The Wadsworth will bring part of its next major exhibition season to Stamford on Thursday, June 11, when Allison Blais, the museum’s new President & CEO, appears at The Barn @ Downing Yudain for an evening reception and preview of The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Painting from the Museo de Arte de Ponce.
The event will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Barn @ Downing Yudain, 357 Old Long Ridge Road in Stamford. Blais will be joined by Matthew Hargraves, Executive Director; Vanessa Sigalas, David W. Dangremond Chief Curator; and Erin Monroe, Krieble Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture.
The reception will introduce Blais to area supporters and offer guests an early look at an exhibition scheduled to open at The Wadsworth on Nov. 5, 2026. The show will remain on view through March 14, 2027.
Organized by the Museo de Arte de Ponce, The Sense of Beauty will feature 60 paintings by European, Puerto Rican, and American artists, spanning the 1500s through the present day. The exhibition highlights major areas of the Ponce museum’s collection and brings works to the mainland United States, many for the first time.
Founded in 1959 by Luis A. Ferré, the Museo de Arte de Ponce is located on the southern coast of Puerto Rico and is widely regarded as one of the Caribbean’s major cultural institutions. Its collection includes European, Puerto Rican, and American works, with particular strength in painting across centuries.
For Connecticut audiences, the exhibition offers access to works usually housed in Puerto Rico, including paintings by El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Francisco de Goya, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Claude Lorrain, Frederic Church, José Campeche, Francisco Oller y Cestero, Myrna Báez, Rafael Ferrer, and Waldemar Morales Lugo. Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June, among the best-known works in the Ponce collection, will also be included.
The exhibition arrives during a period of transition for both institutions. The Museo de Arte de Ponce has circulated works from its collection while its main building undergoes repairs following the 2020 earthquakes in Puerto Rico. The Wadsworth, founded in 1842, enters the season under Blais’s leadership.
Blais became President & CEO of The Wadsworth in January 2026 after two decades connected to the rebuilding and operation of the World Trade Center site in New York City. She played a central role in the creation, development, and operation of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, where she served in several leadership positions, most recently as executive vice president and chief strategy & operations officer. She is also co-author of A Place of Remembrance, published by National Geographic in connection with the opening of the Memorial on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Her arrival at The Wadsworth places a leader with deep experience in civic memory, institutional planning, and public engagement at the head of one of Connecticut’s oldest cultural institutions.
The June 11 program also gives Fairfield County guests a preview of the curatorial thinking behind The Sense of Beauty months before the exhibition opens in Hartford. Hargraves, Sigalas, and Monroe are expected to provide context on the works, the Ponce collection, and the broader significance of bringing the exhibition to Connecticut.
The Wadsworth will also present a companion exhibition highlighting contemporary Puerto Rican artists in Connecticut. Together, the two exhibitions will place historic works from Ponce in conversation with artists working in the state today.
The Stamford reception extends that conversation into Fairfield County before the exhibition’s opening. For local arts audiences, the event offers a first look at a major museum project shaped by history, preservation, and cultural exchange — and a chance to meet the Wadsworth’s new leader at the beginning of her tenure.
