January 2022
Thomas Nast and Santa Claus
The illustrations in this exhibit form part of a collection owned by Stephen Jeffrey of Bloomfield, Connecticut. His interest is in the evolution of the image of St. Nicholas from the early 1800s until today.
March 2019 - December 2020
Twain's Attic: 90 Years, 90 Treasures
This exhibition at The Mark Twain House & Museum celebrated the 90th anniversary of the organization by exhibiting 90 objects from its collection to commemorate its 90 years of work in collecting, preserving, and interpreting the life and times of Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens and his family. The main areas of focus are: the saving of the house and our founding; Nook Farm players; Tiffany, pop culture; the Langdon family; and Clara Clemens and Ossip Gabrilowitsch (with their home movies).
Summer 2020
Who Was George Griffin?
This exhibit was guest curated by My’kelle Coleman, a junior at Hartford Public High School. Her work was supported by the ReadyCT Summer Internship Program. My’kelle learned about the behind the scenes operations of museums, got to know the Clemens family and about their life here in Hartford, researched George Griffin, wrote exhibit labels, chose objects from the MTHM collections, and installed this exhibit.
View the Virtual Exhibit
February 2020
Sam & Livy's 150th Wedding Anniversary
To celebrate the 150th wedding anniversary of Samuel and Olivia Clemens, the Mark Twain House displayed their wedding bible, a letter from Sam to Livy, and a family photograph. Sam once noted: “My experience with Providence has not been of a nature to give me great confidence in his judgment, and I consider that my wife crept in while his attention was occupied elsewhere.”
Spring 2020
2020 Art and Essay
Since 2013, the MTH&M has sponsored an art and essay contest for middle and high school students at the Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy. This year students learned about the evolving art of book illustrations and were tasked with producing illustrations for Chapter XXIII from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Spring 2019
2019 Art and Essay
Since 2013, the MTH&M has sponsored an art and essay contest for middle and high school students at the Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy. HMTCA art teachers based their curriculum on the work of Associated Artists, the firm who designed the decor and interior finishes of the Mark Twain house in 1881. The high school graphic design classes produced wallpaper patterns in the style of Candace Wheeler, while the middle school classes used mixed media to produce art inspired by different aspects of Associated Artists’ work.
March 2018 - January 2019
Tails of Twain
This exhibit celebrated Mark Twain’s affection for all creatures, whether they had paws or claws, wings or whiskers; an affection he shared with his family – and with his readers. His beloved cats, the family dog, horses, donkeys, and a calf won the affections of his three daughters. As a boy in Missouri and in old age, he felt a deep kinship with the animals large and small that he encountered on his travels.
Spring 2018
2018 Art and Essay
Since 2013, the MTH&M has sponsored an art and essay contest for middle and high school students at the Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy. HMTCA art teachers based their curriculum on the work of Associated Artists, the firm who designed the decor and interior finishes of the Mark Twain house in 1881. The high school graphic design classes produced wallpaper patterns in the style of Candace Wheeler, while the middle school classes used mixed media to produce art inspired by different aspects of Associated Artists’ work.
March 2017-January 2018
Renewing the Royal Chamber: The Clemenses’ Mahogany Suite Reborn
Preservation is a constant concern for historic sites. Restorations, studies, and archaeological surveys since the 1950s have interpreted and reinterpreted the physical history and features of the suite. In 2016, thanks to a major state grant, work was completed that brought the Mahogany Suite closer to its original beauty than ever before. This exhibit showcased the history of this enchanting set of rooms, and the work of our restorers.
March 2017-January 2018
Twain’s Temper: Top-10 Tantrums and Righteous Rages
Throughout his lifetime, and his literary life as Mark Twain, the author found many things to provoke his profanity. But his critical strength didn’t just lie in swearing – his command of the American language enabled him to encircle his enemies with grace and skill, and then eviscerate them with his pen. For this exhibition, the Mark Twain House & Museum chose a “top ten” list of Mr. Clemens’s furies.
Summer 2017
2017 Art and Essay
In conjunction with the exhibition Renewing the Royal Chamber, the Museum sponsored an art and essay contest for middle school students at Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy (HMTCA), in the Learning Corridor of Hartford’s South End. Based on classes and their own research students designed a piece of furniture or a decorative element according to the home’s style, and wrote short essays describing this process.
Summer 2016
Twainiac Celebrities
Over the years many visitors have come to the Mark Twain House and Museum. Some just happen to be more famous than others. Spanning many mediums such as film, music, publishing, and so much more these visitors brought new insight, allowed their “twainiac” side to explore, or became inspired by one of America’s beloved authors. Just as you are now, each one of these individuals came to learn more and discover something new about Hartford famous resident.
March 2016 - January 2017
In Their Father's Image: Susy, Clara, and Jean Clemens
Mark Twain’s Hartford home is known for the happy, loving family of five it held within its walls. Here Samuel and Olivia Clemens raised three daughters who were highly individual, talented, and spirited women in their own right. This exhibit examined the extraordinary lives and deaths of these three women.
Summer 2016
Art and Essay
In conjunction with our exhibition In Their Father’s Image, the Museum sponsored an art and essay contest for high and middle school students at Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy, in the Learning Corridor of Hartford’s South End. The purpose of this collaboration was to enhance students’ reading, writing, and artistic skills, and to inspire them to express their creative voices through words and illustration. Students produced original artwork and stories in response to studying the lives of Mark Twain’s daughters.
Summer 2015
Mark Twain & China: A Collaboration
This exhibition displayed an extraordinary collection of rubbings from stone carvings of the Han Dynasty period (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) in collaboration with the Shandong Museum, Shandong, China. The province of Shandong maintains a sister relationship with the state of Connecticut which includes many educational and cultural endeavors.
March 2015 - January 2016
Travel is fatal to prejudice…
Clemens wrote: “Nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people.” Clemens’s journeys opened his mind to new ideas and lifestyles, experiences that he detailed in his writings and shared with other travel-loving Victorians. This exhibit focuses on the overseas trips that led to his three travel books, The Innocents Abroad, A Tramp Abroad, and Following the Equator.
Summer 2015
Art and Essay
In conjunction with our exhibition Travel is Fatal to Prejudice, the Museum sponsored an art and essay contest for high and middle school students at Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy, in the Learning Corridor of Hartford’s South End. The purpose of this collaboration was to enhance students’ reading, writing, and artistic skills, and to inspire them to express their creative voices through words and illustration. Students illustrated a scene from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
October 2015 - January 2015
Spiritualism, Seances and Sam
The exhibit took on the spiritualism craze of the 19th century, especially after the Civil War, and Twain’s conflicted relationship with it. It included objects such as mourning clothes, jewelry, death portraits.
March 2014 - September 2014
At Your Service
At Your Service used historic objects from the collections of the museum and of other institutions to educate visitors about the daily work lives of servants of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and to tell the stories of the diverse and interesting individuals who worked as servants for Mark Twain and his family. This is exhibit was part of Connecticut at Work, an initiative of CT Humanities.
Summer 2016
Art and Essay
In conjunction with our exhibition In Their Father’s Image, the Museum sponsored an art and essay contest for high and middle school students at Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy, in the Learning Corridor of Hartford’s South End. The purpose of this collaboration was to enhance students’ reading, writing, and artistic skills, and to inspire them to express their creative voices through words and illustration. Students produced original artwork and stories in response to studying the lives of Mark Twain’s daughters.
October 2013 - January 2014
An Inglorious Peace or a Dishonorable War: Mark Twain’s Views on Conflict
Samuel Clemens lived through a time of much hostility: civil wars; rebellions; wars of liberation; wars of conquest. He was not a pacifist; he was enraged by the wars of imperialism that were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rather, he opposed wars in which the powerful victimized the weak. He truly believed that “An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war.”
March 2013 - September 2013
The Gilded Age of Hartford
This exhibition featured artifacts and rare items from the museum’s collections revolving around Hartford Connecticut’s period of wealth, poverty, dynamism, oppression, plutocracy, populism, corruption, and reform. Twain was an active member of the community and his own ideas and life helped to depict the varying dimensions of the time.