Thanks to the generosity of longtime Hartford philanthropists Melinda and Paul Sullivan through the Melinda and Paul Sullivan Foundation for the Decorative Arts, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art’s exhibition “Samuel Colt: Arms, Art and Invention” is back on the museum’s 2006 exhibition schedule. Director Willard Holmes made the announcement three weeks after the museum postponed the exhibition for lack of funding. The exhibition, which was to have opened May 5, will now open Wednesday, September 20.

“The Wadsworth Atheneum trustees, staff, and I are most grateful to Melinda and Paul Sullivan for providing full funding for the Colt exhibition,” said Holmes. “Their generosity enables us to fulfill our original objectives with this groundbreaking show; to tell the full and true story of Colt’s genius through the exhibition, its catalog and our programs for schools and the public, all centered on these exemplary objects from our collection.”

The Sullivans commented in a joint statement, “Quite simply, we felt that the Wadsworth Atheneum’s unprecedented scholarship in examining Samuel Colt’s inventions deserve to be presented first in Hartford, his hometown, before going on a national tour.” Echoing this, Coleman H. Casey, president of the board of trustees, remarked, “This is a wonderful gift; wonderful for the Atheneum, for Hartford and Connecticut, for American history and the memory of Samuel Colt.”

“Samuel Colt: Arms, Art and Invention” and its accompanying book from Yale University Press mark the first initiative to fully document the unique Colt firearms collections held by the Wadsworth Atheneum. Constituting what Holmes has called “the American equivalent of the great arms and armor collections in Europe,” the majority of these rare firearms – prototypes and examples of his manufactured revolvers, pistols and rifles – were in Samuel Colt’s armory office at his death in 1862. Others represent the models in production at his death and were acquired by his widow, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, in 1862-1863.

Although these firearms collections alone demonstrate Colt’s achievements as a technological innovator and an industrial entrepreneur, the exhibition and publication of Samuel Colt: Arms, Art and Invention reveals the profound impact of Colt’s genius on American industry, US national identity and international relations in the Nineteenth Century.

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is at 600 Main Street. For information, www.wadsworthatheneum.org or 860- 838-4058.