California, Sept. 27–Oct. 1 • Washington, D.C., Oct. 17–19 • Glass House, Oct. 27 • Philadelphia, March 2009

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27—WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1
Orange County and Santa Monica, California
Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor; Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, et al.

This trip will take us to Southern California for some surprising exhibitions of international stature—and it will still be warm enough for you to enjoy gardens and beaches.

We begin by flying into John Wayne Airport to stay in Costa Mesa, where we'll visit the Bowers Museum (www.bowers.org) for the amazing exhibition Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor. This show sold out at the British Museum in London. I am thrilled to have Sharon Stotz, Education Coordinator at Hill-Stead Museum, join us for this trip. Sharon has visited the actual tombs of the warriors in China. There will be time to visit one of the ritziest shopping malls ever, complete with a great French restaurant for lunch.

The next day we drive to Santa Monica to stay in a luxury hotel on the beach. The energetic may walk along the Pacific Ocean to Venice Beach and explore the canals. We will visit several outstanding museums. The J. Paul Getty Museum (www.getty.edu/museum) has a special show of the works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his contemporaries in Rome during the first half of the 17th century. The portrait bust—the main focus of the show—became an innovative and groundbreaking art form which forever changed sculptural portraiture. There will be time to explore this beautiful complex of buildings by Richard Meier, and to have lunch at the museum restaurant.

On former trips here we have visited the private Eli Broad Foundation. This time, we will see his collection recently installed in the new buildings at LACMA (www.lacma.org), funded by the Broads. Another day will be spent in Pasadena and San Marino to visit the Norton Simon Museum (www.nortonsimon.org), before public hours, with its great collection of Europoean paintings and Oriental sculptures. At the time of our visit there will be a special Marcel Duchamp exhibition. In the afernoon we will visit The Huntington Garden and Library (www.huntington.org) for a special tour of the newly opened Chinese Gardens. In the museum you can enjoy highlights such as Sir Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie and Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy.

Cost: $1,575/person; $400 single supplement

Included in cost: Round-trip air fare from Bradley on Delta Airlines (into John Wayne / out of LAX) • Four nights' hotel accomodations with buffet breakfast daily • Private transportation in Los Angeles, Costa Mesa and Santa Monica where needed • All museum and garden admissions as listed in itinerary • Two lunches, one dinner and reception including wines • Informal commentary throughout by Sharon Stotz • Guiding and hostessing by Jean Glasel • A $50 donation to Hill-Stead Museum (www.hillstead.org).

Reservations: A deposit of $350 per person, made payable to Adventures, Inc., will reserve a place.

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17—SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19
Weekend in Washington

Recently, the New York Times had a short article about hotels in D.C. lowering prices... I guess everyone is hurting! Since there are several exciting exhibitions scheduled for the Fall, I decided that we should "go for it." So, here are plans for a fun-packed weekend at a rate no higher than our last trip of April 2006! Hard to beat.

Departure by train—in business class—from Berlin at 6:42 a.m., to arrive in D.C. at 1:01 p.m. No change of trains required and we can lunch on the train. We will transfer to our hotel, the luxury Renaissance Mayflower Hotel (www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/wassh-renaissance-mayflower-hotel) for the next two nights.

After check-in, we will immediately go to The Mall to visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum (www.americanart.si.edu), which is newly ensconced in a glorious historic building. At the time of our visit, one of the main attractions will be a special exhibition, Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities. This celebrates the deep commitment to the American landscape by these two iconic artists.

We can then cross the Mall to revisit the Freer + Sackler Galleries (www.asia.si.edu) with the fabulous Peacock room and wonderful paintings by Whistler, but also another fine exhibition of American paintings: for the first time since the Freer Gallery of Art opened in 1923, works from its American collection will be displayed with works from outside the museum.

A series of 22 pastels of the Maine coast by American landscape painter Dwight Tryon (1849–1925), known collectively as Sea Moods, will be on view at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, juxtaposed with six black-and-white photographs of the sea by contemporary Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto from his ongoing series "Seascapes." Separated by history and medium, the works are linked by a common subject—the sea—and document the perceptual activity of the artist as well as a natural motif. The formal resonances between these two series will encourage quiet comtemplation and allow viewers to discern aesthetic connections between the diverse artworks on view throughout the Freer and Sackler Galleries.

Dinner this evening (included) will be at our hotel so that you only have to take the elevator up to your rooms after the long day.

On Saturday, October 18, we will have transportation for morning visits to two very different places: The Kreeger Museum (www.kreegermuseum.org), located in a suburb of the city, and President Lincoln's Cottage (www.lincolncottage.org), which was opened to the public just a few months ago.

The Kreeger Museum, designed by renowned architect Philip Johnson, showcases its permanent collection of 19th- and 20th-century paintings and sculptures. Highlights of the collection include works by Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Cézanne, Chagall, Rodin, Miró, Moore, Kandinsky and Washington artists Gene Davis, Sam Gilliam, William Christenberry and Kendall Buster, as well as examples of traditional African and Asian art.

Located on a picturesque hilltop in Washington, D.C., President Lincoln's Cottage is the most significant historic site directly associated with Lincoln's presidency aside from the White House. During the Civil War, President Lincoln and his family resided here from June–November of 1862, 1863 & 1864.

For the balance of Saturday, you will be free to choose another museum of your liking, or to shop, or to rest up before we meet in the evening for dinner (included) at a nearby restaurant.

After breakfast on Sunday, October 19 (included both days), we will go to the National Gallery of Art (www.nga.gov) for the final—yet very exciting—highlight of our trip: Pompeii and The Roman Villa. In the first century B.C., the picturesque Bay of Naples became a favorite retreat for vacationing emperors, senators, and other prominent Romans. They built lavish seaside villas in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius where they could indulge in absolute leisure, read and write, enjoy their gardens and the views, and entertain friends. The artists who flocked to the region to adorn the villas also created paintings, sculptures and decorative arts for the residents of Pompeii and nearby towns. Pompeii and the Roman Villa presents some 150 works of sculpture, painting, mosaic and luxury arts, including recent discoveries on view in the U.S. for the first time and celebrated finds from earlier excavations. Exquisite objects from the richly decorated villas reveal the breadth and richness of cultural and artistic life, as well as the influence of classical Greece on Roman art and culture in this region. The exhibition also focuses on the impact that the 18th-century excavations and rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum had on the art and culture of the modern world. A highlight of the exhibition is a dining room from the site of Moregine on the Sarno River south of Pompeii. Discovered in 1959, the site was excavated in 1999–2001 when the walls from its flooded dining rooms were removed in order to preserve their frescoes. The exhibition features three dining-room walls decorated with images of Apollo, god of the arts, with the muses, shown floating against a red background and framed by elegant architectural fantasies. Ancient Roman dining rooms were often located to offer diners a view of the garden, an arrangement echoed in the installation of the Moregine frescoes at the National Gallery.

We can spend a leisurely morning here and get lunch in the museum before heading back to Union Station and our 4:20 pm train back to the Hartford area with arrival in Berlin at 10:30 pm.

This exhibition will be of special interest to people who might want to join us in 2009 on a trip to the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento, which will include visits to Herculaneum and Pompeii. There will be a discount of $100 for the trip to Italy for anyone who joins the trip to D.C.

Cost: $1,180/person in twin; $200 single supplement.
Cost includes: round trip business class train tickets Berlin to Washington • private transfers between Union Station and hotel in D.C. • two nights' accommodation in luxury Mayflower Hotel in D.C. • buffet breakfast daily • transportation and admissions to Lincoln's Cottage and Kreeger Museum • all other museum admissions as noted • dinners on both evenings in D.C. • informal commentary throughout by Hill-Stead interpreter Janet Conlin • donation of $50 to Hill-Stead Museum (www.hillstead.org) • hostessing by Jean Glasel

Reservations: To reserve a place on the trip please send a deposit check for $250 per person, made payable to Adventures, Inc., to Jean Glasel at 15 Colton Street, Farmington, CT 06032.

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MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2008
New Canaan, CT: Philip Johnson's Glass House

Following a highly successful trip to this celebrated site in September 2007, we have been able to secure 30 tickets for a second visit in 2008. The Glass House is 80% booked in 2008, so reserve now and be one of the lucky 30! www.philipjohnsonglasshouse.org.

Cost: $125/person includes transportation, Glass House admission, refreshments on the bus in the morning and in the evening, driver tip and a small donation to Hill-Stead Museum (www.hillstead.org).

Bus Departures: Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT at 7:30 am; East Hartford, CT (Sheraton Hotel, Founders Plaza), 8 am; New Canaan, 4:30 pm.

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FRIDAY–SATURDAY, MARCH 20–21, 2009
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Cézanne and Beyond

We want to offer you an advance opportunity to join us for a very special exhibition next spring: Cézanne and Beyond at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (www.philamuseum.org).

Paul Cézanne's posthumous retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907 was a watershed event in the history of art. The immediate impact of this large representation of his work on the young artists of Paris was profound. Its ramifications on successive generations down to the present are still in effect.

This exhibition features forty paintings and twenty watercolors and drawings by Cézanne, displayed alongside works by several artists for whom Cézanne has been a central inspiration and whose work reflects, both visually and poetically, Cézanne's extraordinary legacy. These artists include Max Beckmann, Georges Braque, Pierre Bonnard, Charles Demuth, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Marsden Hartley, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Fernand Léger, Brice Marden, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Giorgio Morandi, Pablo Picasso, and Jeff Wall.

Based on the remarkable resources of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, both in its holdings of major works by Cézanne and in its large collections of early modernist works—thanks to A.E. Gallatin and Louise and Walter Arensberg—this show is a unique occasion to experience the continuing impact of this influential painter. It will be shown only in Philadelphia and will not travel to other venues.

Our short, culturally packed trip will provide us with a private guided tour of the exhibition prior to public opening hours on Saturday. We will also include a Friday matinée concert of the renowned Philadelphia Orchestra at Kimmel Hall, dinner Friday evening at one of the finest restaurants in the city—Lacroix at Rittenhouse (www.lacroixrestaurant.com)—as well as lunch at the museum on Saturday and a chance to explore a little on your own and/or visit the Rodin Museum (www.rodinmuseum.org).

Travel will be by train from Berlin to Philadelphia—you can get lunch on the way down. We will stay overnight at the luxurious Rittenhouse Hotel (www.rittenhousehotel.com), with breakfast included on Saturday morning. After the private tour on Saturday morning, there will be time to visit the rest of the permanent collection before lunch in the museum restaurant. The afternoon will be free to explore downtown before the 6 pm train back to Berlin.

Sign up by August 1, 2008 and receive $25 off.

Cost: $885/person in twin (based on a minimum of 10 people); $150 single supplement.
Cost includes: round trip train from Berlin to Philadelphia • overnight at deluxe Rittenhouse Hotel • buffet breakfast • prime concert seats to Philadelphia Orchestra • private guided tour of Cézanne and Beyond • dinner at Lacroix Restaurant • lunch at the museum • informal commentary by Hill-Stead Museum's Interim Co-Director, Cynthia Cormier (www.hillstead.org) • guidance and assistance of Jean Glasel.

Reservations: Please send a deposit check for $100, made payable to Adventures, Inc., to Jean Glasel at 15 Colton Street, Farmington, CT 06032.

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For further details, please view a copy of the latest newsletter, Art Tours and Travel 2008.

To receive Adventures, Inc. newsletters, (2—3 per year), please email Jean Glasel at adventuresinfo@goadventuresinc.com or call 860.674.1114 to be on the mailing list. You can also request to receive information on upcoming trips via e-mail.