NEW LONDON, CT.- The Lyman Allyn Art Museum’s newest exhibition represents an innovative collaboration between Lyman Allyn and the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. Both museums will be showing the pop art of Leo Jenson (1926–2019), an Ivoryton artist best known regionally for his bronze frog sculptures on the Thread City Crossing Bridge in Willimantic. The Lyman Allyn’s exhibition, Art in Play: Leo Jensen, opened to the public Saturday, Feb. 10 and runs through Apr. 14. It includes a focused selection of the artist’s humorous and insightful paintings and sculpture produced over the course of his career. “Art is one of the oldest human endeavors still done for itself alone,” Jensen once remarked, noting “its power to amuse, to move the heart, and lift the spirit is magical.”

Recognized for his dynamic contributions to pop art, Leo Jensen drew on his experiences growing up in the circus and the rodeo to bring the excitement and allure of those worlds into his art. With a fertile imagination and wide-ranging artistic skills and interests, he produced witty and thought-provoking art, shifting from painting to drawing to carving and welding with equal enthusiasm.

“As we come together with the Florence Griswold Museum for this exciting venture, we relish the opportunity to discover what other benefits can arise from this joining of hands along I-95, and in doing so, help us better serve and enrich our community,” said Lyman Allyn Art Museum Director Sam Quigley.

Florence Griswold Museum’s companion exhibition, Fun and Games? Leo Jensen’s Pop Art, is on view through May 19.

The Lyman Allyn Art Museum welcomes visitors from New London, southeastern Connecticut and all over the world. Established in 1926 with a gift from Harriet Allyn in memory of her seafaring father, the Museum opened the doors of its beautiful neoclassical building surrounded by 12 acres of green space in 1932. Today it presents several changing exhibitions each year and houses a fascinating collection of over 18,000 objects from ancient times to the present, including art from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, with particularly strong collections of American paintings, decorative arts and Victorian toys and doll houses.