A Connecticut Sculptor’s legacy: The artwork of Elbert Weinberg enjoys a renaissance

By Cindy Mindell

Elbert Weinberg

1928-1991

In the November 1982 issue of “Arts Magazine,” art critic Anthony Hecht profiled Hartford-born artist Elbert Weinberg, contrasting his artistic range to the “single vein” of artists like Vivaldi, Picasso, Stravinsky, and James Joyce: “[T]here is also another kind of artist, one who is eager to enlarge his idiom so as to cover the widest ranges of experience, to risk new styles and the dangers of experiment, not for the sake of easy adventurism or flashy novelty, but by way of opening himself to large modes of feeling or realms of experience that a mastered but restricted vocabulary would not allow.”

On Oct. 4, the New Britain Museum of American Art will dedicate “The Blind Sister of Narcissus,” a newly acquired bronze work by the late sculptor, who died in 1991 at the height of his renown.

Weinberg created “The Blind Sister of Narcissus” in the late ‘80s, one of many sculptures inspired by mythology, says Kenneth Kahn, president of the Greater Hartford Arts Council from 1999 to 2009. It may also have been associated with an earlier work of Narcissus by the sculptor, part of his “mirror” series, he notes.

The work was installed on the museum’s lawn two months ago, joining several other large-scale sculptures.

“A major objective of the New Britain Museum is to display the finest of our Connecticut artists from the past and present,” says director Douglas Hyland. “Recently, in particular, I have focused on creating an outdoor sculpture park on the two-plus acres of the museum’s beautifully landscaped property. We now have 15 examples in a wide variety of media by Sol LeWitt, Arthur Carter, Howard Fromson, William Kent, Tom Doyle, and other artists from our state as well as by Alexander Archipenko, Nancy Graves, Mariana Pineda and Chaim Gross, among others, from other parts of the country. Thus, it was a great honor when we applied to the Weinberg Foundation and were given the charming figurative work, ‘The Blind Sister of Narcissus.’ It has a sensuous quality and yet is evocative of innocence and gentleness. It is almost life-size and adds another dimension to our ever-growing sculpture garden.”

A native of Hartford’s North End, Weinberg was born in 1928 and grew up on Nelson Street, behind the family’s grocery store.  He showed an early interest in drawing and in building three-dimensional objects; as a freshman at Weaver High, he began studying with German sculptor Henry Kreis at the Hartford Art School, housed in the Wadsworth Athenaeum. He graduated from Weaver in 1946, as class valedictorian.

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