A museum director’s life might not at first be seen as a natural for stage dramatization. But the charismatic A. Everett “Chick” Austin’s life is a dynamic work of art unto itself, filled with incident, color and characters, and embracing a time between the wars that represented a period of unequaled cultural excitement in America.

Unfortunately, only so much of this is suggested in David Grimm’s awkwardly named bioplay, premiering on Austin’s home turf in a production helmed by Hartford Stage a.d. Michael Wilson. At this point, there’s likely to be limited interest beyond Connecticut stages. But a wider berth could be had if the work is further developed to better convey its irresistible subject, art and times. In its present structure, the play fails to connect.

By making the drama a two-hander, Grimm gives significant but disproportionate attention to Austin’s wife Helen (Enid Graham), a devoted woman nobly pained by her husband’s homosexual affairs.

The domestic melodrama takes away from the grand and exciting world Austin (Robert Sella) created for himself and for Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum, the staid Yankee museum which became a cultural beacon in America in the 1930s — most significantly in its new acquisitions, modern art exhibits and its daring embrace of music, dance and theater. Stylistically, Grimm presents his play as three separate artworks, an interesting and apropos conceit but one that doesn’t deliver on stage.