The Day’s writers have chosen their favorite exhibitions and books of the past year.

EXHIBITIONS

“Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post Covers: Tell Me a Story”

June-Sept., Mystic Museum of Art

This exhibition was scheduled for 2020 but was sidelineed due to the pandemic. It finally opened this year, and it was a gem. The exhibition, organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., featured every cover Rockwell created for the Saturday Evening Post, all 323 of them. The MMoA decided to host a corollary exhibition that was equally important and intriguing, “Missing Narratives,” featuring the work of African-American artists from the collection of Bill and Paula Alice Mitchell.

— Kristina Dorsey

“Remembering the Nut Museum: Visionary Art of Elizabeth Tashjian”

Jan. 18-March 11, The William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs

Old Lyme’s famous Nut Museum was one of a kind, and so was its creator, an artist inspired by hard-shelled fruits ranging from the lowly peanut to the erotic coco de mer. This show memorialized the zany attraction and delved into the proprietor’s perplexing obsession.

— John Ruddy

“Picturing Mystic: Views of the Connecticut Shoreline, 1890-1950”

May 21-Sept. 4, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London

Everyday scenes in Mystic, Noank and Masons Island seized the imagination of painters who formed the Mystic art colony in the early 20th century. This exhibition showcased portrayals of homes, streets and shipyards, many of which are still recognizable today.

— John Ruddy

“Dana Sherwood: Animal Appetites and Other Encounters in Wildness”

May 21-Sept. 18, Florence Griswold Museum

What a vibrantly different, exceptionally fun exhibition. Sherwood explores humans’ relationship to wild nature. She creates paintings but I found her installations particularly fascinating. She sets up these faux rooms outdoors, complete with food, and allows night-vision cameras to capture what happens. The video of raccoons and possums and other critters scampering around the bedroom outside in Old Lyme and scarfing down food was very funny and rather fascinating.

— Kristina Dorsey

“100 Years of the Mystic River and the Bascule Bridge”

Oct. 7 – Dec. 18, Mystic Museum of Art, Mystic

Mystic wouldn’t be Mystic without its drawbridge, whose 100th anniversary was celebrated this year. The bridge, with its wheeled mechanism and massive counterweights, has been fodder for artists, whose works told its history. Earlier spans and the Mystic River were also part of the show.

— John Ruddy

“America’s Instrument: Banjos from the Jim Bollman Collection”

Oct. 8-Jan. 8, 2023, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London

Banjos are synonymous with musical genres like bluegrass and Dixieland, but they have an origin story that’s less well-known. This show went all the way back to the beginning, in Africa, and traced the instrument’s rise from slave cabins to minstrel shows to high society.

— John Ruddy

“Chromatopia: Stories of Color in Art”

Nov. 19 - March 5, 2023, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London

We seldom think about colors, the building blocks of visual art, but they have stories of their own. This show examined our perception of color and the history of pigments and dyes that enrich our surroundings. There were plenty of weird surprises: Some colors are invisible, and others are deadly.

— John Ruddy

“The AIDS Memorial Quilt at Connecticut College”

Nov. 29-Dec. 4, Tansill Theater, Hillyer Hall, Connecticut College

Several panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, each of which was stitched in memory of a loved one who died of AIDS, went on display at Conn College in observation of World AIDS Day. It’s just one small section of the 54-ton quilt with over 48,000 sections, but it was incredibly and almost transcendentally powerful. Yes, one panel recognized one of my wife’s favorite cousins. But we took the time to read each section in order to remember what is still an indelibly dark crisis.

— Rick Koster

BOOKS

“City On Fire” by Don Winslow

This first of a final trilogy by the great Winslow is a chin-kick of a literary crime novel depicting a multi-generational battle between Irish and Italian mob families in Providence. With the darkly beautiful intensity of the author’s renowned Border Trilogy, “City On Fire” and the two already-completed books that will follow promise to be a helluva farewell to fiction. As Winslow told a crowd during his appearance at The Day’s “Read of The Day” series, he’s devoting his time, money and energy to fighting the extreme right. Godspeed, sir.

— Rick Koster

“Rapture and Melancholy: The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay”

Edited by Daniel Mark Epstein

This long overdue volume of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay's journals and jottings follows the tragic arc of the talented poet whose candle burned too hot, too fast. The first half of the volume, from 1907 to 1913, is told in the innocent, ambitious voice of the Maine girl who found inspiration in the hills surrounding her Camden home. The second half is a spotty account of her meteoric rise as a poet and the tragic aftermath of fame, devolving into lists of her daily opioid intake. Taken as a whole, these entries make the title seem an understatement.

— Betty J. Cotter

“Ghost Eaters” by Clay McCleod Chaplin

What if someone invented a drug that let you talk to and see the dead? The concept is dizzying in terms of reconnecting with deceased loved ones and pets. But what if you came in contact with spirits you don’t want to see? Further, what if the drug has oxy-strength addictive properties? Chapman takes this premise and gleefully and adeptly spins an irresistible novel.

— Rick Koster

“Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel weaves together stories from the past and future in this amazing novel about time and loss. And fans of her previous work will notice that some familiar characters make return appearances.

— Kristina Dorsey

“Finding Me” by Viola Davis

Turns out, Viola Davis isn’t just an Oscar-caliber actress. She’s also a hell of a writer. Her memoir is compelling, particularly as she describes in heartrending passages the trauma of growing up in deep poverty and within a fractious family in Central Falls, R.l.

— Kristina Dorsey

“A Book of Days” by Patti Smith

Although most famous as a songwriter and performer, Patti Smith is a talented writer — winning the National Book Award for her memoir “Just Kids” — and photographer. At first glance, this collection of 366 inspirational posts, adapted from her Instagram account, seems like a quick-hit book. But each one of these photographs, about two-thirds original, and the accompanying text invite deep reflection. One favorite: Smith sitting, hand on her chin. “I remember my mother sitting like this. And I would ask, What is it, Mommy? And she would say, Oh nothing. And now I know what nothing is.”

— Betty J. Cotter

“Every Cloak Rolled in Blood” by James Lee Burke

This latest in the multi-volume saga of the Holland family is set in Montana and stands as a monumentally emotional story. Burke — whose poetic depth and grasp of humanity’s darkest tendencies is powerful in any case. But, inspired by the death of his daughter Pamala in 2021, he’s at the top of his game and has crafted a beautiful, sad but ultimately redemptive story that will hopefully bring him some comfort.

— Rick Koster

“The Furies” by John Connolly

This volume comprises two novellas in which the writer’s recurrent hero, private eye Charlie Parker, deals with a pair of disparate plots that nonetheless blend beautifully. Funny, occasionally vicious and always superb entertainment, “The Furies” easily withstands any temptations to pick up electronic media devices or check social media.

— Rick Koster

“The Candy House” by Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan can do pretty much anything. Her sweeping “Manhattan Beach” had a traditional structure, while “The Candy House” is more like her “Visit from the Goon Squad,” with chapters focused on different characters and sometimes using varying styles.

— Kristina Dorsey

“Hello, Transcriber” by Hannah Morrissey

Hazel Greenlee and her chump of a husband have moved to the crime-drenched town of Black Harbor, Wisconsin for work, and she finds herself working for the city’s police department transcribing crime scene reports from detectives. Bewitched by mysterious homicide cop Nik Kole and his efforts to capture the Candy Man, a drug pusher whose products are killing children, Hazel steps beyond the parameters of her job and marriage. Things ... don’t go well.

— Rick Koster

“Eater of the Gods” by Dan Franklin

This limited edition short novel makes you laugh out loud at how effortlessly Franklin scares the hell out of you with this tale of a team of archaeologists that breaches a tomb in the Libyan desert of Kiya, the heretical lost queen of Akhenaten. This ain’t no mummy story — and no matter what you expect from this well-trodden path, it’s NOT what happens.

— Rick Koster

“Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty” by Anderson Cooper with Katherine Howe

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's mother was Gloria Vanderbilt, the “poor little rich girl” who was tugged back and forth in an infamous custody trial in 1934. Cooper, with the aid of Howe's precise research, digs deep into his family roots, from his Dutch ancestor settling in New York in the mid-1600s to the rags-to-riches story of the “Commodore,” Cornelius Vanderbilt, who turned a modest ferry business into a fortune. Cooper does not shy away from the vapid lives that the Commodore's descendants led in New York and Newport, and by the time the last Vanderbilt is ousted from the Breakers (in 2017), it's hard to believe how far the family has fallen.

— Betty J. Cotter

“The Pallbearer’s Club” by Paul Tremblay

The author was another “Read of The Day” guest, touring behind this touching and seductively weird tale of a high-school loner who discovers the comfort of punk rock through an older girl who may or may not be a vampire. Rooted in the folklore of Rhode Island, Tremblay effortlessly hits another home run.

— Rick Koster

“The Cloisters” by Katy Hays

Ann Stillwell, young academic linguist from the West Coast scores an unimaginable opportunity to research esoteric Renaissance art at the esteemed Cloisters museum in Manhattan. She’s introduced into a world and social circle that simultaneously intimidates and entrances her. Maybe an on-site homicide will help! This is a revealing look at an intriguing world — and one that seems to corrupt.

— Rick Koster