Sarah G. Austin
1935 - 1994
Birth-PlaceHartford, CT
Death-PlaceNew York, NY
BiographySarah Goodwin Austin (1835-1994)“A Hartford Biography”
© Gary W. Knoble, 2015
Sarah Goodwin Austin, known as Sally, was born in Hartford, Connecticut on April 22, 1935. She was the daughter of A. Everett (Chick) Austin and Helen Goodwin Austin. She had one brother, David E. Austin. Her Goodwin ancestors were early settlers of Hartford. Goodwins were President of the Wadsworth Atheneum for 60 years. Her aunt was President of the Hartford Art School and her uncle was a founder of the Hartford Symphony. Her father “Chick” was Director of the Wadsworth Atheneum from 1927-1944. He is widely credited for being instrumental in introducing “modernism” to the United States.
She attended the Oxford School in West Hartford, the Hartford Art School, and graduated from the Concord Academy, in Massachusetts in 1954.
Sally grew up in the extraordinary “stage set” house her father and mother built at 139 Scarborough Street in Hartford. As a child, she was surrounded by such artistic talents as Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Salvador Dali, Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, Le Courbusier, Lincoln Kirsten, Alfred Barr, and George Balanchine. Mary Ann Caws, one of her biographers, says, “Everything was theater at home”.
In 1944 she survived the great “circus tent fire” in Hartford, still one of the most remembered tragedies in Hartford’s history. Her family moved to Hollywood for a while since Chick wanted to be near the Hollywood scene, but they eventually moved back to Scarborough Street.
Sally moved to New York City in 1960.
In 1985, she and her mother and brother donated the Scarborough Street house to the Wadsworth Atheneum. It has been restored by the museum and is now a national historic monument.
During her life she produced over 350 “Boxes”, as she called them, which she never showed publically until around 1990. According to Caws, Sally’s “boxes” were her private life. Many of them are theatrical portraits of her family and the artists she encountered in her magical home.
She loved museums and classical music and was a member of the Colonial Dames and the Cosmopolitan Club of New York.
She died of cancer in New York City on April 16, 1994 and is buried with her mother and father at the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford.
Caws, Mary Ann, “the Modernist Art of Sarah Austin: Growing up in Drama”, venardos.com, 2000
Gaddis, “Sarah Goodwin Austin: A Life in the Arts”
Both essays are published in the catalogue for the 2000 show entitled “Meditation on Modernism”,
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