America’s Newest Commemorative Quarter Honors Connecticut’s Weir Farm

The celebration was cancelled but the coins are working their way into circulation nonetheless.

Connecticut’s historic Weir Farm is the latest issue in the America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Series, issued by the U.S. Mint.  In 2010, the Mint began issuing 56 quarter-dollar coins featuring designs depicting national parks and other national sites as part of the new program, authorized by Congress in 2008.

The national site quarter-dollars are being issued at a rate of five new designs each year in the order in which the selected sites were first established as a national site. Connecticut’s place in the order came earlier this month, in the 11th year of the program, which releases five new quarter designs each year.

Weir Farm in Wilton was officially designated Connecticut’s first national park in 1990, after legislation for the establishing the 68-acre property as a national park was introduced by newly elected U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman.  Nearly two decades later, after passage of the America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarters Act, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Weir Farm had been selected for the series. Weir Farm was among several locations in the state nominated by Governor Rell for the honor.

“Weir Farm is an outstanding example of Connecticut’s natural beauty and historic past and it is an ideal spot to be honored in the Mint’s new series of quarters,” Governor Rell said in 2009.  “The farm has been home to decades of great art and artists.”

Also slated for release this year are commemorative Quarters for American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont and Kansas.  Massachusetts was honored last year with a coin depicting Lowell National Historical Park; Rhode Island’s Block Island National Wildlife Refuge was featured in 2018. 

Plans for an on-site celebration marking the coin’s issuance were slated for April 6 and 7 at Weir Farm, but were cancelled due to the prohibition on large gatherings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Mint explains that Weir Farm National Historic Site includes a 68-acre cultural landscape consisting of 15 historic structures, including houses, barns, studios, and outbuildings. The landscape features bedrock outcrops, historic gardens, stone terraces, specimen trees, orchards, fields, miles of stone laid walls, a pond, and hundreds of historic painting sites–all expertly preserved.

Weir Farm, the only national park dedicated to American painting, was home Julian (J.) Alden Weir, often referred to as the “father of American Impressionism,” who settled there in the late 1800’s Weir painted extensively in the gardens, at the pond, and throughout the rest of the grounds.

This reverse side design of the new coin portrays an artist, wearing a painter’s smock, painting outside Julian Alden Weir’s studio at Weir Farm.  It is inspired by various images of the studio and Weir’s paintings created on the property, as well as descriptions of Weir and his fellow artist’s creative inspiration from the rural environment.

The inscriptions on the “tails” side of the coin, in addition to the depiction of the artist and studio, include WEIR FARM, A NATIONAL PARK FOR ART, and CONNECTICUT, along with E PLURIBUS UNUM and 2020. 

The Weir Farm coin was designed by Artistic Infusion Program artist Justin Kunz and sculpted by Medallic artist Phebe Hemphill. Both have worked on several coins issued by the Mint. Production is occurring at the Denver, Philadelphia and San Francisco Mints.

The United States Mint also offers free lesson plans (for grades K through 12) based on the new quarter designs.  The lesson plan for Weir Farm has not yet been added to the Mint’s website. 

“We remain hopeful that once the public health crisis has passed and restrictions on large gatherings have been lifted, the Mint and National Park Service will be able to coordinate with stakeholders in Connecticut in identifying a suitable date later this year to hold a coin forum and launch event,” the U.S. Mint said in a statement last month cancelling the planned ceremonies.  Weir Farm closed to the public on April 10 due to the state’s limitations on gatherings.