Top Things to do in Connecticut
Top Hotels in Connecticut
Top 10 Shopping in Connecticut, United States
Connecticut is a study in attraction and contrast. In one small state, you’ll find miles of sandy oceanfront shoreline, acres of forested hiking trails, and world-class museums, art and theater. Here family-friendly adventure parks and aquariums are just minutes from dynamic casino resorts and quaint, historic small towns — offering experiences that range from culinary to cultural, luxurious to laid-back. It’s the perfect place to unwind and recharge, all at the same time.
Restaurants in Connecticut
1. Farmington Valley Arts Center
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 10 reviews
The Farmington Valley Arts Center is home to twenty professional artist studios, workshops and classes and located in a beautiful park like setting, right of Route 44, Avon, CT., Fisher Gallery with ongoing exhibits and The Drezner Gift Shop and Gallery. You will find painitng, illustration, ceramics, pottery, fine craft, mixed media, printmaking, photography, sculpture, decorative arts and more. Incorporated in 1974 as a not-for-profit organization, the Farmington Valley Arts Center in Avon, Connecticut, is dedicated to the belief that artistic expression and creativity are vital to daily life. FVAC connects the community to the creative process by offering arts education for people of all ages, supporting and encouraging working artists, and serving as a community resource for promoting the arts. The Arts Center is a vibrant arts community that enables visitors to experience the entire creative process, from seeing artists at work to viewing finished creations in a gallery to learning the skills necessary to create works of their own.
2. Cooper & Smith Gallery
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 2 reviews
Cooper & Smith is committed to making available the best in contemporary fine art. With 5,000 square feet of exhibition space, the gallery offers a range of genres and styles, from representational to abstraction. Located at the head of Main Street in historic Essex, Connecticut, the Cooper & Smith Gallery is just off the I-95 corridor, mid-way between Boston and New York City and bisecting the main artery between Newport and Greenwich.
3. Studio Jeffrey P’an
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 4 reviews
Reviewed By annewU4543VB
Fascinating art and so interesting to learn about the techniques they use to make the items! Worth seeing.
4. Grand & Water Antiques
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 1 reviews
5. Re-Unique
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 2 reviews
Antique and vintage furniture,collectibles,decorative objects. A little shop bustling with something old, something new, something mystical or something with a story to tell…antiques, unique objects, original ideas...
Reviewed By B5023WPmichaelb
Just a beautiful array of goods in this shop. Everything is in superb condition, and the owner is very welcoming. You will find items here that are truly one of a kinds, or from faraway countries. It was a treat to visit this shop. The oldest item is a bell from Italy from 1740. It's in one of the photos I posted.
6. Walnut Beach Farmers' Market
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 3 reviews
7. Artfish42
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 10 reviews
Come and enjoy a unique shopping experience at one of CT's few Artist's Co-op's. Meet one or two of the 17 local artist's and artisan's who create our fine are and handcrafted pieces. Located in the heart of Walnut Beach only a few steps from the beach. Bring your pails for shell collecting. Workshops and classes also available. Join us on June 21st for the 5th annual Fairy Frolic.
Reviewed By RuztyNYC
What a beautiful shop! And the employees are actually the artists themselves! Such a unique and inspiring collective. You can tell everyone is deeply passionate about their creations. I really loved the selection of glass art! I was able to find a few unique and last minute Christmas gifts. Such a great find!
8. The Promenade Shops at Evergreen Walk
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 116 reviews
Whether shopping, dining, or strolling down the vibrant main street, The Promenade Shops at Evergreen Walk has quickly become South Windsor’s go-to lifestyle destination. With highly coveted retailers, restaurants, and amenities, it’s easy to see why. Shoppers have access to the best stores in the area and can relax in front of the cozy fire pit in the Village Green, enjoy concerts and events in Evergreen Walk Park, experience pet-friendly shopping, and take advantage of storefront parking. No matter what brings you to The Promenade Shops at Evergreen Walk, it is sure to please.
Reviewed By lionelb224
Great place to shop. High end shops. LL BeN, Talbots, Apple store. Many others Good place to eat with several good Reasturant.
9. Robert Treat Farm
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 11 reviews
10. Florence Griswold Museum
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 245 reviews
A 12-acre museum campus with a historic home museum, a modern art gallery with changing exhibitions, and gardens and river frontage along the delightful Lieutenant River. Visitors enjoy seasonal events including June's GardenFest and October's Wee Faerie Village. Discovery Sundays (April - September) give visitors of all ages the opportunity to take a mini-lesson in landscape painting and create their own masterpiece on the extensive grounds of the Museum. Visitors can enjoy lunch on the veranda at the outdoor Cafe Flo (May-October), and find unique gifts, exhibition catalogs and more at the Museum Shop. The Museum is named for Miss Florence Griswold, who at the turn of the 20th century opened her home as a boardinghouse which quickly became popular with American artists including Childe Hassam and Willard Metcalf. Museum docents share tales of the Lyme Art Colony and this home of American Impressionism. Check FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org for a calendar of events and exhibitions.
Reviewed By kzsull01 - Windsor, United States
My husband and I visited the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut on Thursday, March 11, 2021. We enjoyed both the Special Exhibits and the Florence Griswold House, which are both very impressive and definitely worth seeing. This time we particularly enjoyed touring the Florence Griswold House because of the friendly docent/interpretive staff member at the house who provided great details about the house, including its restoration and its contents, about Florence Griswold and about interesting places to see while we were visiting the area. The information that she provided was quite helpful making the tour seem like a walk back through time. . We have come to the museum and house many times and have always enjoyed both the temporary Special Exhibits and the exhibits from the Permanent Collection, which change on an on-going basis. As always, we found our visit to be quite enjoyable, being informative, interesting and educational. Our current experience viewing the Special Exhibits and house is described in more detail in separate sections below. We recommend the museum and house and we hope that you have the opportunity to enjoy them as much as we have for a very nice mixture of art, history and nature, especially as reflected in the rural landscape paintings of New England. It is definitely worth the visit and we will go back again. All the overviews/write-ups within the museum, the house and other areas of the grounds are well done and nicely explain what is on exhibit. In the spring, the grounds are quite nice to walk around, and are a great place for artists to come and paint as Impressionists artists did in the past. But this was even true at the time of our visit, which was in early March. There are new trails to hike, including a River Walk and a Hedgerow Walk that we have not had the opportunity to explore but will during a future visit. Details about these trails are in the Visitors’ Guide. . Our visit this time took a little over an hour. There was plenty of free parking in the designated parking area. Please refer to the below for further details about our visit. Although there was no orientation film to watch before our visit at this time as there has been in the past, the write-ups in the house as well as the docent/interpretive staff member provided a very good overview from a historical perspective of Florence Griswold, her home and about the Old Lyme Art Colony. We thank the museum for being open during their normal hours throughout the pandemic and for not having reduced hours as many other museums have had. The only issue we had was with the Timed Tickets. The on-line process was a bit complex. Also, we prefer more flexibility in terms of the time we have to arrive at the museum to visit. We got tickets for 10:30 a.m.. We left our house in order to arrive early but due to construction on Route 9 we were delayed for about 25 minutes and arrived in the later part of the 15 minute time slot that the tickets applied to. This was a bit stressful and we would have preferred more flexibility, perhaps having the time range for the tickets apply to a longer period of time. Although we had no issues being admitted into the museum, we did not like the stress of having to arrive at the museum by a specific time because we didn’t want to be late. Special Exhibits: The Special Exhibit: ‘Expanding Horizons; Celebrating 20 Years of the Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB) Collection’ expanded on the museums focus on landscape paintings by American Tonalist and Impressionist artists from the Old Lyme Art Colony to include canonical American portraits, still lifes, figurative compositions, narrative scenes and landscapes painted by Connecticut artists working in other locations. The exhibit interestingly illustrated new methods of research and interpretation and the importance of connecting the narrative lessons of historical works of art with changes that happened in our contemporary world. Hence, the exhibit addressed issues very relevant to current times. New methods and approaches to American Art, including Ecocritical Approaches; Thing Theory; “New Materialism”; new ethical museum practices for structural transparency in museums; and new ways of looking at landscape paintings, identity, and hidden histories in art are all presented in the exhibit with very informative overviews/write-ups and very nicely done corresponding artwork. This exhibit is well done and quite educational. Interesting, intriguing, and thought-provoking concepts were explained within the different sections of the exhibit. Below I mention some of the information that I got from the overviews/write-ups pertaining to each section, to give you an idea of what these concepts are based on my understanding of them, but the write-ups say a lot more than what I mentioned below and should be definitely read if you have the opportunity. Please note that this information is just from the overviews and not from the individual pieces of art. So there is really a lot of information to absorb!!. . ‘Thing Theory’ examines subject-object relationships in art based on the assumption that objects – their materials, construction, physical lives – hold knowledge about human history, culture and nature. Examining works of art based on this theory can take a variety of forms with the goal of a more nuanced understanding of objects within their historical context. Ecocritical Approaches to American Art is interdisciplinary, studying the physical environment and its relationship with other aspects of society and culture. This approach can be applied to historical art and ideas to learn about their environmental significance, both in the past and present. The ‘Revealing Hidden Histories’ Section raises awareness surrounding ethical museum practices and the need for structural transparency in museums. Prior to the HSB Collection the museum had articles primarily created from the largely male Lyme Art Colony. The HBS Collection showcases artwork from more diverse populations in Connecticut, which is a priority of the Museum going forward. New collaborative research has expanded art historical inquiry, allowing the potential for multiple perspectives, interpretations and meanings to surface all within one picture. This section taps on histories of land ownership, labor, food and music that intersect with issues of race. The ‘New Lenses on Landscape’ Section interestingly provides background on how Art History has historically included understanding concepts of place, property and national identity with recent studies focusing on social and environment frameworks. Definitions of “American Art” landscape painting are being expanded to a more global approach reflecting the nuances of artists’ international travels, networks and exchanges, The exhibit shows paintings created abroad that focus on issues of artistic process, public taste and histories of colonialism while the paintings created in Connecticut focus on narratives about land ownership, war, urbanization, and fine art’s intersection with mass culture. The ‘Inquiring into Identity’ Section explains how Identity is a construction shaped by culture, individuals and images created by artists and non-artists. As we become more aware of social disparities, inequalities and injustices, it is useful to look to historical art for the cues, roots and lessons of those narratives. This specific section analyzes identity through considerations of landscape, portraiture and still life to help better understand history, its people and experience and the need for works of art to require contextualization. The Special Exhibit: ‘Centennial of the Lyme Art Association Gallery’ is a very nice tribute to the historical significance of the gallery, and to the role that the original Lyme Art Colony largely male members, Florence Griswold, and women painters, among others, played in the creation of the Lyme Art Association Gallery. Revisiting the origins of this art gallery allows an examination of the economics of art and tourism, local history, the impact of World War I and reactions to modernism, and even censorship as the former artists chose what and who should be represented in this gallery. This gallery definitely has a very interesting history and the exhibit nicely depicts that. What I found of particular interest is the evolving role that women played in the gallery, including that Florence Griswold transitioned from art colony matron to be the L.A.A. first gallery manager!! This exhibit was very interesting and well done. . The Florence Griswold House: We then went to the Florence Griswold House, which was built in beautiful Late Georgian architecture. As mentioned previously, the interpretive staff member/docent within the house was very friendly and provided helpful information about what was on display in the house as well as helpful hints about interesting places to visit in the area. . The multiple rooms in the house on the first floor are well restored to the time period of the Art Colony, nicely depicting what the artists would have experienced during their stay. The rooms include Florence Griswold’s bedroom; the Art Colony parlor; an Art Colony member’s bedroom; the Dining Room; a cupboard room with beautiful dishes; and main entry hallway and staircase with each room very nicely arranged and having an informative write-up about it. The furnishings in the house are from the time period of the Art Colony and are beautiful, but are not all actually authentic to the house. The series of wall and door panels painted by the artists of the colony are very impressive and all well preserved. What we missed, but have seen during previous visits, was the film shown in the room on the right as you enter the hallway to the house which included actual footage of Florence Griswold walking through her gardens while she was living in the house in 1935, when she was eighty-five years old. This film was quite unique and nice to see. The second floor of the house has multiple rooms with Impressionist, Tonalist and miniature paintings and sketches painted by members of the Art Colony, with the art representing a subjective interpretation of nature and the surrounding Lyme landscapes, providing a very nice touch of spring. These paintings have harmonious colors, with delicate effects of light, showing rural life with great sensitivity and personal feeling. There is a room devoted to Florence Griswold and information on the restoration of the house and gardens which was quite interesting. Touring the house is like a walk back through time. All the write-ups within the house are quite educational and nicely explain the art on display and reflect the historic significance of the house and the Art Colony. I particularly liked the write-ups about each room in the house as well as those about the ‘Art Colony of Old Lyme’, including the corresponding picture of its members; the ‘Welcome to Florence Griswold’s Boardinghouse for Artists’; ‘Childe Hassam and the American Impressionists’, ‘Henry Ward Ranger and His Tonalist Circle’; ‘the Painted Sketch’; ‘the Landscape of Lyme’; and ‘Replanting an Old-Fashion Garden’.. We enjoyed this museum. It had a lot to offer and provides a good perspective of what the artists would have experienced during their visits to the Art Colony. Again, we recommend a visit to this museum and definitely will go back again soon, as we have always done in the past. We only wish that we lived closer to this museum! A library pass may be available at your local library for free admission into this museum, a rather nice bonus! This time we used the ‘CT Art Trail’ Passport Booklet.
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