Bank of America Selects the Stowe Center for Art Conservation Project Grant

Bank of America has awarded the Stowe Center a grant to fund conservation of four works of art in our collection including two by Stowe herself. The Stowe Center is one of only 13 museums in seven countries to receive the 2015 award. Additional grant recipients include Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the British Museum, London.
“By selecting Hartford’s Harriet Beecher Stowe Center for an Art Conservation Project grant, we’re preserving works for generations to come” said Kevin Cunningham, Connecticut State President, Bank of America. “We’re proud to play a role in conserving important works of art used to share her story of courage and inspiration with a worldwide audience.”
With support from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, the Stowe Center will conserve four paintings and their respective frames including:

Portraits of two men important to Stowe’s life, her father, Lyman Beecher, and her husband, Calvin Stowe and
Two of Stowe’s own works, oil botanicals, reflecting her interest in the natural world.
When conservation is complete the paintings will be on permanent view in the 1871 Stowe House, a National Historic Landmark.

“The Stowe Center is honored to receive an art conservation grant from Bank of America and to be in the esteemed company of our fellow awardees around the world who will conserve works by artists including Manet and Van Gogh,” said Katherine Kane, Stowe Center Executive Director. “Bank of America’s support, through a highly competitive grants process, demonstrates Stowe’s continuing international impact.”

The Stowe Center’s fine art collection is of national importance for understanding the life of the 19th-century author and the impact made by her 1852 anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities as “critical to American history and culture,” the Stowe Center’s collections are the foundation for compelling and provocative programs that engage and inspire.

The Bank of America Art Conservation Project preserves cultural treasures from around the world and highlights the crucial need for their protection. The Art Conservation Project is a unique program that provides grants to nonprofit museums throughout the world to conserve historically or culturally significant works of art that are in danger of degeneration, including works that have been designated as national treasures.

Since 2010, Bank of America has provided grants to museums in 28 countries for 85 conservation projects through the global Art Conservation Project.

2015 Awardees Bank of America Art Conservation Project

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2024

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

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Adult Group Interest Form

Group Tour Interest Form 2022

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

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Are you interested in a joint visit with our neighbor, The Mark Twain House and Museum?

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If yes, have you already contacted The Mark Twain House?

Yes

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.