Wisdom House Hosting Interactive Photo Gallery Celebrating 70 Years In Litchfield through August 17

Wisdom House Spiritual Retreat and Conference Center’s popular Marie Louise Trichet Art Gallery at 229 East Litchfield Road in Litchfield, Connecticut is hosting a highly-distinctive interactive photo art exhibit, “The Enduring Presence of Wisdom Through the Years: A celebration of the Daughters of Wisdom in Litchfield For 70 Years.”

The ground-breaking exhibit includes an audio component available by downloading a special app onto smartphones to hear the voices of the contemporary nuns featured in large photos taken by Ruedi Hoffman of Manhattan. This special exhibit is open for public viewing through August 17, 2019, and also commemorates the 25^th year of Wisdom House hosting the Marie Louise Trichet Art Gallery.

“The Enduring Presence of Wisdom” exhibit features a breath-taking display of petite historical photos and artifacts showing the day-to-day lives of some of the nearly 100 nuns who resided and trained in the former convent founded in 1949. Those archival photos are in startling juxtaposition to photos of contemporary nuns who have also contributed to the many activities and extensive offerings of Wisdom House Spiritual Retreat and Conference Center during the past 70 years.

Through a distinctive “Live Portrait” application (app) link to smartphones, viewers of the photos of the contemporary Daughters of Wisdom nuns can listen to “live” audio stories from each nun highlighting her life at Wisdom House in the past and present, plus offerings of insights into the anticipated future of the Daughters of Wisdom ministries that spans the globe.

The Daughters of Wisdom originated in 18^th Century France and founded the U.S. Province in 1949 with the purchase of 100 acres of the former Spruce Brook Farm in bucolic East Litchfield. The property was established as a Novitiate to train the order’s young postulant nuns from Brooklyn, New York who had only ‘heard’ of Connecticut. Today some of those nuns, now in their 70s, joyfully recount how enormously surprised they were to see cows walking around the convent’s property and intruding into their morning prayers by sticking their ‘mooing’ heads through open windows.

The archival photos show young Catholic nuns who wore ‘full habits’, cooked, cleaned, and did the laundry for themselves as well as the priests who lived in the nearby Montfort Missionary located “just up the road” from Wisdom House. The Montfort Missionary was founded in France by the St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort (1637 to 1716), and the Daughters of Wisdom order was founded by Montfort and Marie Louise Trichet in 1703.

Currently an interfaith spiritual retreat and conference center, Wisdom House presents programs and day-to-day operations that celebrate the sacred in everyday life, the arts and ecology. Wisdom House offers one-day, two-day, weekend, and week-long conference and retreat lodging and hospitality to academic, nonprofit, and business organizations from across New England, the United States, and from around-the-world.

“The Enduring Presence of Wisdom Through the Years: A celebration of the Daughters of Wisdom in Litchfield For 70 Years” free interactive photo exhibit is open to the public through August 17, 2019. The Wisdom House property also offers a year-round open-air meditative labyrinth and peace garden.

To learn of the days and times Marie Louise Trichet Art Gallery inside Wisdom House located at 229 East Litchfield Road in Litchfield, Connecticut is open for viewing, please visit www.wisdomhouse.org, or call 860-567-3163.

For information on current and upcoming workshops, retreats, and conferences open to the general public to attend, please email Wisdom House Program Manager Bonnie Mis at programs@wisdomhouse.org, call 860-567-3163, or visit www.wisdomhouse.org.