Arts & Culture

We can’t imagine any other town in the country that has so many residents and organizations dedicated to the fine arts, drama, dance, music and literature.

The nationally accredited Bruce Museum has become one of the finest regional art and science museums in the country. More than 100,000 visitors a year are drawn to its many exhibitions, such as a remarkable collection of Dutch masters, sculpture and fine art from private collectors and science exhibitions ranging from robots to climate. In addition to lectures and a vast educational program for children, the museum annually sponsors an outdoor art festival and a crafts festival. It plays host to the Greenwich Antiques Society, Connecticut Ceramics Study Circle and other worthy groups.

Over on Strickland Road with seven buildings on the site and over 2,800 members on its roster, the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich preserves our illustrious beginning with the founding of Greenwich in 1640. Its centerpiece is the pre-Colonial Bush-Holley House that in the early twentieth century became the residence of the famous Cos Cob School of American Impressionists. Across the back lawn, the William Finch Archives Building houses many of the town’s existing historic documents and photographs, and the old barn has been transformed into the Hugh and Claire Vanderbilt Education Center. Then, up the hill on the Post Road, more history awaits at Putnam Cottage, one home to weary eighteenth-century travelers, now home to the DAR.

Down the road at Flinn Gallery at Greenwich Library, volunteers hang the walls with outstanding work from botanicals to our children’s free-spirited creations, and keep the pedestals mounted with everything from butterfly sculptures to whimsical chairs. There is the Art Society of Old Greenwich, open to both amateur and professional artists, that organizes a wonderful sidewalk show on Sound Beach Avenue every fall, and the 100-year-old Greenwich Art Society, whose work you can see upstairs at the Greenwich Arts Council in the old town hall on Greenwich Avenue.

Seeing to it that all the arts stay wonderfully alive and well in our town the Arts Council boasts two galleries, a dance studio, recital hall and artist’s studios. Under its auspices, we now have “Art to the Avenue,” a May evening when carefully selected artists and musicians bring their work into central Greenwich shops and restaurants. You can stroll the Avenue top to bottom, savoring it all from fine photography and floral art to Japanese Dancers and jazz ensembles. The Arts Council has also joined with the Department of Parks and Recreation to form the Greenwich Summer Music Series, offering some twenty outdoor concerts.

Music, of course, is close to our hearts, and there are many opportunities in Greenwich for you to join the aficionados in the audience or the ensemble on stage. The ninety-member Greenwich Symphony Orchestra has been in business for fifty years and its concerts are not to be missed. There are several excellent chamber music groups in town and plenty to do for the vocalists among us. The 120-member Greenwich Choral Society, still going strong after eighty years, puts on three major concerts a year- in December, March, and May. The Grace Notes, an a cappella women’s singing group, have carried their tunes as far as the White House and, for strictly gents, we have the Melody Men and Off-Sounders, not to mention the outstanding Choir for Men and Boys over at Christ Church (you don’t have to be a member to try out).

To name a few groups of interest to the thespians, there are the Connecticut Playmakers with its Young People’s Theater division, the Acting Company at the First Congregational Church in Old Greenwich and the St. Catherine’s Players, who pull out all stops every spring to put on great performances of classics like West Side Story and Music Man. Auditions are open to all.

For lovers of classics with a twist, Shakespeare on the Sound is now putting on wonderful summer performances in Roger Sherman Baldwin Park.

Book clubs, literary discussion programs and community libraries abound, but it suffices to point out that Greenwich Library is known to be the second busiest public library in New England, after Boston Public library, with an annual circulation of 1.4 million books, DVDs and other materials. It obviously draws readers and researchers from all over.

And thinking further afield, just over our western border in Purchase, New York, are the Don Kendall Sculpture Gardens at PepsiCo and the many-splendored Performing Arts Center at Purchase College. To our north in Katonah are the Katonah Museum of Art and Caramoor Music and Arts Center. To the east are the Stamford Symphony, Palace Theatre and Rich Forum, and in Norwalk, the outstanding Stepping Stones Museum for Children.