2 Best Sights in Southwestern Connecticut, Connecticut

Cutting-edge art is not necessarily what you'd expect to find in a stately, 18th-century structure that, by turns, served as a general store, a post office, and, for 35 years, a church. Nicknamed "Old Hundred," this historic building is just part of the vast facility, which includes a 17,000-square-foot exhibition space that puts its own twist on traditional New England architecture. The white-clapboard-and-granite structure houses 12 galleries, a screening room, a sound gallery, a 22-foot-high project space for large installations, a 100-seat performance space, and an education center. Outside is a 2-acre sculpture garden. 

In the 1890s, visitors from New York's Art Students League journeyed to the Cos Cob section of Greenwich to take classes taught by American Impressionist John Henry Twachtman at a boarding house for artists and writers run by Josephine and Constant Holley. Thus, the Cos Cob Art Colony was born and flourished until 1920. Today, the circa-1730 house is known as the Bush-Holley House, which displays a wonderful collection of 19th- and 20th-century art by Twachtman, along with rotating art, history, and cultural exhibitions. The collection also includes personal papers, photographs, and records that reflect the long history of Greenwich and its inhabitants, from farmers to Gilded Age barons, politicians, artists and writers, and shopkeepers.