HARTFORD – Hartford Public Library’s Hartford History Center is the recent recipient of a treasure trove of documents, sketches, and sculptures created by the late artist and Hartford native Elbert Weinberg. Included in this extraordinary gift from the Elbert Weinberg Trust are four sculptures now on display at the Library’s downtown location.

The items offer a window into the working life of the world-renowned artist – sketchbooks, photographs of all his sculptures, personal correspondence, and even his address books – filled with the names of art-world luminaries and East Coast foundries – are all part of the many objects now undergoing cataloguing and archival preservation.

Before his death in 1991, Weinberg had a studio workshop in the Colt building in Hartford. Many of his sculptures are still in a repository in Hartford. Weinberg became internationally known for his works which explored many subjects, including the suffering of the Holocaust, politics, mythology, and the joy in human nature. His sculptures grace museums – including the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art – as well as exhibitions at such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Boston Museum of Fine Art

“[Weinberg] had a great wit,” said Harold Lindenthal, who met Elbert 25 years ago at a Passover Seder and is now the head of the Elbert Weinberg Trust. “He was prolific in many directions – and he worked in wood, marble, terra cotta, bronze. He worked out his sadness and his happiness in his sculpture.”

For more information, call (860) 695-6297 or visit hhc.hplct.org.