Location: Old Lyme
Top Things to do in Old Lyme
Top Restaurants in Old Lyme
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What to do and see in Old Lyme, Connecticut (CT): The Best Things to do
Old Lyme is a coastal town in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The Main Street of the town, Lyme Street, is a historic district. The town has long been a popular summer resort and artists' colony. The town is named after Lyme Regis, England.
Restaurants in Old Lyme
1. Sculpture Grounds
2. Lyme Art Association
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 14 reviews
The Lyme Art Association is a vibrant art center with a diverse series of juried exhibitions throughout the year featuring representational art, with all works for sale by member artists. We have a busy schedule of affordable art classes and workshops. The architect of the gallery, built in 1921, was Charles A. Platt, designer of the Freer Gallery. In 1986 the building was named to the National Register of Historic Places and is situated in the hear of the Historic District of Old Lyme, Connecticut. Step through our iconic blue doors often - there is always something new on the walls at the Lyme Art Association!
Reviewed By paaronson - Santo Domingo, Caribbean
We visit about once a year. Exhibits rotate frequently and it's always a top quality. It's right next to the Florence Griswold Museum, which is another terrific destination and across the street from the Old Lyme Inn where we often stay to enjoy a dinner and a jazz performance at the Side Door Club located at the Inn.
3. Goose Island
4. Black Hall Outfitters
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 20 reviews
Kayak & SUP rentals and outings in pristine Old Lyme, directly on the National, Great Island Estuary, on the Long Island Sound. e also have a second location in Westbrook CT directly on the Stewart McKinney Wildlife preserve and a simple paddle to the Long Island Sound. We have direct access to some of the most beautiful coastline in New England, perfect to paddle and explore. Our complete fleet of SUP’s, Kayaks, and Canoes will help create an unforgettable, and affordable day on the water for your family, friends, or group outing
5. Florence Griswold Museum
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 245 reviews
A 12-acre museum campus with a historic home museum, a modern art gallery with changing exhibitions, and gardens and river frontage along the delightful Lieutenant River. Visitors enjoy seasonal events including June's GardenFest and October's Wee Faerie Village. Discovery Sundays (April - September) give visitors of all ages the opportunity to take a mini-lesson in landscape painting and create their own masterpiece on the extensive grounds of the Museum. Visitors can enjoy lunch on the veranda at the outdoor Cafe Flo (May-October), and find unique gifts, exhibition catalogs and more at the Museum Shop. The Museum is named for Miss Florence Griswold, who at the turn of the 20th century opened her home as a boardinghouse which quickly became popular with American artists including Childe Hassam and Willard Metcalf. Museum docents share tales of the Lyme Art Colony and this home of American Impressionism. Check FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org for a calendar of events and exhibitions.
Reviewed By kzsull01 - Windsor, United States
My husband and I visited the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut on Thursday, March 11, 2021. We enjoyed both the Special Exhibits and the Florence Griswold House, which are both very impressive and definitely worth seeing. This time we particularly enjoyed touring the Florence Griswold House because of the friendly docent/interpretive staff member at the house who provided great details about the house, including its restoration and its contents, about Florence Griswold and about interesting places to see while we were visiting the area. The information that she provided was quite helpful making the tour seem like a walk back through time. . We have come to the museum and house many times and have always enjoyed both the temporary Special Exhibits and the exhibits from the Permanent Collection, which change on an on-going basis. As always, we found our visit to be quite enjoyable, being informative, interesting and educational. Our current experience viewing the Special Exhibits and house is described in more detail in separate sections below. We recommend the museum and house and we hope that you have the opportunity to enjoy them as much as we have for a very nice mixture of art, history and nature, especially as reflected in the rural landscape paintings of New England. It is definitely worth the visit and we will go back again. All the overviews/write-ups within the museum, the house and other areas of the grounds are well done and nicely explain what is on exhibit. In the spring, the grounds are quite nice to walk around, and are a great place for artists to come and paint as Impressionists artists did in the past. But this was even true at the time of our visit, which was in early March. There are new trails to hike, including a River Walk and a Hedgerow Walk that we have not had the opportunity to explore but will during a future visit. Details about these trails are in the Visitors’ Guide. . Our visit this time took a little over an hour. There was plenty of free parking in the designated parking area. Please refer to the below for further details about our visit. Although there was no orientation film to watch before our visit at this time as there has been in the past, the write-ups in the house as well as the docent/interpretive staff member provided a very good overview from a historical perspective of Florence Griswold, her home and about the Old Lyme Art Colony. We thank the museum for being open during their normal hours throughout the pandemic and for not having reduced hours as many other museums have had. The only issue we had was with the Timed Tickets. The on-line process was a bit complex. Also, we prefer more flexibility in terms of the time we have to arrive at the museum to visit. We got tickets for 10:30 a.m.. We left our house in order to arrive early but due to construction on Route 9 we were delayed for about 25 minutes and arrived in the later part of the 15 minute time slot that the tickets applied to. This was a bit stressful and we would have preferred more flexibility, perhaps having the time range for the tickets apply to a longer period of time. Although we had no issues being admitted into the museum, we did not like the stress of having to arrive at the museum by a specific time because we didn’t want to be late. Special Exhibits: The Special Exhibit: ‘Expanding Horizons; Celebrating 20 Years of the Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB) Collection’ expanded on the museums focus on landscape paintings by American Tonalist and Impressionist artists from the Old Lyme Art Colony to include canonical American portraits, still lifes, figurative compositions, narrative scenes and landscapes painted by Connecticut artists working in other locations. The exhibit interestingly illustrated new methods of research and interpretation and the importance of connecting the narrative lessons of historical works of art with changes that happened in our contemporary world. Hence, the exhibit addressed issues very relevant to current times. New methods and approaches to American Art, including Ecocritical Approaches; Thing Theory; “New Materialism”; new ethical museum practices for structural transparency in museums; and new ways of looking at landscape paintings, identity, and hidden histories in art are all presented in the exhibit with very informative overviews/write-ups and very nicely done corresponding artwork. This exhibit is well done and quite educational. Interesting, intriguing, and thought-provoking concepts were explained within the different sections of the exhibit. Below I mention some of the information that I got from the overviews/write-ups pertaining to each section, to give you an idea of what these concepts are based on my understanding of them, but the write-ups say a lot more than what I mentioned below and should be definitely read if you have the opportunity. Please note that this information is just from the overviews and not from the individual pieces of art. So there is really a lot of information to absorb!!. . ‘Thing Theory’ examines subject-object relationships in art based on the assumption that objects – their materials, construction, physical lives – hold knowledge about human history, culture and nature. Examining works of art based on this theory can take a variety of forms with the goal of a more nuanced understanding of objects within their historical context. Ecocritical Approaches to American Art is interdisciplinary, studying the physical environment and its relationship with other aspects of society and culture. This approach can be applied to historical art and ideas to learn about their environmental significance, both in the past and present. The ‘Revealing Hidden Histories’ Section raises awareness surrounding ethical museum practices and the need for structural transparency in museums. Prior to the HSB Collection the museum had articles primarily created from the largely male Lyme Art Colony. The HBS Collection showcases artwork from more diverse populations in Connecticut, which is a priority of the Museum going forward. New collaborative research has expanded art historical inquiry, allowing the potential for multiple perspectives, interpretations and meanings to surface all within one picture. This section taps on histories of land ownership, labor, food and music that intersect with issues of race. The ‘New Lenses on Landscape’ Section interestingly provides background on how Art History has historically included understanding concepts of place, property and national identity with recent studies focusing on social and environment frameworks. Definitions of “American Art” landscape painting are being expanded to a more global approach reflecting the nuances of artists’ international travels, networks and exchanges, The exhibit shows paintings created abroad that focus on issues of artistic process, public taste and histories of colonialism while the paintings created in Connecticut focus on narratives about land ownership, war, urbanization, and fine art’s intersection with mass culture. The ‘Inquiring into Identity’ Section explains how Identity is a construction shaped by culture, individuals and images created by artists and non-artists. As we become more aware of social disparities, inequalities and injustices, it is useful to look to historical art for the cues, roots and lessons of those narratives. This specific section analyzes identity through considerations of landscape, portraiture and still life to help better understand history, its people and experience and the need for works of art to require contextualization. The Special Exhibit: ‘Centennial of the Lyme Art Association Gallery’ is a very nice tribute to the historical significance of the gallery, and to the role that the original Lyme Art Colony largely male members, Florence Griswold, and women painters, among others, played in the creation of the Lyme Art Association Gallery. Revisiting the origins of this art gallery allows an examination of the economics of art and tourism, local history, the impact of World War I and reactions to modernism, and even censorship as the former artists chose what and who should be represented in this gallery. This gallery definitely has a very interesting history and the exhibit nicely depicts that. What I found of particular interest is the evolving role that women played in the gallery, including that Florence Griswold transitioned from art colony matron to be the L.A.A. first gallery manager!! This exhibit was very interesting and well done. . The Florence Griswold House: We then went to the Florence Griswold House, which was built in beautiful Late Georgian architecture. As mentioned previously, the interpretive staff member/docent within the house was very friendly and provided helpful information about what was on display in the house as well as helpful hints about interesting places to visit in the area. . The multiple rooms in the house on the first floor are well restored to the time period of the Art Colony, nicely depicting what the artists would have experienced during their stay. The rooms include Florence Griswold’s bedroom; the Art Colony parlor; an Art Colony member’s bedroom; the Dining Room; a cupboard room with beautiful dishes; and main entry hallway and staircase with each room very nicely arranged and having an informative write-up about it. The furnishings in the house are from the time period of the Art Colony and are beautiful, but are not all actually authentic to the house. The series of wall and door panels painted by the artists of the colony are very impressive and all well preserved. What we missed, but have seen during previous visits, was the film shown in the room on the right as you enter the hallway to the house which included actual footage of Florence Griswold walking through her gardens while she was living in the house in 1935, when she was eighty-five years old. This film was quite unique and nice to see. The second floor of the house has multiple rooms with Impressionist, Tonalist and miniature paintings and sketches painted by members of the Art Colony, with the art representing a subjective interpretation of nature and the surrounding Lyme landscapes, providing a very nice touch of spring. These paintings have harmonious colors, with delicate effects of light, showing rural life with great sensitivity and personal feeling. There is a room devoted to Florence Griswold and information on the restoration of the house and gardens which was quite interesting. Touring the house is like a walk back through time. All the write-ups within the house are quite educational and nicely explain the art on display and reflect the historic significance of the house and the Art Colony. I particularly liked the write-ups about each room in the house as well as those about the ‘Art Colony of Old Lyme’, including the corresponding picture of its members; the ‘Welcome to Florence Griswold’s Boardinghouse for Artists’; ‘Childe Hassam and the American Impressionists’, ‘Henry Ward Ranger and His Tonalist Circle’; ‘the Painted Sketch’; ‘the Landscape of Lyme’; and ‘Replanting an Old-Fashion Garden’.. We enjoyed this museum. It had a lot to offer and provides a good perspective of what the artists would have experienced during their visits to the Art Colony. Again, we recommend a visit to this museum and definitely will go back again soon, as we have always done in the past. We only wish that we lived closer to this museum! A library pass may be available at your local library for free admission into this museum, a rather nice bonus! This time we used the ‘CT Art Trail’ Passport Booklet.
6. Connecticut Impressionist Art Trail
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 3 reviews
Established in 1993, this trail is comprised of 12 museums and historic sites around Connecticut where one can view American Impressionist paintings.
7. Vitality Spa
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 3 reviews
8. DEEP Marine Headquarters - Ferry Landing Park
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 36 reviews
Reviewed By Vacation29422 - Old Lyme, United States
When the weather is nice, my bride and I will go to Subway for a sandwich. We will eat it at the bench or tables near the walk way. Then, go for a walk along the boardwalk. If we time it right, a train will rumble overhead. There are usually several persons fishing from the walkway when we go. Also, the lookout at the end of the boardwalk is a great place to look over the marsh.
9. Soundview Brewing Co.
Overall Ratings
1.5 based on 3 reviews
10. Bell 8 Charters
Bell 8 Charters is based out of The Black Hall Outfitters and Marina which is only minutes from Long Island Sound. Cruise, bird watch or fish with a USCG certified Captain in a 18'Center Console Parker.
