11. There are two National Historic Sites dedicated to the visual arts
The National Park Service maintains two historic sites which are dedicated to the visual arts (out of 88 places designated as National Historic Sites). Both are located in New England, Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, New Hampshire and Weir Farm in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Saint-Gaudens was the summer home and later permanent residence of Auguste Saint-Gaudens, a major American sculptor in the late nineteenth century. Many of his works are equestrian monuments to Civil War officers, including the statue of William Tecumseh Sherman in New York’s Central Park and the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial which is featured on Boston Common. His statue known as Standing Lincoln, which towers twelve feet high, is featured in Chicago’s Lincoln Park.
Weir farm in Connecticut maintains an artist-in-residence program (as does Saint-Gaudens) and has hosted aspiring artists in numbers well into the hundreds. It is named for American artist J. Alden Weir, who purchased the 153 acre farm in exchange for a painting and $10 in 1882. Weir and other artists in residence on the property painted numerous landscapes of the Connecticut countryside, and the farm continued to host artists for decades following Weir’s death in 1919. Paintings by J. Alden Weir are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, and other prestigious collections in the United States. Today 60 acres are dedicated to American art and recreation with hiking trails among the sixteen buildings which are preserved, with some serving as working studios.