Photos: Carter Fish
Waveny Park, now a glorious jewel of New Canaan, was originally the grand summer estate of Thomas Wells Hall from 1894 to 1904, during which time he built a home, a carriage barn, and a powerhouse. In 1904, Lewis Henry Lapham, a co-founder of the Texaco Oil Company, bought the property as a summer estate from Hall, and expanded it from 280 acres to 450 acres, and then, in 1912, tore down Hall's house and had a new one built by the renowned architect William B. Tubby. The new house was named Waveny House, after Waveny River in England, where Lapham’s ancestors had once lived. And after about five decades of Laphams living in the home, in August of 1967, the Town of New Canaan purchased Waveny Park from Mrs. Ruth Lapham Lloyd, the daughter of Lewis Lapham Lloyd, for $1,500,000.
Pursuant to a stipulation on the deed, Waveny is and will always be a place for the community, open to all, meant for people to enjoy. The Town put its first focus into improving and operating Waveny House, while the carriage barn on the property had fallen into disrepair. …Ten years later, in 1977, a group of local female artists in town banded together with the idea that there should be a public arts center, free and open to everyone, to culturally enrich the town - and they figured that the open carriage house building at Waveny would be just the spot.
There was a real artistic movement going on in the area at the time. The Harvard Five were building iconic mid-century modern masterpieces ‘right down the block’, and the area was chock full of actors, artists, and authors. Andy Warhol is known to have visited the Glass House on weekends, Gutzon Borglum - who created Mt. Rushmore - lived in the area in the early 1900s, and Charles Saxon, who did lots of covers for The New Yorker lived in New Canaan for decades.
Betty Barker, herself a painter, who founded, funded, and volunteered for the New Canaan Society of Arts, led the effort by dozens of volunteers to themselves restore the carriage barn with their own hands! They cleared out the debris from the building and did the initial repairs on their own. Charles Saxon created custom designs to go on the bathroom doors that have been preserved to this day. And the initial renovation was completed just days before the first member show opened, and the member show has been going on every year since.
Since its inception, the Carriage Barn Arts Center has primarily been a visual arts center that is free and open to the public. The mission has always been to provide New Canaan with special exhibits and curated collections, but also to focus on making art accessible at all levels, amateurs and aficionados alike, and to provide something that’s interesting to everyone. And, until about a decade ago, when Hilary Whitman came on board as the Executive Director, the Carriage Barn remained volunteer-run. “We’ve really grown up in the last ten years,” Hilary remarks, “we have a professional staff with a much more robust year-round calendar of exhibitions. Our board of directors has been really strategic about having programming that grows the organization and draws people that are going to come back as repeat visitors, and who might not otherwise do other cultural stuff or go out of their way to go to other galleries or museums. We’re trying to involve more people with the arts world at a kind of an entry level point that makes it feel more accessible.”
Norm Siegel’s painting, Mona Rolla. An oil painting encompassing trompe l’oeil.
The Carriage Barn Arts Center is open five days a week (Wednesdays through Sundays), and serves as a sort of public gallery for local and regional artists. “For the first forty years or so, the artists exhibiting were really hyper local to New Canaan… and we love having New Canaan artists… but in recent years we’ve grown to incorporate a lot more artists from surrounding towns - very similar in scope to Bedford & New Canaan Magazine, with a similar kind of cross-border, and yet still really local feeling,” Hilary explains. For creating the gathering hub and the space to show, as well as facilitating sales, the Carriage Barn takes a 50% cut of all sales, just like a gallery, and uses the proceeds to fund the organization's operations. Artists, many of whom might not have other places to exhibit, get the opportunity to monetize their work to a rather large audience. About 8,000 people come through the Carriage Barn every year and hundreds of pieces are sold; most works sold are under $2,000… but the Carriage Barn also dabbles in higher-end works ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 and up.
While the flagship exhibition is the annual members show, which provides the opportunity for all members to submit pieces of art to be showcased - with over 175 pieces on display this year - the cultural center hosts a wide variety of exhibitions and artists.
The Carriage Barn has also been a springboard to young and emerging artists. “There’s a young man in high school who lives in New Canaan who’s an exceptionally talented painter. His mother got involved with the Carriage Barn as a photographer, and he submitted a piece for Art in The Windows, an annual program we do, where we put a juried selection of members’ pieces into the shop windows of downtown New Canaan. Starting there, we sold a few of his pieces, and his painting, What's Next, got a lot of attention at this year’s member show…” Hilary shares, “and he’s also a classically trained pianist, has performed at Carnegie Hall, and came and played an event at the Carriage Barn recently, as well. Then there’s Connie Brown, a young woman in town who started on the board of the Carriage Barn and then got her artistic professional start at the Members' Show, and eventually with a solo show. Connie Brown has risen to prominence and now has her own big shows at major New York City galleries, but as she tells everyone…she got her start at the Carriage Barn Arts Center. “About 10 years ago there was an exhibition of Cuban art, most of which was collected by a local man, that was all made by living Cuban artists, who really had not had the opportunity for their work to be seen outside of Cuba for decades,” Hilary elaborates on the Carriage Barn’s offering. “We’ve done two exhibitions around the ‘art of the vehicle’, and in 2018 we did a great exhibit on the Mid-Century Modernist Movement, including the Harvard Five.”
Now on display at the Carriage Barn Arts Center: Edward Keating
Currently on display, the Carriage Barn is proud to be hosting the first retrospective show of the work of Edward ‘Eddie’ Keating, who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, best known for his coverage of 9/11 and of the war in Kosovo for the New York Times, and for his black and white takes on gritty Manhattan street scenes and years of work focused on Route 66.
Eddie died in 2021 at the age of 65. He grew up in New Canaan, in idyllic circumstances…until his father died from a sudden heart attack when Eddie was seven…leaving behind Eddie’s mother, two younger brothers, and an older half sister. Then, when Eddie was in his early teens, his mother took her life, and though the boy’s older sister Cynthia came back from newly-married life to New Canaan to take care of her three brothers, it’s said that the Town of New Canaan really became the Keating boys’ built-in family and support system. “No matter where Eddie went, he always considered New Canaan home,” Eddie’s widow, Carrie, shares. “So of course, as I planned his first retrospective…it just had to be back here at home.” What was not planned, or even realized until weeks before opening, was that the 50th Reunion for the New Canaan High School Class of 1974 - Eddie’s Class! - would be held at The Carriage Barn Arts Center on the day after the Exhibition’s opening! “A lot of his best buddies in life were from New Canaan High School. There’s no doubt Eddie will be there in spirit at the Reunion! And he would’ve gotten such a kick out of his work being displayed for all his classmates!”
Eddie picked up a camera at age twenty-five when he got a bit of money back from a tax return and used it to buy a Leica. “Ken Hansen at the camera store had told him that he wasn’t ready for this level of camera as a beginner…so, of course, Eddie had to have it! He just started shooting right on the street in Manhattan when he walked out of the store and never stopped. He became a chameleon who could adapt to whoever he was shooting - and he changed with everyone he shot,” Carrie explains. “A camera is all about the decisive moment, and that was perfect for Eddie.”
Carrie relays, “He was always shooting film on a Leica, never digital. He felt film is much more of an ‘in the moment’ kind of an experience. He shot some really beautiful things and some moments that were so delicate and filled with love… we actually did weddings together on the side to make extra money - and working together was like a dance, always knowing where the other was going to be. But Eddie also got himself into lots of sticky situations going deep on assignment.”
“In 1991, Eddie got sent to Crown Heights for The New York Times to cover the race riots. I got a call at 3am that he was in Kings County Hospital with 100 stitches in the back of his head. About 100 kids saw him floating around after the incidents started and got suspicious. He was fast, but he couldn’t outrun them. There were so many kids on top of him, and one put a brick to his head. It would have been it, if not for another brave correspondent who got him out of there. But he always had PTSD after that.”
“Then he covered the Kosovo War in the late 90s. His whole feeling was that you can’t shoot from where everyone else is shooting, so he decided to cross the border. He got nabbed by the Serbian cops, became a hostage with guns to his head, and during the search, they found his harmonica - he was an amazing blues harp player - and in their broken Serbian/English they kept saying: “Dylan!” and jabbing the harmonica into his side. The story goes that he closed his eyes and played the most beautiful rendition of Mr. Tambourine Man that he could muster, and when he opened his eyes the cops were crying and told him he could leave.”
While Keating’s work took him all over the world, in the early '80s he moved back to New Canaan, and even did a stint working as a photographer for the town paper! A few prints of New Canaan subjects are on display and are for sale.
When 9/11 occurred, he felt compelled to go and cover Ground Zero. He couldn’t have comprehended what he was inhaling would cause cancer years later. His work portraying the raw wreckage, the survivors, the first responders, and the way that it caused life to stand still in Manhattan is what won him the Pulitzer Prize.
He left behind 300+ rolls of unprocessed film, and Carrie, also an award-winning photographer says she’s “slowly been making my way through developing those images and curating Eddie’s vast body of work. As I began to catalog everything, having a retrospective at the Carriage Barn became an obvious focus - and we’re so excited that it’s come to fruition! He will never be forgotten!”
At the opening on October 18, past and present New Canaanites came together to celebrate Eddie’s life and work. The Keatings’ 32 year old daughter, Emily, a professional musician, performed some of his favorite songs. And at the New Canaan Class of 1974’s 50th Reunion at the Carriage Barn Arts Center the next day…Eddie’s classmates honored and toasted Eddie’s memory!
As an added bonus, for 47 years now, sculptors have been meeting to work in the basement of the Carriage Barn…and that activity has a robust and ever-evolving membership.
“There truly is something for everyone here. We do seasonal flower arrangement nights, where people come and hang out, and drink wine, and it’s really high energy, and fun, and social. And then we do yoga on Saturday mornings. People come from a half an hour or more away to be here. We had Ray Isle - the wine editor from Food & Wine - come and do a whole event and talk. Those are all drawing-in people with various interests to be in the space and engage with the artwork. People who might not otherwise seek out art… but who will benefit from that exposure… and we think everyone benefits from that!” Hilary beams.
And, in addition to art and community programming, the Carriage Barn’s large open space is rented out for a variety of private events, and is used as a go-to by many New Canaan non-profits as a gathering space for meetings and to host fundraisers and functions. Planet New Canaan just hosted their annual gala at the Carriage Barn, West School just did their parents social there, New Canaan Newcomers is doing a ‘Friendsgiving Dinner’… “and we’re always eager to form meaningful partnerships and collaborations,” Hilary says. “We also work with teachers at the high school who bring over their students for almost every exhibit, and weave the exhibit into their curriculum. It’s such a great way to expose kids outside of the classroom setting … and they can just walk over!”
As featured in the November/December 2024 issue of Bedford & New Canaan Magazine