‘The time is ripe for revolution’: Burt Chernow and the founding of the Housatonic Museum of Art

Abstract In 1967, a year of profound social and political upheaval in American history, an educator and art historian named Burt Chernow (1933–1997) founded a public art collection at a small urban community college in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Described as one of the poorest and most racially diverse cities in the state, Bridgeport was an unusual choice for a blue-chip collection of modern American art. Part of a wave of ‘cause-based’ collecting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Chernow’s collection has since grown and thrived, helping to educate generations of learners who have, in turn, informed the collection’s scope and articulation. This article explores the intellectual underpinning and material circumstances that inspired Chernow’s radical mission to make fine art accessible to all, and contributes to a fuller appreciation of the history of museological grassroots activism that followed the long 1960s.