2025 Year in Review
2025 YEAR IN REVIEW
A snapshot of what your support made possible, and what we are building next
Download a PDF of the 2025 Year in Review Packet
A NOTE TO OUR SUPPORTERS
In 2025, the Mark Twain House remained what we believe it should be: a historic site that feels alive.
With your support, we welcomed visitors from across the region and beyond, delivered tours and programs at a steady pace, expanded education access for students and teachers, and made meaningful progress on preservation and collections work that protects this place for the future.
This Year in Review is intentionally easy to skim. It highlights the impact your support helped create, with key figures, major accomplishments, and a look at what is coming next.
Thank you for being part of this work. We look forward to welcoming you back in 2026.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
– Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad
2025 AT A GLANCE
Visitor Reach and Engagement
- Nearly 50,000 touring tickets served
- Nearly 54,000 total ticketed admissions and program attendance
Tours and Programs
- 3,441 general tours welcoming visitors year-round
- 1,039 living history tours bringing interpretation to life
- 73 program dates across 41 unique programs
Education and Community Access
- 2,000 students served through on-site field trips
- 67 teachers served through Teacher of the Year professional development, the highest participation to date
- 17 off-site outreach programs delivered, reaching over 400 adult learners
Financial Snapshot
- More than $3M in total ticketing and recorded donations processed including $1.19M in ticket revenue and $1.79M in philanthropic support
TOURS AND THE VISITOR EXPERIENCE
Tours remain the heart of what we do. In 2025, guests continued to come for the restored house, the craftsmanship and architecture, and the feeling that the story is still present in the rooms.
We offered thousands of tours across formats, including core guided tours and living history experiences. This steady pace supports earned revenue, visitor satisfaction, and repeat engagement, while keeping the museum’s daily experience strong and consistent.
EDUCATION AND ACCESS
Education is where mission becomes measurable. In 2025, the museum expanded learning opportunities for students, strengthened teacher engagement, and continued building relationships with schools across Connecticut and beyond.
Highlights:
• 2,000 K–12 and college students served through on-site field trips, representing visits from towns across Connecticut, plus schools visiting from multiple states
• 10 educational programs offered in addition to the historic house tour, giving educators multiple ways to connect Twain and Hartford history to classroom learning
• A major access milestone: thanks to federal support for free civics programming and bus funding, Title I K–5 field trip visitors now make up 20% of total student visitation, where they previously accounted for none
• 17 outreach programs delivered off-site, reaching more than 400 adult learners, expanding the museum’s presence beyond Hartford, and generating earned revenue that supports mission delivery
WHAT EDUCATORS TOLD US
• “Thank you so much for a wonderful day of learning. I am excited to try my object based learning strategies in class.”
• “The tour of the Mark Twain House was really informative and full of insightful remarks that made the house almost come to life.”
• “Loved the emphasis on the household employees and their lived experiences. Students really appreciated the guide’s storytelling.”
NOOK FARM WRITERS COLLABORATIVE
One of the most meaningful parts of our education work is the Nook Farm Writers Collaborative, a summer creative writing apprenticeship for Connecticut teens. Participants spend weeks writing, revising, and building confidence as young authors in a setting that reminds them that writing is not just something you study. It is something you do.
In 2025, the program brought together eleven young writers from across Connecticut. Their work culminated in a public showcase and the publication of a new issue of Journey 75, the Collaborative’s literary magazine.
A moment we are especially proud of: in December 2025, one Nook Farm Writers Collaborative participant shared that they were accepted to Harvard, pursuing creative writing in part based on work developed and refined through the museum.
This program reflects Twain at his best: serious about language, serious about ideas, and willing to invest in the next generation of voices.
“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.”
– Mark Twain
PROGRAMS AND EVENTS
In 2025, the Mark Twain House continued to operate as a living cultural institution, not only a historic site. Our calendar blended author talks, workshops, specialty tours, exhibitions, and seasonal experiences that brought new audiences into the house and created memorable moments of connection.
Throughout the year we delivered:
• A strong slate of author talks, including major names and emerging voices
• Workshops that invited visitors to create, learn, and return
• Specialty programs like Get a Clue and seasonal tours that help define the museum’s public identity
• Signature community-forward events that expanded our reach, including major seasonal programming and on-site community gatherings
LITERARY PROGRAMS AND THE AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARD
Our literary programs remained a point of strength in 2025. Across genres and topics, audiences showed up, stayed engaged, and often stayed after, asking thoughtful questions and continuing the conversation well beyond the formal program. That kind of energy is one of the clearest signs that these events are meeting a real community need.
Highlights included popular and well-attended programs such as:
• Mark Twain with Ron Chernow
• FOX with Joyce Carol Oates
• Heartwood with Amity Gaige
• Vera, or Faith with Gary Shteyngart
• Jane Austen’s Bookshelf with Rebecca Romney
• Grief Is for People with Sloane Crosley
• Hurricane: My Story of Resilience with Salvador Gómez-Colón
• Suzanne Hopgood Book Release Party
• Additional in-person and virtual author events throughout the year
American Voice in Literature Award: 2025 Winner
The American Voice in Literature Award remains one of the museum’s most visible national platforms, drawing serious attention from publishers, writers, and readers across the country.
In 2025, the museum awarded the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award to Ben Shattuck for The History of Sound (Viking). The winner was selected from 148 submitted titles and received a $25,000 cash prize provided by Michelle and David Baldacci, who established the award in 2016.
The award process itself is a major community effort, supported by volunteer readers and a distinguished panel of judges. It brings new audiences to the museum and reinforces Twain’s legacy as a writer who looked directly at American life and asked it to explain itself.
“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
PRESERVATION, COLLECTIONS, AND INTERPRETATION
Behind every public moment is work that visitors rarely see, but donors make possible. In 2025, the museum advanced several important curatorial and preservation efforts that protect the long-term future of this National Historic Landmark.
Curatorial and preservation highlights:
• Awarded a State Historic Preservation Grant to begin initial investigations of the two historic buildings on our grounds, laying the foundation for future restoration and long-term maintenance planning (the last restoration of the home occurred in 1998–1999)
• Designed and installed a new exhibit in Hal Holbrook Hall highlighting the American Voice in Literature Award
• Began curatorial work for TradeMARK’d, a major exhibit planned for Fall 2026
• Started a full reassessment and inventory of collections to identify gaps, elevate underutilized items for interpretation, and flag high-value objects in need of conservation attention
MUSEUM STORE AND EARNED REVENUE
The Museum Store is a meaningful part of the visitor experience and an important source of earned revenue that supports the museum’s mission. In 2025, the store posted year-over-year growth, exceeded budget goals, and delivered record performance during key seasonal periods.
Highlights:
• Total net sales (including online and café): $616,864, a 6% increase over 2024
• Performance exceeded the annual budget goal by 13%
• Best Museum Store Sunday to date, with a record-breaking day of $5,570 net sales
• Continued expansion of the online store presence
• A stronger, more consistent marketing plan for retail, including a new promotional campaign focused on seasonal gifting and Twain-inspired merchandise
MARKETING, PARTNERSHIPS, AND VISIBILITY
In 2025, we strengthened the museum’s reach through partnerships and more consistent promotional systems. This work supports attendance, earned revenue, and donor confidence because it ensures the museum’s story is clear, current, and widely seen.
Highlights included:
• Collaboration development with Hartford Athletic to connect with new community audiences and create co-promotional pathways
• Collaboration with TheaterWorks for the Richard Thomas Mark Twain Tonight opening performance
• Sports and cultural outreach efforts, including work connected to NYCFC, that helped broaden awareness of our literary programming and special events
• National-facing storytelling partnerships connected to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Smithsonian, including interpretive storytelling tied to Samuel Clemens’ patents
• Strengthening PR and outreach workflows by bringing more press outreach in-house, improving responsiveness, increasing control over messaging, and reducing reliance on outside support
• Continued investment in clearer, more coordinated campaigns for key programs, so major events build momentum before and after the date itself, not only on the night of the program
• Expanded digital infrastructure to support long-term visibility, including a dedicated website presence for the American Voice in Literature Award
INVESTING IN WHAT COMES NEXT
The strongest organizations do two things at once: deliver today and build for tomorrow. In 2025, we made progress on planning and infrastructure that will directly improve the visitor and supporter experience.
Key priorities moving into 2026:
• A new museum website, funded through the Hartford Foundation Technology Grant, replacing a site more than a decade old with a mobile-friendly, ADA-compliant experience designed for clearer storytelling and smoother engagement
• A light, practical brand modernization effort to create secondary logos and a usable branding kit for signage and digital products, improving consistency across platforms
• A planned auditorium sound upgrade, including assisted listening to better serve visitors who are hard of hearing
• Transition planning toward a new ticketing and donor management system to improve integration, reporting, and the overall visitor and supporter experience
• Continued development of TradeMARK’d, opening in Fall 2026
• Continued expansion of public programs and literary events that keep the house active, relevant, and community-facing
A LOOK AHEAD: TOM SAWYER AT 150
2026 marks the 150th anniversary of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, first published in 1876. This milestone is a rare opportunity to invite new audiences into Twain’s work and into the house where he wrote some of America’s most enduring stories. We look forward to sharing more soon about how we will celebrate it, in ways that are both fun for the public and meaningful for longtime supporters.
THANK YOU
Every tour ticket, program registration, membership renewal, and donor gift sustains something rare: a place where history, preservation, literature, and public learning meet.
Thank you for helping the Mark Twain House thrive in 2025. We are proud of what we accomplished together, and excited about what we are building next.
Download the Mark Twain House 2025 Year in Review packet here
Please consider renewing your membership or making a gift today