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Past Virtual Lectures
2021 Winter Lecture Series
The American Country Place Era
Leslie B. Jones, Director of Museum of Affairs and Chief Curator, The Preservation Society of Newport County
March 25, 2021
Following the end of the Gilded Age, circa 1900, the built environment of America’s wealthy took a turn into a new age of architecture. The American Country Place Era was a subtle yet definable shift as wealth expanded across the nation, cities grew, and industry boomed, resulting in major home building projects distinguished by a proclivity for historical revival styles in structural architecture and complementary landscape architecture designs. Leslie Jones will discuss various examples of this Gilded Age bookend, illustrating edifices from Massachusetts to Tennessee.
Leslie Jones has been the Director of Museum Affairs and Chief Curator for the Preservation Society since April 2019. Prior to this role, she has consulted with various historical sites across the country and served as the Director of Museum Affairs and Curator of Decorative Arts at Cheekwood (Nashville) and the Curator and Director of Historical Resources and Programming at the White House Historical Association (D.C.).
Virtual Tour of the Lobkowicz Palace Collections, Prague
William Rudolf Lobkowicz
March 25, 2021
IMPORTANT NOTE: This tour was only available to view live. It will not be saved on YouTube.
Once one of Bohemia’s most prominent noble families, the Lobkowiczes were forced to flee their homeland twice under both the Nazi and Communist regimes. Join William Rudolf Lobkowicz on a personal tour of Lobkowicz Palace to find out how the family returned to its native country to reclaim its confiscated possessions, with the mission to preserve, study, and share them with the world. Mr. Lobkowicz will lead you through the Lobkowicz Collections, which feature world-famous paintings by Canaletto, Bruegel, and Velázquez, as well as hand-annotated manuscripts by Mozart and Beethoven. The tour will conclude with a 15-minute Q&A, when attendees will have the opportunity to write in questions for Mr. Lobkowicz to answer.
William Rudolf Lobkowicz was raised in the Czech Republic and has been actively involved in his family’s cultural heritage efforts around the Lobkowicz Collections and historic properties since childhood. After graduating from the International School of Prague, he attended Harvard University, receiving his BA in Central European History in 2018. After graduating, Mr. Lobkowicz returned to the Czech Republic to continue working with his family’s enterprises. His work involves digitization efforts, marketing, media, online platforms and public programming. One of his main goals is to find new and innovative ways to share the family’s collections and nonprofit activities with the world.
Americans in Paris: Foundations of America’s Architectural Gilded Age
Margot Ellis, Architectural Historian
March 11, 2021
Americans in Paris tells the story of the influential group of American architecture students who attended the world-renowned École des Beaux-Arts and went on to design and build many of our nation’s most recognized and prestigious buildings and monuments. American alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts, famous for being the world’s greatest art and architecture school at the time, include Richard Morris Hunt, Guy Lowell, John Russell Pope, Julia Morgan, Julian Abele, and many others.
Margot M. Ellis was educated at Manhattanville College, where she received a bachelor’s degree in French Studies, and at Harvard University, where she received a master’s degree in Anthropology. Hired as a research assistant by Jean-Paul Carlhian, Miss Ellis spent 15 years completing the manuscript of Americans in Paris and brought it to publication after the death of Mr. Carlhian in 2012. Following its publication by Rizzoli International in September 2014, Miss Ellis spent four years lecturing courtesy of ICAA (Institute of Classical Architecture & Art), among others. ICAA is co-publisher through its Classical America series. She lectured for 13 of its 16 chapters nationwide as well as presenting in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Miss Ellis is an author and editor based in Tucson, Arizona.
Click here to access the lecture on our Newport Mansions youtube channel
Julian Abele: Architect and the Beaux Arts
Dreck Spurlock Wilson, ASLA, NOMA
February 25, 2021
Julian Abele: Architect and the Beaux Arts uncovers the life of one of the first African-American architects to be accredited. Despite racial segregation at the beginning of the 20th century, Abele received his architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Author Dreck Spurlock Wilson traces Abele’s progress as he went on to become the most formally educated architect in America at the time. Abele later contributed to the architectural history of the United States by designing over 200 buildings throughout his professional career, including the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University and the Philadelphia Free Library.
Dreck Spurlock Wilson, President of the Landscape Consortium Ltd. in D.C. and a Senior Construction Program Manager at Delon Hampton & Associates, Engineers, published his newest book in 2020, entitled, Julian Abele: Architect and the Beaux Arts. He has also contributed a number of publications to the field of architectural history around topics relating to African-American architects and landscape architects. Mr. Wilson holds a B.S. in Urban Planning from Iowa State University and an M.A. in Urban Studies from the University of Chicago.
Horace Trumbauer Remembered
Trudy Coxe, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director, The Preservation Society of Newport County
February 11, 2021
Trudy Coxe, Chief Executive Officer of The Preservation Society of Newport County, spoke about the complex life, work and legacy of one of America’s most prolific architects, Horace Trumbauer. During his illustrious career, Philadelphia-based Trumbauer designed some of America’s most iconic homes and public buildings, many of which remain prominent today. Ms. Coxe showed examples of his work, including buildings in Newport, and discussed the Preservation Society’s efforts to preserve and interpret The Elms, his Gilded Age mansion designed for coal magnate Edward Julius Berwind of Philadelphia and New York.
As CEO and Executive Director of The Preservation Society of Newport County, Trudy Coxe oversees a collection of 11 historic house museums, including seven National Historic Landmarks, spanning nearly 300 years of American architectural history. These include four Gilded Age icons: The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms and Rosecliff. Immediately prior to joining the Preservation Society in December 1998, Ms. Coxe served for six years as Massachusetts’ Secretary of Environmental Affairs, where she presided over completion of the Boston Harbor cleanup and creation of the next generation of clean drinking water technology; protected more than 100,000 acres of land; and led the national fight for alternative-fueled vehicles. Previously, she was Executive Director of Rhode Island’s Save The Bay for 11 years, turning it into the largest citizen-action organization in New England. She also served for two years as Director of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Click here to access the lecture on our Newport Mansions youtube channel
Memory & Imagination: Stanford White in Detail
Samuel G. White, FAIA, LEED AP, Consulting Partner of PBDW Architects
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Stanford White’s (1853-1906) portfolio includes houses ranging from marble palaces to shingled retreats, buildings and master plans for major institutional clients, and civic monuments, as well as jewelry, picture frames, furniture, and even covers for books and magazines. Sam White discusses his most recent book — Stanford White In Detail (Monacelli Press, 2020) — which keeps a tight focus on the signature ornamental details that animate Stanford White’s oeuvre. This lecture also considers the broader themes that unite the individual designs across the spectrum of his career.
Sam White is a founder and consulting partner at PBDW Architects, a New York firm focusing on designs that introduce new interventions to historic settings. The firm’s work ranges from the restoration of the Park Avenue Armory, the Palace Theatre, and Astor Courts to reconfiguration of the New-York Historical Society, and many other New York landmarks. Mr. White is the author of The Houses of McKim, Mead & White (Universe, 2004) and Nice House (Monacelli Press, 2010). He is co-author with Elizabeth White of McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks (Rizzoli, 2003) and Stanford White Architect (Rizzoli, 2008). Mr. White is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, an Academician of the National Academy of Design, a trustee of Green-Wood Cemetery and the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, a member of the Advisory Board of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, and a former adjunct associate professor of Fine Arts at New York University.
Click here to access the lecture on our Newport Mansions youtube channel
2020 Fall Lecture Series
The Social Network: How American Artists Used Popular Magazines to Rule the Gilded Age
Jayme Yahr, Ph. D, Associate Curator at the Crocker Art Museum
November 19, 2020
Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, was a pioneer in promoting and introducing artists into mass media print, a move that redefined American periodicals in the 1870s and 1880s. Gilder championed living American artists in the pages of the magazine while simultaneously presiding over one of the most influential, yet often forgotten, artistic salons of the time. Along with his wife, Helena de Kay Gilder, brother-in-law Charles de Kay (art critic for The New York Times) and such artists and authors as Joseph Pennell, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Cecilia Beaux, Thomas Moran, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain, Gilder formed a Friday night social network at his home, known as “The Studio.” As a group, the Gilder Circle founded the Society of American Artists, International Copyright League, and the Art Students League of New York, forever changing the role of artists in the mass media, as well as the artistic landscape of Gilded Age America.
Jayme Yahr, Associate Curator at the Crocker Art Museum, is a specialist in American art, with an emphasis on the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on New York’s Gilder Circle, which included such artists as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Albert Pinkham Ryder and Cecilia Beaux. Additional areas of expertise include American works on paper, photography and Native American art. Yahr holds a M.A. in Art History from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Washington. Prior to joining the Crocker Art Museum, Yahr designed and directed university-level Museum Studies programs in New Hampshire and Minnesota.
Click here to access the lecture on our Newport Mansions youtube channel
English Country Homes in Edith Wharton's Last Novel, The Buccaneers
Maureen Montgomery, Adjunct Associate Professor in History, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa
November 5, 2020
In Edith Wharton’s last, unfinished and posthumously published novel, The Buccaneers (1938), the aristocratic country home features prominently. From a Tudor mansion built on the site of an ancient abbey to a late 17th-century palace and a “honey-coloured” Cotswold manor house, Wharton takes us into the world of the English aristocracy. These aristocratic homes, all based on actual country houses, are filled with art treasures, tapestries, famous ceilings, additions by notable architects, and gardens landscaped by the likes of Capability Brown. These are homes that belonged to families who patronized the arts and hosted leading figures of the day. The houses have stories to tell about the pursuit of pleasure and prestige in an earlier age.
Wharton’s novel, however, is set at the beginning of a major decline in aristocratic fortunes. It was a time of crisis for many British landed families and the old expedient of marital alliances with heiresses, including those outside the traditional social circle, was practiced with increasing urgency as the 19th century drew to a close. American friends and acquaintances of Edith Wharton began marrying into the British aristocracy in the 1870s and 1880s, including Belle Wilson, a Newporter who married into the famous Herbert family. The Herberts’ country seat, Wilton House, which has hosted British monarchs from the time of Henry VIII, plays a special role in Wharton’s last novel. This presentation will show how Wharton deftly weaves together art, architecture, history and poetry in her homage to English culture, an homage that does not exclude criticism of the foibles of fashionable society and the tragedies of the marriage market.
Maureen Montgomery has taught History and American Studies at universities in England, New Zealand and the United States, and was the inaugural holder of the McGinty Distinguished Chair in History at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. She has published several essays on Edith Wharton and is the author of Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton’s New York (Routledge, 1998) and Gilded Prostitution: Status, Money, and Transatlantic Marriages, 1870-1914 (Routledge, 1989). She is currently editing a scholarly edition of Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers for Oxford University Press as part of its Complete Works of Edith Wharton.
Click here to access the lecture on our Newport Mansions youtube channel
Zorn Museum Tour
Dr. Johan Cederlund, International Council member and Executive Director of the Zorn Museum in Mora, Sweden
October 21, 2020
One hundred years ago, Anders Zorn (1860-1920) was among Europe’s most celebrated artists. Kings, presidents, financiers and cultural figures lined up to have their portrait painted by the Swede, and his etchings commanded prices higher than those of any other artist. Hence, Zorn acquired considerable wealth. In their joint will, he and his wife, Emma, bequeathed their fortune and collections to the Swedish State. Still today, the couple's home, the Zorn House, and the Zorn Museum, situated next to the house in the village of Mora, Sweden, attract visitors from all over the world.
Click here to access the lecture on our Newport Mansions youtube channel.
Dr. Johan Cederlund, who received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Lund, has been Director of the Zorn Museum since 2006. Five years later he was also appointed Adjunct Professor in Art History at Uppsala University. Dr. Cederlund has written about 18th-century architecture and other subjects, including Classical Swedish Architecture & Interiors 1650-1840, New York (W.W. Norton & Co., 2006), and Anders Zorn: Sweden's Master Painter (San Francisco, 2013).
Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America
Michael Hiltzik, journalist for The Los Angeles Times
October 15, 2020
When the final spike was driven into the ties of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, few were prepared for its aftershocks. The vicious competition between empire builders such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan and E. H. Harriman sparked stock market frenzies, panics and crashes; provoked strikes that upended the relationship between management and labor; transformed the nation’s geography; and culminated in a ferocious two-man battle that shook the nation’s financial markets to their foundations, producing dramatic, lasting changes in American business and government. Michael Hiltzik brings to life these outsized figures and the era, industry and nation that they defined. Spanning four decades and set against the gritty, glittering backdrop of the Gilded Age, his book Iron Empires reveals how the robber barons drove the country into the 20th century — and almost sent it off the rails.
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Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who has written for The Los Angeles Times for three decades, serving as a financial and political writer, investigative reporter, technology writer and editor, and foreign correspondent in Africa and Russia. His columns on economics, business, public policy and politics can be found at www.latimes.com/people/michael-hiltzik.
Hiltzik’s previous books are Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex (2015), The New Deal: A Modern History (2011), the New York Times bestseller Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century (2010), The Plot Against Social Security (2005), Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (1999), and A Death in Kenya: The Murder of Julie Ward (1991).
A graduate of Colgate University and Columbia University, Hiltzik received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for articles exposing corruption in the entertainment industry. His other awards for excellence in reporting include the 2004 Gerald Loeb Award for outstanding business commentary and the Silver Gavel from the American Bar Association for outstanding legal reporting.
Elegance and Aspiration: Money, Taste and Jewelry in America's Gilded Age
Ulysses Dietz, Chief Curator Emeritus, Newark Museum of Art
October 8, 2020
As America industrialized from the mid-19th century onward, all aspects of our country’s material culture industrialized as well. Jewelry, once the sole province of European aristocracy, became a commodity, produced and marketed to the rapidly expanding middle class. The very rich in America (most of them newly so) responded to this reality by embracing jewelry, both American-made and European, that evoked aristocratic traditions, and thus helped to distinguish the top of the socio-economic pyramid from everybody else. In the absence of inherited titles, jewelry became an identity badge of social standing and aspiration.
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Ulysses Grant Dietz is Chief Curator Emeritus at the Newark Museum. He previously served as the museum’s Curator of Decorative Arts since 1980 and the Chief Curator since 2012. He has been instrumental in expanding and showcasing the museum’s jewelry collection. He has been the curator of more than 100 exhibitions covering all aspects of the decorative arts from colonial to contemporary.
The Breakers Geothermal System: A 19th- and 21st-Century Solution
Patricia Miller, Preservation Society Chief Conservator
September 24, 2020
Beginning in 1892, Cornelius Vanderbilt II built The Breakers, a 125,000-square-foot Italian Renaissance-style summer "cottage" equipped with the most advanced domestic technology then available. Architect Richard Morris Hunt’s design for the house relied upon ocean breezes for natural cooling during the summer occupancy and a convection heat system to provide warmth during the winter. More than a century later, risks to the house and its collections, due to extreme fluctuations in relative humidity, prompted The Preservation Society to commission a climate modification study. The goal was to identify a system that would stabilize humidity levels, respect the existing infrastructure, integrate modern technology in a way that did not compromise historic integrity, and also meet sustainability goals.
Click here to access the lecture on our youtube channel.
Patricia Miller, Chief Conservator of The Preservation Society of Newport County, will explain how 21st-century geothermal technology was integrated with 19th-century heat supply infrastructure to provide climate control at The Breakers. This presentation is based on Ms. Miller’s recent paper published in the journal Studies in Conservation which will be delivered as part of the International Institute for Conservation 2020 Congress "Practices and Challenges in Built Heritage Conservation" aimed at bridging the divide between built heritage and in-situ collections.
Patricia Miller holds a B.F.A from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Columbia University. Adding to her education, she earned a Certificate in Arts & Business Management from the Sotheby’s Institute in London and a Project Management Certificate from ESI/George Washington University.
Women Pioneers of American Landscape Architecture
Jim Donahue, Preservation Society Curator of Historic Landscapes & Horticulture
September 10, 2020
Landscape architecture, as a discipline distinct from architecture and as a profession, was not fully realized until the latter part of the 19th century. And while many are familiar with the accomplishments of male practitioners of that era, there were several successful women landscape architects practicing at the turn of the twentieth century who remain relatively unrecognized. This presentation will introduce some of the early ‘Lady L.A.’s’ and their work, using images taken from vintage glass lantern slides from The Garden Club of America Collection at The Smithsonian Institution.
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Jim Donahue holds a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross in Liberal Arts/Economics and an M.A. in Sustainable Landscape Design & Planning from The Conway School. Jim is the Curator of Historic Landscapes & Horticulture for The Preservation Society of Newport County.
2020 Spring Lecture Series
The John G. Winslow Lecture
Power, Privilege & Preservation: The History of African American Civil Rights in Newport, R.I.
Theresa Guzman Stokes and Keith Stokes
August 27, 2020
In this multimedia presentation, Theresa Guzman Stokes and Keith Stokes will present images of rare documents and photographs depicting African American life in Newport dating back to the 18th century. The presentation will trace the struggle of African Americans to achieve civil rights in Newport, from 18th-century enslavement and emancipation through separate and unequal life during the 19th century, the drive to secure equal access to employment and fair housing in the 20th century up to the social justice movement in 2020. The lecture will also discuss how preservation activities today are changing the kinds of historic places that are recognized and what it means to preserve and interpret them.
View the lecture here
Theresa Guzman Stokes is Executive Director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. Ms. Stokes’ professional background includes magazine editor and published writer with a focus on ethnic American history. She has participated in and supervised dozens of historic preservation, genealogical and cultural resource investigations throughout New England and Virginia, with an expertise in African American, Latin American and Jewish history and genealogy. She also has years of experience in the design and creation of websites and social media promotions tailored around historic, genealogical and creative (arts, literature and music) presentations.
Ms. Stokes has received numerous awards for her web design and genealogical work, including the Women Webmasters Award for Excellence and the Ancestry Connections Genealogy Award. Theresa and her husband, Keith, are the 2006 recipients of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities Tom Roberts Prize for Creative Achievement in the Humanities. Her current professional memberships include the National Genealogical Society, the Association of Professional Genealogists, the Historical Writers of America, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.
Keith Stokes is Vice President with the 1696 Heritage Group, a historical consulting firm dedicated to helping persons and institutions of color increase their knowledge and access to the light of truth of their unique American heritage. The firm draws on extensive knowledge and experience in ethnic American historical research, interpretation, program and product development. See www.1696heritage.com.
Mr. Stokes has a long and distinguished career in business and community development, with degrees from Cornell University and the University of Chicago. He served as the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation and Executive Director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce. He has been an Advisor for Rhode Island with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and has served on regional and national historic preservation boards, including Chairman of the Touro Synagogue Foundation, Vice President and Trustee of The Preservation Society of Newport County, and the Newport Historical Society. He is a frequent national, state and local lecturer in community and regional planning, historic preservation and interpretation with an expertise in early African and Jewish American history, often appears on national historical programs, and recently travelled to Ghana to give a lecture as part of the 400th anniversary of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
He has received numerous local, state and national awards including the United States Small Business Administration - Rhode Island Small Business Advocate of the Year Award, American Sail Training Association Leadership Award, Rhode Island Black Heritage Society’s Fredrick Williamson Award, Historic Preservation Award, Rhode Island Martin Luther King Keeper of the Dream Award and, with his wife, received the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities Prize for Creative Achievement in the Humanities.
The Eaddo H. and Peter D. Kiernan Lecture
Let's Get Digital: Exploring and Sharing the Third Floor of The Breakers Through Technology
Sébastien Dutton, Preservation Society 2020 Research Fellow
July 28, 2020
With historic houses, accessibility is often an issue. Considerations regarding accessibility can sometimes present what feel like insurmountable challenges; in some houses, spatial and safety concerns limit the number of people permitted to occupy a space, while other sites restrict access to protect valuable historic material or fragile object collections. Through technology it is now possible to create interactive virtual tours of spaces that are scalable, easy to use and content-rich. Several of these can be found at NewportMansions.org/ /exhibitions/virtual-exhibition-tours. Dutton discusses the process he used to create these tours, and guided viewers through his latest creation: a virtual tour of the third floor of The Breakers. Completed in 1895, this space remains largely intact and has never been open to the public. Participants in this online lecture will be able to see these rooms and spaces for the first time.
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Sébastien Dutton earned his Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Oklahoma Baptist University. His studies focused on Business Administration and French language. In May 2019, he received his Master of Arts in Historic Preservation from Boston Architectural College, where he focused his studies on Gilded Age America. Dutton has received three consecutive scholarships to attend the Newport Symposium and once remarked that the inspiration for his pursuit of a Master’s degree was the Preservation Society properties. He is currently working on digitally mapping the interiors of these historic properties.
The People’s House: Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House Restoration Project
Katherine Gilliland, Docent Manager, John F. Kennedy Library
July 16, 2020
When Jacqueline Kennedy became first lady in 1961, she began a project to restore the state rooms of the White House to reflect the artistic and architectural history of the presidential mansion. "Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there...It must be restored -- and that has nothing to do with decoration. That is a question of scholarship," she told Life magazine. She went on to establish a White House Fine Arts Committee made up of experts in historic preservation and decorative arts, and lobbied Congress to pass a law which granted the White House museum status. Don’t miss this behind-the-scenes look at the first lady's project through archival documents and photographs from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library collections.
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Katherine Gilliland has been the docent manager at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for fourteen years. As an educator in the Education and Public Programs Department, she develops docent-led programs for the public and for school groups. She holds an M.A. in art history and museum studies from Tufts University and a B.A. in art history from Carleton College in Minnesota.
The Pamela and David B. Ford Lecture
The Women Who Saved Mount Vernon: The Early Years
Dr. Susan P. Schoelwer, Executive Director of Historic Preservation and Collections, Mount Vernon
July 9, 2020
By 1850, George Washington’s estate along the Potomac River, south of Washington, had slid into disrepair, like many once-stately Virginia plantations, victim to a failing regional economy. A decade later, its purchase by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association marked the beginning of the historic preservation movement in America. From then until now, the story of Mount Vernon’s survival is the story of remarkable women from across the nation, coming together to support a cause.
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Dr. Susan Schoelwer is the Executive Director of Historic Preservation and Collections and Robert H. Smith Senior Curator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, and directs the architectural preservation, furnishing, and interpretation of George and Martha Washington’s house and surrounding plantation buildings and landscape, as well as the creation of museum exhibitions, including the current, award-winning special exhibition, Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Prior to coming to Mount Vernon as Curator in 2010, Dr. Schoelwer served for more than a decade as head of museum collections at the Connecticut Historical Society, where she authored Connecticut Needlework: Women, Art, and Family, 1740-1840, winner of the 2011 Connecticut Book Award for Non-Fiction. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale, a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and a BA in history from the University of Notre Dame, where she participated in the historic transition to coeducation. In addition to Mount Vernon and the Washingtons, Dr. Schoelwer has written and lectured on a variety of topics, including American art and decorative arts, needlework, and women’s history. She is currently researching a book examining the creation and continuing re-creation of George Washington portraits.
The Jacalyn and William P. Egan II Lecture
Artistic Wrought Iron in the Gilded Age Mansions of Newport: Design, Technique, and Influences
Mathilde Tollet, Preservation Society Research Fellow
July 2, 2020
The study of artistic wrought iron is often regarded as a kind of “poor cousin” to the fine arts in art history studies, a regrettable state of affairs since such metalwork can be both an inseparable part of the beauty of the architecture, as well as integral to the overall design scheme. Sometimes it can even be a masterpiece in its own right. Examples abound here in Newport at historic properties such as The Breakers, Marble House, and The Elms, providing a springboard for further consideration and discussion of this highly skilled but oft-overlooked art process.
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Mathilde Tollet earned her bachelor's degree in Art History, with a concentration in Decorative Arts, in 2016 from l’Ecole du Louvre in Paris, and received a M.A. in Museology and Conservation in 2018 from l'Ecole du Louvre and the Complutense University in Madrid. She wrote her thesis on the collection of writer and art critic Octave Mirbeau. Tollet was the 2018 French Heritage Society Intern at the Preservation Society and is a current 2020 Preservation Society Research Fellow. She is working on French influences on artistic wrought iron found in the Newport Mansions.
Discriminate Doorknobs: An Inventory of Door Hardware at The Breakers and the Delineation of Spaces using Decorative Details
Sébastien Dutton, Preservation Society Research Fellow
June 25, 2020
The Breakers is a glittering showpiece of art and design, and no architectural detail, regardless how small, was too insignificant to merit serious thought. New original research undertaken by the Preservation Society's 2019-20 Research Fellow Sébastien Dutton provides an eye-opening look at the variety of door hardware used throughout the house, and demonstrates how a multitude of different designs and styles were used to create separation between public and private, family and service spaces. Comparisons with similarly sized homes of the period help to establish whether such lavish variety was commonplace, or whether in this, as in so much else, The Breakers broke the mold.
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Sébastien Dutton earned his bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Oklahoma Baptist University. His studies focused on Business Administration and French Language. He received his MA in Historic Preservation in May 2019 from Boston Architectural College, where he focused his studies on Gilded Age America. Dutton has received three consecutive scholarships to attend the Newport Symposium and once remarked that the inspiration for his pursuit of a master's degree was the Preservation Society properties. He is currently working on digitally mapping the interiors of these historic properties.
The News of Newport: Mrs Schuyler Van Rensselaer is Expected for the Season
Dr. Judith Major, Landscape Historian
June 18, 2020
Dr. Judith Major discusses the life of Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer (1851-1934), one of the premier art, architecture, and landscape critics of her day in a field dominated by men. Part of the new breed of American critics, she closely examined the nature of her profession and brought a disciplined scholarship to the craft. She considered herself a professional, leading the effort among women in the Gilded Age to claim the titles of artist, architect, critic, historian, and journalist. She first visited Newport at the age of 13 when her family stayed with her uncle J. N. A. Griswold at his new house at 76 Bellevue Avenue, now the home of the Newport Art Museum, and returned to the city many times during her life. Rarely idle in the summer, she produced numerous articles, books, and poetry while here in Newport, and Dr. Major focuses on that output.
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Judith Major is a landscape historian with a concentration on 19th-century American landscape architecture. Her books include: Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer: the Evolution of a Landscape Critic in the Gilded Age and To Live in the New World: A. J. Downing and American Landscape Gardening, and she lectures widely on Downing and Van Rensselaer. She also contributed a chapter entitled “Toward an American Gardening Theory” to the New York Botanical Garden’s Flora Illustrata, which won the 2015 American Horticultural Society Book Award. She is the recipient of numerous grants including the Mellon Resident Fellowship, a Graham Foundation Grant, and the Samuel H. Kress Publication Fellowship. In 2009 she traveled to China on a University of Kansas grant from its Center for East Asian Studies to lecture and to study Chinese traditional gardens. She is a charter member of the Landscape History Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and she chairs sessions and gives presentations at national and international conferences. She taught at the University of Kansas for 23 years in the Architecture Program and ended her academic career at Kansas State in the Department of Landscape Architecture, retiring as a Professor Emerita in 2014.
Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener
Kimberly A. Hamlin, Ph.D, Historian, Author, Writer
May 21, 2020
This online lecture is about Helen Hamilton Gardener, a free-thinking woman who was a force to be reckoned with in her male-dominated world. Kimberly Hamlin, Ph.D., discusses her book, "Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener." Gardener devoted her life to championing women’s rights and decrying the sexual double standard. Opposed to piety, temperance, and conventional thinking, she eventually settled in Washington, D.C., where her tireless work proved, according to her suffrage colleagues, “the most potent factor” in the passage of the 19th Amendment.
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Kimberly A. Hamlin, Ph.D. is an award-winning historian, speaker, and writer. Her book received support from a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholar Award and the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics. Appointed to the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer Bureau, Hamlin speaks about the history of women, gender, and sex across the country. A regular contributor to the Washington Post, Hamlin’s research has also been featured on various NPR and CBC radio programs, Vice, qz.com, among other outlets, and she has contributed to several PBS documentaries. Hamlin is currently helping to organize commemorations of the 2020 suffrage centennial, and she serves as historical consultant to the Bearded Lady Project, now on view at the National Museum of Natural History. Hamlin lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she co-hosts the Mercantile Library’s “Women You Should Know” Book Discussion Series and is associate professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Hamlin received her BA from Georgetown University and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She is also the author of From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America (University of Chicago Press, 2014) and numerous scholarly articles. She is the recipient of the History of Science Society’s Margaret Rossiter Award for Research on Women and Science and the 19th Century Studies Association’s Emerging Scholar Award, as well as research fellowships from the Schlesinger and Countway Libraries at Harvard, Duke University, and the Huntington Library, among others.
Edith Wharton’s Revolution: Architecture, Interiors and Fiction
Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor in Architectural History at UVA
May 7, 2020
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) wrote many novels, among them House of Mirth (1905), Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920), that contained close examinations of manners and the settings where people resided. She explained in her 1923 Yale University honorary doctorate talk: “The impression produced by a landscape, a street or a house should always, to the novelist, be an event in the history of the soul.” Her novels are filled with descriptions of rooms and architectural details and styles, and indeed, the settings she describes in her fiction are integral to understanding her writing. Her first book, The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored with Ogden Codman Jr. and written partially in Newport, was one of the most important books ever written in the United States about the treatment of interiors. This virtual lecture examines Edith Wharton’s interest in architecture and the decorative arts with references to many houses, including her own in Newport, New York and The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts.
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Richard Guy Wilson is the Commonwealth Professor in Architectural History at the University of Virginia and received the university’s Outstanding Professor award in 2001. A frequent lecturer for universities, museums and professional groups, he has been a TV commentator for PBS and A&E, including America’s Castles, served as a curator for museum exhibitions and published 16 books, including The American Renaissance, McKim, Mead & White, Architects and Edith Wharton at Home. He directs the Victorian Society in America’s 19th Century Summer School in Newport.
Forever Seeing New Beauties: Mary Rogers Williams
Eve Kahn, Historian, Journalist
April 30, 2020
The artist Mary Rogers Williams (1857-1907), a baker's daughter from Hartford, Connecticut, biked and hiked from the Arctic Circle to Naples, exhibited from Paris to Indianapolis, trained at the Art Students League, chafed against art world rules that favored men, wrote thousands of pages about her travels and work, taught at Smith College for nearly two decades, but sadly ended up almost totally obscure. In this lecture, Eve Kahn explores how she was able to trace Williams’ adventures, and what insights can be gleaned from the paintings and pastels of a pensive gowned women, Norwegian slopes reflected in icy waters, saw-tooth rooflines on French chateaus, and incense hazes in Italian chapels.
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Eve Kahn, a noted historian and journalist, is most well known for her weekly Antiques column that ran in The New York Times from 2008 to 2016. As a writer, scholar and exhibition adviser, Kahn specializes in art, architecture, design and preservation. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and lectures regularly in New York, New England and elsewhere. Adding to her accolades, Kahn is also an accomplished author. Her latest project and book is Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams 1857-1907 (Wesleyan University Press, 2019).