The Newport Piccolo Simposio: Italian Influence in Newport

Keynote Speaker: Nathaniel Silver, Associate Director and Chief Curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Italy and the American Collector: Isabella Stewart Gardner and her Gilded Age Peers

Of the more than 37 countries visited by Isabella Stewart Gardner during her lifetime, she returned to Italy more frequently than anywhere else. Silver will explore Gardner's pioneering taste for Italian art, architecture and culture, how it shaped her collection and the museum she built to house it, and some of the friends and colleagues who helped her bring the Renaissance to life in Boston. This talk will further address Gardner's contemporaries, showing the breadth of their intersecting interests in Italy.

Bio: Nathaniel Silver is the Associate Director and Chief Curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. He has 15 years of experience in fine art museums and cultural institutions including The Frick Collection, J. Paul Getty Museum, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and as executive director and CEO at Hancock Shaker Village. In his previous role at the Gardner as the William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection and Division Head, Silver oversaw Collections, Conservation and Archives and curated or co-curated more than a dozen exhibitions. These include the acclaimed Titian: Women, Myth, and Power and Boston’s Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent. He holds a Ph.D. in art history from University College London.

Catherine Hess, Former Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Getty Museum and former Chief Curator of European Art at The Huntington Museum

The Lure of Italy: The Case of Gilded Age Newport and Chateau-sur-Mer

Just before and after the turn of the 20th century, American men and women of great means developed a taste for Italian art and furnishings of the past. Their motives can be explained by a complex mixture of yearning, discernment and insecurity. The material and ideas they brought back to the U.S. impacted the art market, collecting and, indeed, the definition of sophistication for many decades. In Newport, George and Edith Wetmore engaged Luigi Frullini, a brilliant wood carver from Florence, to create a masterpiece of furniture and interior elements for Chateau-sur-Mer's library and dining room. Hess will examine the Wetmores’ selection of Frullini as a vivid, lasting example of Gilded Age Italophilia.

Bio: Catherine Hess was a curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the Getty Museum, LA, from 1984 to 2008 and then served as chief curator of European art at The Huntington Museum from 2008 to 2020. She also was director of a small art school for underserved young adults until 2023. In her curatorial work, she published, lectured about and produced exhibitions on European glass, ceramics, furniture and sculpture. She attended the Museum Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University and served on the National Endowment for the Art Indemnity Panel in Washington, D.C. She believes that the craft of art can be a source of profound inspiration, delight and knowledge.

Sarah Cartwright, Chief Curator and Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections at The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art

Fundament and Fantasy: Italian Renaissance Inspiration at The Breakers

By examining specific examples, both small and large, Cartwright will consider some of the ways that elements of Italian Renaissance architecture, design and decoration were reinterpreted at The Breakers, the massive Newport summer residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and family, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and completed in 1895. Of particular interest will be the contrast in the home’s design between architectural clarity and elaborate ornamentation, as well as the variety of all’antica (classicizing) visions the home conveys.

Bio: Sarah Cartwright is Chief Curator and Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections at The Ringling. She has a PhD in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Prior to her arrival at The Ringling in 2013, Cartwright was a research associate at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University and a curator at Villa La Pietra in Florence, Italy. At The Ringling, Cartwright is responsible for the museum’s collection of European and American paintings, sculpture and works on paper from antiquity to 1900 CE. She has published and presented on a wide array of subjects, ranging from Italian manuscript illumination to ancient carved gemstones to the 19th-century French painter Rosa Bonheur. Recent projects at The Ringling have included curating the exhibition Shinique Smith: PARADE and co-curating the international loan exhibition Guercino’s Friar with a Gold Earring: Fra Bonaventura Bisi, Painter and Art Dealer and co-authoring its catalogue.

Charles Birnbaum, President + CEO, The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The Influence of the Italian Villa Landscape on Garden Design and Landscape Preservation in America

The Italian Villa landscape has been celebrated in America since the turn of the last century. Since the publication of Charles Platt’s Italian Gardens (1894), there has been a succession of popular books aimed at America’s quest for beauty and antiquity. Birnbaum’s presentation will explore the period from 1890 through the 1930s when Americans had a thirst for Italian Villa landscapes.

Although much has been written about these built works, little attention has been paid on the early American Academy in Rome (AAR) fellows and the Italian influences they imported to the U.S. This presentation will explore the palimpsest of historic preservation and design decisions made at iconic Italian Villas and Gardens, as recorded by early AAR Fellows in Landscape Architecture as part of their documentation plans, planting plans, regional surveys, illustrative landscape “restoration” and “reconstruction” plans.

Bio: Prior to serving as The Cultural Landscape Foundation President + CEO, Birnbaum spent 15 years with the National Park Service and a decade in private practice in New York City. Birnbaum was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and a Rome Prize recipient. He was awarded American Society of Landscape Architects’ LaGasse Medal (2008), President’s Medal (2009), the ASLA Medal (2018) and the Olmsted Medal (2023). He served as a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (2020-); Visiting Professor, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture (2011-16); and Glimcher Distinguished Professor, Ohio State (2007). In 2021, The Cultural Landscape Foundation unveiled The Oberlander International Prize in Landscape Architecture, a permanently endowed prize with a $100,000 purse.

Kerry Shrives, Senior Vice President and Senior Appraiser at Bonhams Skinner

Kerry Shrives and Leslie Jones, Director of Museum Affairs and Chief Curator at the Preservation Society, will join in conversation to discuss The Elms. While the 1901 mansion is styled after a French chateau, Italian influence permeates its interior, with the Dining Room in particular paying spectacular homage to Venice. In 1962, before the Preservation Society purchased the property, many of the items in the collection were sold at auction, and it is an ongoing process to track down and reacquire many of these pieces. Kerry and Leslie’s discussion will touch on some of the works of art that have been restored to The Elms over the years, their significance to the art historical canon, and the reason they would have been coveted by collectors in the Gilded Age and the mid-20th century. They will also discuss the impact of having them restored to The Elms.

Bio: Kerry Shrives is a Senior Vice President and Senior Appraiser at Bonhams Skinner. She has over 30 years of experience appraising, cataloging, and selling furniture, decorative art, and fine art from the 17th to the 21st centuries. Kerry has been a frequent contributor to Antiques Roadshow and has provided commentary on the antiques and art market for print and digital news channels, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, Bloomberg, and The Guardian. She is a Certified Member of the Appraisers Association of America and maintains current requirements for the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP). Kerry has handled such significant property as the rediscovery and sale of Fitz Hugh Lane's Sunset at Gloucester Harbor for $3.3 million – a world record for the artist and a record for a painting sold at an American auction outside of New York. She also has broad experience with single-owner sales, including the Solomon Collection of Judaica, which brought $1.5 million. Her focus on the intersection of antiques and technology drove the successful transformation of Skinner into a digital business. As a generalist appraiser, she assists clients by providing appraisal reports for estate tax, financial planning and equitable distribution, and insurance purposes.