Contributed by Sharon Butler / I was born in New London, Connecticut, still known as “The Whaling City,” having trailed only New Bedford in vessels and voyages in the late nineteenth century and amassed much of its wealth from that maritime oil trade. Sea captains were the sturdiest pillars of the community and their grand homes punctuated the city’s streets. One was Captain Lyman Allyn (1797–1874), who commanded a whaling ship at age 21 and went on to serve as director of a bank, an insurance firm, and a railroad. Harriet Upson Allyn (1840–1926), the youngest of his six children, spent her entire life in New London. In her will, she dedicated funds to establish an art museum, prospectively naming it after her father. I’ve been enjoying the Lyman Allyn for years, and it’s a terrific regional museum – small and stately with a permanent collection of roughly 20,000 works, spanning paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, furniture, and decorative arts. While its strongest suit is American painting and decorative arts from the eighteenth through the twentieth century, it is now fielding several winningly divergent shows.