Published July 08. 2021 11:27PM
Susan Dunne, Hartford Courant
The corroded green and black-streaked statue of Connecticut’s state hero Nathan Hale that has stood in front of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford since 1893, has been cleaned and now can be seen in its original shiny bronze.
Casey Mallinckrodt, objects conservator at the Atheneum, said this is possibly the first time the statue, which has endured rain, hail, sleet, snow and increasingly polluted air for 128 years, has been cleaned.
“In the ’30s there is documentation of a correspondence regarding the potential treatment of the statue, but record keeping was very poor at that time, so it may or may not have been treated,” she said.