The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art was founded in 1842 by Daniel Wadsworth, a significant American patron of the arts. Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest public art museum in the country and has amassed more than 50,000 art pieces. The museum is surely a haven for art enthusiasts. Wadsworth Atheneum has a library and thousands of art pieces and artifacts which is devoted to history, literature, culture, art and science.

The Atheneum is comprised of the Gothic Revival Wadsworth building, the Watkinson Library of Reference, the Tudor Revival Colt Memorial, the Renaissance Revival Morgan Memorial and the Avery Memorial. All of these spaces are housed in a total of five buildings in all. All memorials and the buildings are built during the 1900s when the museum is still expanding to hold more art pieces. The Watkinson Library of Reference is very popular to those who want to learn more about the arts

The museum boasts a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, baroque and surrealist paintings, Samuel Colt firearms and several costumes and textiles. The museum is famous for its Hudson River School landscape collections. The museum also houses the Wallace Nutting collection of American colonial furniture and decorative arts and many African-American artifacts.