WELCOME
THE CLARA HATTON CENTER EXISTS TO FOSTER AN AWARENESS AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF CLARA ANNA HATTON (1901-91) AND HER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE VISUAL ARTS CULTURE OF KANSAS AND THE MOUNTAIN-PLAINS REGION
Who was Clara Hatton?
Clara Hatton’s story begins and ends in Kansas. She was born in 1901 and raised on a farmstead in Russell County near Bunker Hill. She died in Salina, where she lived and worked from 1970 until her death in 1991. A practicing artist for nearly seventy years, Hatton had an impressive command of a wide variety of media, including: bookbinding, calligraphy and lettering, ceramics, metalwork, oil painting, printmaking, watercolor, and weaving. The artistic ideals to which she aspired have their source in the British Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A gifted educator and administrator, Hatton began her teaching career in a one-room Kansas schoolhouse before embarking on a career in higher education at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where she built what is now CSU’s Department of Art and Art History.
What is the Clara Hatton Center?
Founded in 2020, the Clara Hatton Center is a 501(c)(3) Kansas organization that exists to foster an awareness and understanding of the life and work of Clara Anna Hatton (1901-91) and her contributions to the visual arts culture of Kansas and the Mountain-Plains region. The Center advances this mission by maintaining an annual schedule of exhibitions, regularly presenting educational programs (presentations, demonstrations, and workshops) for all ages and audiences, and providing the general public and the scholarly community with access to Hatton’s work and papers.
Where is the Clara Hatton Center?
Located in the heart of downtown Lindsborg, Kansas, the Clara Hatton Center is within easy walking distance of the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery on the campus of Bethany College, the Smoky Valley Arts and Folk Life Center, and the Red Barn Studio Museum, as well as plenty of opportunities for shopping, dining, and lodging.