Currier Museum, Manchester NH

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Currier Museum, Manchester NH
Friday December 18, 2009
http://www.currier.org/galleries/zhouse/zhouse.html

Maxanne, home for school break, drove us to Manchester New Hampshire to visit the Currier Art Museum. We wanted to view their art collection and especially wanted to tour the Frank Lloyd Wright, Zimmerman House. Upon entering the museum we were greeted by a pleasant woman who asked us if we had visited the Currier before. We told her we hadn’t and had come to see the Zimmerman House. She began to laugh and said we’d have had to purchase our tickets online in advance because the house tour is always sold out. The woman selling tickets from across the room listening to our conversation injected that there were tickets available for the afternoon tour. The greeter told us she was surprised as there are never tickets available on the day of the tour. Well it’s our lucky day. We purchased our tickets and began touring the museum and enjoyed a nice lunch in the Winter Garden Cafe before our tour started. After lunch we met our Frank Lloyd Wright house tour guides and ten other visitors as they give a brief introduction before boarding the museum’s van. Our interpreters are two volunteers who are part of a dedicated group of Zimmerman House lovers that conduct the daily tours. We boarded the van for the two-mile drive to the house. The interpreters were knowledgeable and clearly enjoyed what they were doing. Their enthusiasm certainly enhanced the 90-minute tour. The Zimmerman’s relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright and the incredible house that they built is a great story. As with all of Wright’s houses, he designed all of the fixtures that you see in the house including furniture, light fixtures, bookcases, tables and even the music stand. Everything, that is but two comfortable reading chairs that the Zimmerman’s purchased on their own when the original chairs proved uncomfortable. The low slung Usonian style house is very impressive and truly a work of art. The museum has done a great job of preservation and shows the interior of the house as it appeared around 1955 during the time that Isadore & Lucile lived there. The home has a row of small high windows on the street side and floor to ceiling windows on the garden side. It gives one the impression and feeling of being outdoors when you’re in the “Garden Room”. The museum doesn’t allow pictures to be taken in the house so I’ve included the museum’s web site for the Zimmerman house at the top of the page.

We returned to the museum to continue our visit of the galleries and had an unpleasant encounter with a staff member who saw us getting off the tour van but asked only us where our visitor pins where. Max couldn’t find her pin so she had to go to the admission desk and get another one. I’m unable to unzip my jacket so I exasperated the zealous lady, as I had to wait for Max to unzip my jacket to reveal my pin. Then she said “you can’t use tripods in the museum”. I then told her that my walking stick is a monopod and I’m disabled and I need it for balance. She then angrily became the fifth person to tell me the rules of how that I couldn’t take pictures using a flash, or pictures of the special visiting exhibits. We continued to tour the museum and as we did Max and I had a man with an earplug following us everywhere we went. I assume it’s because of our encounter with the greeter at our return.

The museum itself is an interesting small museum. The newly refurbished building and parking area fill a full city block. Founded by Moody and Hannah Currier it opened in 1929. It now houses a collection of over 13,000 items. The museum presents samples of its collection in a dozen galleries. They have a wonderful collection of glass objects and paperweights. The modern art collection includes works by Matisse, Picasso, Dove and O’Keeffe. The European Collection contains an impressive Flemish tapestry, with works by John Constable, Henry Rueburn, Claude Monet and a collection of Dutch painters. The second floor has a gallery of colonial home furnishings by New Hampshire furniture makers. There are sculptures by many artists throughout the museum with works by Rodin, Calder, Remington, and Augustus Saint Gaudens.

The Currier also has several works by my favorite artist a former New Bedford resident Albert Bierstadt on display.

The Currier Museum of Art is a wonderful small museum with an interesting collection and the Zimmerman House itself is worth the visit. It would be even a better if some of the volunteers work on their people skills to make visitors feel more welcomed.

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Photos

Currier Museum
Main Entrance

Zimmerman House
Frank Lloyd Wright Design

Modern Art Collecction
Still Life with Chocolate,
James Aonovich

Modern Art Collection
The Family,
Marisd Escobar

Modern Art Collection
Petit Disque Jaune,
by Alexander Calder in foreground

Mt. Hood Washington
Albert Bierstadt

Floral Still Life
Severin Roesen

Woman Seated in Chair
Pablo Picasso

Raptus
Marsden Harley

Diana
Agustus Saint Gaudens

The Bronco Buster
Frederic Remington

Colonial Home Furnishings
Collection of New Hampshire Artisans

Comments

[Karen Tebbenhoff]

Thanks for the feedback
The feedback from your visit has been shared with Currier staff. We appreciate your input and are glad that, overall, you had a good visit.