NEW BRITAIN, CT.- The New Britain Museum of American Art presents Visions of America: 125 years of American Masterpieces, on view through August 27, 2006. The installation ranges from a 19th century Hudson River painting to contemporary abstractions. Many of the paintings have been restored and reframed in recent months. Acquistions made over the last decade include many artists selected for the NEW/NOW Series.

Also featured in this exhibition are works on paper by contemporary artist Sol Le Witt, a New Britain native who has also designed the large wall drawing that greets visitors in the lobby of the new Chase Family Building. The Museum has, as promised gifts from LeWitt, some 1,500 lithographs, silk screens and engravings, most of which have never been on public display. Sol and his wife Carol LeWitt are also loaning a Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and other contemporary art works for the Museum’s initial installation from their private collection.

Photography, another aspect of American Visions, features 30 works ranging from the social activist Lewis Hine to the abstract Polaroid pulls of Hartford artist Ellen Carey. In the past few years, the NBMAA has actively pursued the acquisition of photographs; recently the Museum has been given and purchased works by Gertrude Kasebier, Cindy Sherman, Jack Pierson and Francis Bruguiere, among many others. The collection now includes the full spectrum of photographic innovation from the daguerreotypes and tin-types of the late 19th century to the most innovative uses of digital photo-collage. The recent donation of 50 19th-century photographs, the gift of Charles Goss, allows the Museum to present a complete history of photography as an artistic medium.