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Inventing Abstraction: 1910–1925 explores the advent of abstraction as both a historical idea and an emergent artistic practice.

František Kupka. Localization of Graphic Motifs II. 1912–13. Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 76 3/8″ (200 x 194 cm), frame: 78 3/4 x 76 3/8″ (200 x 194 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund and Gift of Jan and Meda Mladek. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

In 1912, in several European cities, a handful of artists—Vasily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Francis Picabia, and Robert Delaunay—presented the first abstract pictures to the public. Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925 celebrates the centennial of this bold new type of artwork, tracing the development of abstraction as it moved through a network of modern artists, from Marsden Hartley and Marcel Duchamp to Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, sweeping across nations and across media. The exhibition brings together many of the most influential works in abstraction’s early history and covers a wide range of artistic production, including paintings, drawings, books, sculptures, films, photographs, sound poems, atonal music, and non-narrative dance, to draw a cross-media portrait of these watershed years.

Commemorating the centennial of the moment at which a series of artists invented abstraction, the exhibition brings together over 350 works in a broad range of mediums—including paintings, drawings, prints, books, sculptures, films, photographs, recordings, and dance pieces—to offer a sweeping survey of a radical moment when the rules of art making were fundamentally transformed. Half of the works in the exhibition, many of which have rarely been seen in the United States, come from major international public and private collectors. The exhibition is organized by Leah Dickerman, Curator, with Masha Chlenova, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.

A key premise of the exhibition is abstraction’s role as a cross-media practice from the start. This notion is illustrated through an exploration of the productive relationships between artists, composers, dancers, and poets in establishing a new modern language for the arts. Inventing Abstraction: 1910–1925 brings together works from a wide range of artistic mediums to draw a rich portrait of the watershed moment in which traditional art was wholly reinvented.

Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925

Available exclusively at MoMA, this publication accompanies the exhibition Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925 (December 23, 2012–April 15, 2013).

To download a sample PDF of Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925 click here.

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See lots of great art with each of these posts on my blog:

Art History News

Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in 19th-Century Paris

The Cleveland Museum of Art presents *Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in 19th-Century Paris*, an exhibition that explores Cassatt’s images of women with those of her contemporaries such as Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Organized thematically and primarily drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition contains over 50 works on paper, depicting visions of femininity ranging from the bourgeois wife and mother to peasant women of the countryside to urban women at work in the ballet and the brothel. *Mary … more »

Encounters with the 1930s

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain presents Encounters with the 1930s, on view 2 October 2012–7 January 2013. Encounters with the 1930s is the Museum’s contribution to the commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the creation of Guernica (1937), Pablo Picasso’s emblematic art work. Max Beckmann, *Paris Society*, 1931. Oil on canvas, 109,2 x 175,6 cm., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The show, jointly organized by the Museum’s Departments of Collections and Exhibitions, will occupy a surface of more than 2,000 square meters divided into two … more »

The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from The Art Institute of Chicago

Some of the most celebrated works of modern art are coming to the Kimbell Art Museum in the fall of 2013. The Art Institute of Chicago holds one of the greatest collections of modern European art in the world. In the largest loan of its kind from the Art Institute, nearly 100 works from this collection will be traveling to the Kimbell Art Museum. The only venue for the exhibition, the Kimbell will present *The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago* from October 6, 2013, through February 16, 2014. “The Kimbell is proud to showcase Chicago’s tr… more »

El Greco THE ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST

DOMENIKOS THEOTOKOPOULOS, CALLED EL GRECO CANDIA (HERAKLEION), CRETE CIRCA 1541 – 1614 TOLEDO THE ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST Estimate: 1,000,000 – 1,500,000 USD Sotheby’s Auction Property from the Estate of Giancarlo Baroni New York | 29 – 30 January 2013 | N08857 This touching early panel by El Greco has until now remained largely unknown by the general public and unseen by art historians. It was in private hands until 1974, when it was sold as part of the Estate of Mme. Gegette Broglio and appeared in only a single public exhibition, in Venice, in 1981. Alvarez Lopez included it as an… more »

Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Art History News – 2 days ago

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has announced that more than 100 masterworks from one of the world’s most renowned collections of European painting will be presented at the MFAH beginning December 16, 2012, in *Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado*. The exhibition—on exclusive U.S. loan in Houston as part of a new initiative by the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid to broaden access to its holdings—tells the story of the evolution of painting in Spain from the 16th through 19th centuries and explores how artists reflected the sweeping changes in society, culture, polit… more »

Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris

One of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) was at his most inventive between 1905 and 1945. The Philadelphia Museum of Art presented *Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris *(February 24 – April 25, 2010) surveying Picasso’s remarkable output during these years, from the pioneering role he played in the development of Cubism to his dialogue with Surrealism and other important art movements in the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition also explored the pivotal role that the city of Paris played in the history of modern art, wh… more »

Brueghel: The fascinating world of Flemish art

From 18 December 2012 to 2 June 2013 the Chiostro del Bramante is hosting Brueghel. The Fascinating World of Flemish Art, the largest exhibition devoted to the famous artistic dynasty ever to be held in Rome. The exhibition represents a unique opportunity to admire the masterpieces produced by an entire dynasty of exceptional talent active between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and trace the 150-year timeline of this family and artistic history. Featuring more than 100 pieces, the exhibition offers an extraordinary opportunity to see these marvellous works of art from m… more »

Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901

The Courtauld Gallery’s exhibition *Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901*, on view February 14 to May 26, 2013, tells the remarkable story of Pablo Picasso’s breakthrough year as an artist – 1901. It was the year that the highly ambitious nineteen-year-old first launched his career in Paris at a debut summer exhibition with the influential dealer Ambroise Vollard. Refusing to rest on the success of this show, Picasso (1881-1973) charted new artistic directions in the second half of the year, heralding the beginning of his now famous Blue period. Becoming Picasso focuses on the figure paint… more »

Gerard ter Borch

Gerard ter Borch, one of the finest of all Dutch 17th-century painters, was shown in his full splendor in this magnificent exhibition, the first ever devoted to his work in the United States. *Gerard ter Borch* presented over 50 of the artist’s exquisite portraits and genre scenes from public and private collections in the United States and Europe. On view at the Nation… more »

“Modern Art in America” Forever® stamp collection

Modern art will become the latest Forever® stamp collection offered by the United States Postal Services. “Modern Art in America” is the 2013 collection picked to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the groundbreaking 1913 Armory Show in New York, the first exhibition to introduce modern art to American audiences on a large scale. Twelve works, dating from 1913 to 1931, will be reproduced on a sheet of adhesive Forever stamps which are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate. The collection will be available in early 2013. The dozen masterpieces rep… more »

Masters of American Photography

Dramatic black and white photographs taken by 20 of the nation’s most important and influential photographers were featured on new commemorative postage stamps issued June 13, 2002 by the United States Postal Service. The Masters of American Photography stamps were available in a pane of 20 stamps that includes examples of portrait, documentary, landscape and fine art photography. Many of the major themes and events in U.S. history, including immigration, the Great Depression and World War II, are captured in these compelling images. Arranged in chronological order, the stamps also offe… more »

Modernizing America: Artists of the Armory Show

The Heckscher Museum of Art presents *Modernizing America: Artists of the Armory Show*. On view from December 8 through April 14, 2013 this Museum Permanent Collection exhibition celebrates the centennial of the Armory Show featuring works by American artists who participated in the legendary exhibition that introduced modernist art to America. In 1913, the American public was introduced to avant-garde European art styles at the International Exhibition of Modern Art, held at the Lexington Avenue Armory and known as the Armory Show. Organized by the Association of American Painters… more »

George Catlin: American Indian Portraits

The National Portrait Gallery in London announces its spring 2013 exhibition of iconic American Indian portraits by the American artist George Catlin (1796-1872). George Catlin: American Indian Portraits will open on 7 March 2013 and will include major loans from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington. *Stu-Mick-o-Sucks, Buffalo Bill’s Back Fat, Head Chief, Blood Tribe, Blackfoot/Kainai by George Catlin, 1832 © Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr* Catlin was an artist, writer and showman who documented Native American peoples and their cultu… more »

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The Recalcitrant Cancer Research Act, formerly known as the Pancreatic Cancer Research & Education Act, has passed Congress today as part of the National Defense Authorization Act and will now be sent to President Obama to sign into law. The legislation requires the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to evaluate its current efforts in studying pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, and other recalcitrant cancers, and focus on ways to improve outcomes.

“The passage of this bill is a milestone in the history of pancreatic cancer. This is the first substantive legislation for this disease. On behalf of the entire pancreatic cancer community, we commend Congress for passing the Recalcitrant Cancer Research Act and are deeply grateful for the leadership and continued support of all of the bill sponsors including Representatives Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI),” said Julie Fleshman , president and CEO of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. “This moment would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the incredible commitment and hard work of our volunteer network. Our tireless advocates wrote letters, made phone calls and even traveled to Capitol Hill to advocate for this landmark legislation. Though we still have a lot of work to do before reaching our goal to double the pancreatic cancer survival rate by 2020, the bill’s passage is an important step.”

“We are hopeful that President Obama will quickly sign this legislation into law so the NCI can get to work right away on a plan to fight pancreatic cancer and other deadly diseases.”

The Recalcitrant Cancer Research Act will require the NCI to convene working groups to develop scientific frameworks for pancreatic cancer and lung cancer that could then be expanded to other recalcitrant cancers. The frameworks will identify promising scientific advances, assess the sufficiency of qualified researchers working in relevant specialties, outline a plan to coordinate research, and include recommendations to advance research, including appropriate benchmarks for measuring progress. The legislation is a measured and balanced approach that complements ongoing research efforts at the NCI. The bill gives the NCI significant discretion to follow the best science, while encouraging the Institute to rigorously evaluate how existing efforts are, and are not, supporting progress in the prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of recalcitrant cancers.

The legislation provides an opportunity to change the future for pancreatic cancer by implementing a plan that will lay the groundwork for the development of early detection methods and effective treatment options, which are currently lacking.

The five year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is just 6 percent, the lowest among all major cancer killers. This year, nearly 44,000 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and more than 37,000 will die from the disease. And according to a recently released report, the incidence and death rates for pancreatic cancer are increasing, and pancreatic cancer is anticipated to move from the fourth to second leading cancer killer in the U.S. by 2020, and possibly as early as 2015.

“The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network applauds the Lung Cancer Alliance for their efforts in advocating for the passage of the Recalcitrant Cancer Research Act. We look forward to partnering with the organization as we work to defeat our nation’s deadliest cancers,” added Fleshman.

To learn more about the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s advocacy efforts, visit www.knowitfightitendit.org.

About the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network_The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is the national organization creating hope in a comprehensive way through research, patient support, community outreach and advocacy for a cure. The organization is leading the way to increase the survival rate for people diagnosed with this devastating disease through a bold initiative — The Vision of Progress: Double the Pancreatic Cancer Survival Rate by 2020. Together, we can know, fight and end pancreatic cancer by intensifying our efforts to heighten awareness, raise funds for comprehensive private research, and advocate for dedicated federal research to advance early diagnostics, better treatments and increase chances of survival. The organization also leads the Deadly Cancer Coalition, organizations representing the nation’s deadliest cancers defined as those cancers with a five-year survival rate of less than fifty percent. Pancreatic cancer is the deadliest with a five-year survival rate of just six percent.

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by Jon Pelto from Wait, What

It was created in 2007 as a way to fund education technology programs in Connecticut public schools and help develop public oriented local and state cable programming.

Its short-form name was the State Account for Community Access and Educational Technology. In fact, its official title was the “public, educational and governmental programming and education technology investment account.”

The account and its programs are funded by one of the taxes on your cable bill, and each year, the funds are legally deposited into a separate, non-lapsing account.

In fact, there is an extra 0. 25 percent gross earnings tax on your cable or satellite service bill.

Connecticut’s public utility regulators are required to put the funds into the separate account. Then they must distribute half of the funds to local boards of education or other public education entities to fund educational technology programs, while giving the other half to “local cable TV and video advisory councils; state-wide cable TV and video advisory councils; public, educational and governmental programmers and public, educational and governmental studio operators.”

Then came Section 29 of this week’s Deficit Mitigation legislation and the $3,600,000 that was in the “public, educational and government programming and education technology investment account” was slid over the Connecticut General Fund.

The problem with these types of provisions is that you have to actually look up what program is being hit. For example, Section 29 of this week’s bill actually read, “(Effective from passage) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 16-331cc of the general statutes, the sum of $3,600,000 shall be transferred from the public, educational and governmental programming and education technology investment account and credited to the resources of the General Fund for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013.”

In English, this means that $3.6 million is moved from its home in the separate, targeted fund and put into the General Fund for this fiscal year.

If you didn’t know what the account was actually used for, you might not fully appreciate what you were voting to cut.

Perhaps even more importantly, since the bill doesn’t identify how much money is actually available in the account, you wouldn’t know that, in this case, as in the case of the seat belt fund discussed yesterday, the Governor and Legislature took ALL THE FUNDS available in the account.

One wonders whether schools even know that an important source of education technology programming just disappeared.

The same could be said about the people in charge of local cable TV programming. Do they realize their share of the $3.6 million is gone?

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Eighteen early to mid-century American artists who forged distinctly modern styles are the subjects of American Legends: From Calder to O’Keeffe, opening December 22 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Drawing from the Whitney’s permanent collection, the year-long show features iconic as well as lesser known works by

Oscar Bluemner,

Charles Burchfield, Paul Cadmus,

Alexander Calder,

Joseph Cornell,

Ralston Crawford,

Stuart Davis,

Charles Demuth, My Egypt, 1927. Oil on fiberboard, 35 3/4 °— 30 in. (90.8 °— 76.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;

Charles Demuth,

Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Gaston Lachaise, Jacob Lawrence, John Marin,

Reginald Marsh,

Elie Nadelman, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Joseph Stella.

Joseph Stella (1877–1946), The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme, 1939. Oil on canvas, 70 × 42 in. (177.8 × 106.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 42.15

Curator Barbara Haskell has organized the museum’s holdings of each of these artists’ work into small-scale retrospectives. Many of the works included will be on view for the first time in years; others, such as

Hopper’s A Woman in the Sun,

Calder’s Circus,

Jacob Lawrence’s War Series,

and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Summer Days,

are cornerstones of the Whitney’s collection.

The show will run for a year in the museum’s fifth-floor Leonard & Evelyn Lauder Galleries and both the Sondra Gilman Gallery and Howard & Jean Lipman Gallery on the fifth-floor mezzanine.

To showcase the breadth and depth of the Museum’s impressive modern art collection, a rotation will occur in May 2013 in order that other artists and works can be installed.

In the late nineteenth century artistic innovation was largely driven by European art. For aspiring young painters and sculptors in America, traveling to Europe and assimilating European styles was considered integral to becoming a modern artist. By the turn of the twentieth century, with America’s emergence as an international power, the nation’s artists began to reassess their earlier dependence on Europe in favor of creating independent styles, inspired by American subjects and forms of expression.

Two clear movements dominated art in the first half of the twentieth century: realism and modernism. “Despite their seemingly antithetical styles and subject matter, the two groups shared a determination to portray their intense connection to American subjects,” Haskell explains. “Together, they charted a new direction in American art and, in the process, redefined the relationship between art and modern life.”

By featuring realists, such as Hopper

Charles Burchfield, Noontide in Late May, 1917. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper, 22 × 18 in. (55.9 × 45.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 31.408.

and Burchfield,

alongside modernists, such as Bluemner and Stella, American Legends: From Calder to O’Keeffe represents the vitality and diversity of early twentieth-century American art. The Whitney has a long and proud history of supporting this work, as evidenced by the depth of its holdings of the eighteen artists in this exhibition.

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by Jon Pelto from Wait, What

It’s morning in Connecticut: Do you know what the budget bill means?

With little debate, and even less awareness of the ramifications of passing the bill, the State House of Representatives voted 140 to 3 and the State Senate voted 31 to 3 to pass a deficit mitigation bill that included a record breaking set of cuts to social services and education programs.

Considering the bill wasn’t even available to review until just before the vote, legislators would be hard-pressed to claim that they knew the magnitude of the cuts or how those cuts would impact their constituents AND some of the most vulnerable people in our state.

Ending partisan gridlock is a grand thing, and creating bi-partisan cooperation has plenty of benefits, but one would hope that political expediency wouldn’t take the place of good public policy. Looking at the list of cuts, its pretty clear political expediency won out.

In this case, led by a Democratic Governor and a Democratic Legislature, along with the support of nearly every single Republican, Connecticut’s elected officials chose to spare millionaires from having to pay their fair share in income taxes and instead cut just over $250 million in funding for state services, on top of the $120 million Governor Malloy cut last month.

As reported in the CTMirror, “Connecticut’s hospitals took the single-largest hit in the package adopted Wednesday, losing nearly $90 million.” With Malloy’s rescissions last month, Connecticut’s hospitals have now lost a total of $103 million. These were funds that hospitals received to cover the costs of uninsured patients and help to make up for the below-cost reimbursement rates for Medicaid patients.

In the short-term, the funding cuts to hospitals will lead to additional layoffs at many Connecticut hospitals, and in the longer term, the cuts will produce higher health insurance premiums, as costs are shifted even more quickly to those who have health insurance.

The massive cut to the 29 acute-care hospitals did produce some of the no votes.

As CTNewsjunkie reported, “Johnson Memorial Hospital is just emerging from bankruptcy and can’t handle a $608,000 cut, Bacchiochi said. It’s also the largest employer in her mostly rural district and she’s concerned it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Guglielmo [the State Senator from Stafford] cited Johnson Memorial Hospital as one of the reasons he voted against the bill.”

In addition to hospitals, significant cuts were made to a wide variety of community-based health, mental health and social service programs including autism services, mental health housing programs, re-entry programs for ex-offenders, after school programs and many of the state’s arts and culture grants.

In addition to the actual cuts, by reducing state funding for Medicaid programs, Connecticut lose about $60 million in funding from the Federal government, since Washington reimburses Connecticut 50 cents for every dollar the state spends on those programs.

Beyond the cuts, the deficit mitigation bill also increased revenue by $30 million by limiting a couple of business tax credit programs, including a relatively minor change to the film tax credit and the expansion of an element of the tax on electricity generation.

The budget mitigation plan also swept up $11 million in one-time funds that had been reserved and devoted to specific targeted programs (such as energy conservation) and shifted the state’s $10 million stem cell research program to the state’s credit card.

Finally, the plan collects and extra $9.5 million, as CTMirror explains, “by intensifying efforts to identify and prevent state income tax fraud.”

There was a fair amount of discussion about eliminating longevity payments for non-union employees. Completely eliminating the longevity payments, those being the twice a year payments that employee with more than ten years of state service receive, would save $6 million a year.

Under the plan that passed last night, the 3,200 non-union state employees will get their longevity payments one last time in April AND those last payments will be added to each employee’s base pay. However, after that, longevity payments for the non-union employees will be eliminated.

A variety of education programs also got cut, “saving” the state budget about $11 million. The UConn Health Center was also cut an additional $4 million. The higher education cuts come on top Malloy’s recent $10 million cut to UConn and $14 million cut to the Connecticut State Universities and Community Colleges. Malloy also made a multi-million dollar cut to student financial aid for lower-income Connecticut students attending public colleges in the state, money students had been promised next month.

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Raising the minimum wage to a living wage begins the cycle of lifting single mothers out of poverty, according to a policy report released by the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis (IUPRA) at The University of Texas at Austin.

The U.S. census shows more Americans — 46.2 million people — are living in poverty than ever before. And for African American and Hispanic women, a full-time minimum wage job isn’t enough to break out of the poverty cycle. According to the report, working women of color make $0.64 and $0.56, respectively, for every dollar white men earn.

Shetal Vohra-Gupta, an IUPRA research fellow, said this disparity is concerning because female-led households with children have increased by approximately 10 percent during the past decade — and more families than ever before depend on women as primary breadwinners.

To illustrate the adverse effects of a stagnant minimum wage, the analysis points to Texas, which has the largest number of low-wage workers ($7.25/hour) in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite its national reputation for economic growth, Texas ranks sixth in the number of people living in poverty, and its poverty rate is growing faster than the national average, according to the 2010 U.S. census.

African American and Hispanic women are hit the hardest. Drawing from U.S. census and American Community Surveys data, the report shows the nation’s total of single-mother households increased 163 percent among Hispanics and 33 percent among African Americans during the past decade.

To rise above the poverty threshold, a single mother raising two children and working full time would need to earn $17.50 to
$31.60 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank for economic research. This amount, known as the living wage, is more than twice the average minimum wage in most communities.

The findings indicate that Congress should work to increase the federal minimum wage and then adjust it to inflation in order to increase purchasing power and ultimately boost the U.S. economy. King Davis, professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and IUPRA director, says the report reveals the dire implications of a stagnant minimum wage on the U.S. economy.

“Low wage earners cannot participate fully in the economy, thus lowering the overall economic health of their neighborhoods and communities,” Davis says. “Dr. Vohra-Gupta identifies that where race, low education and limited skills combine, the risks of long-term poverty for the women and their children requires policy action by a Congress that is intent on eliminating rather than increasing the worth of entitlements.”

In a separate policy report, Vohra-Gupta and a team of IUPRA researchers analyzed demographic trends in the African American population in Texas since 1950. The findings show that single mothers comprise the third largest group of householders. Of the 24 percent living below the poverty level, single mothers comprise 65 percent.

The researchers also found the share of African Americans in the category of “high school graduate, GED or alternative” is five percentage points higher than the general population. Yet that group is seven percentage points lower in the category of “bachelor’s degree or higher.”

The reports raise important questions about several important issues, such as racial disparities in higher education, the economic toll of a stagnant minimum wage and the cycle of poverty among African American single mothers.

“Wages that do not provide women with the ability to meet their needs is a major national problem that is often ignored,” Davis says. “This research shows just how concentrated low wages are in populations of women of color. The absence of a living wage greatly limits their ability to sustain themselves and their families or get out of poverty.”

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From the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut, Connecticut Economic Outlook – December 2012 report

The Connecticut economy is in trouble. Deep trouble. Federal statistics released in August revealed that
Connecticut went into recession much earlier than previously known and, critically, the contraction was
dramatically worse. And then recovery in both output and jobs has been weak, and now appears to be
weakening relative to the national pattern. Indeed, Connecticut is one of the very few states whose
recovery measured in output (or household income) is still below its peak in 2007.

Job recovery has been equally as anemic, barely recovering a quarter of the jobs lost while the quality of
jobs deteriorates. The unavoidable outcome has been tax revenues falling below projections, driving the
current state budget into a significant deficit and confronting the Governor and Legislature with billion
dollar deficits in each of the next two years’ biennial budgets, to be adopted next Spring. With the state’s
economy still struggling to recover, the cuts in public sector expenditure will weaken the economy further,
and may even put the state back into recession—measured in terms of contracting output for at least two
quarters. The November 2010 Outlook assessed the potential impact of addressing the massive deficit the
state then faced; without offsetting policies and initiatives, the analysis projected that meeting the deficit
only through budget cuts would impact as many as 35,000 additional job losses, making the contraction the
worst since World War II.

This Outlook again looks at the impact that significant cuts in the state budget may inflict on the state’s
economy by modeling $200 million cuts in each year of the biennium. Such cuts would cost more than
5,000 jobs each year; if cuts rose to a billion dollars, the result would be a loss of about 25,000 jobs each
year, eliminating essentially all jobs created since the recovery began. The current forecast anticipates little
capacity of the private sector to offset the impact of public sector contraction. Ironically, Super Storm
Sandy may help improve conditions as the region rebuilds; this Outlook devotes a section below to this
question.

Even as the state cuts its current services budget it still has the capacity to push forward with capital
projects, funded through bonding. This Outlook then evaluates the degree to which public sector
investments of the same scale as the cuts could offset the economic damage the impending reductions will
inflict. While the public sector will lose significant jobs, the private sector would gain significantly, partially
mitigating the overall impact on the state’s economy and potentially hastening its recovery as these
investments both reduce long‐term costs and strengthen Connecticut’s competitive position…