Displaying items by tag: New England

When: Friday, November 13, 2015 at 1:00 PM EST to Sunday, November 15, 2015 at 1:00 PM EST

Where: Deerfield Community Center, 16 Memorial St., Deerfield, MA 01342

Join Historic Deerfield for an in-depth examination of the decorative arts of New England's inventors, merchants and peddlers during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

When President Adams moved into the new White House in 1800, innovation and adaptation already drove the creative designs of many New England-made objects. Even as elite tastes maintained traditional ties to European styles and materials, the consumer demands of an expanding middle class fueled inventive entrepreneurial approaches to making and selling cheaper American-made attractive goods. At times protected or even encouraged by embargo, war, and westward expansion, New Englanders made and sold a profusion of wares including patent clocks, popular prints, glassware, stoneware, tinware, pewter, cast iron stoves, and stenciled and painted furniture. First competing with and ultimately replacing European manufactures for many families, they infused their products with artistic energy and excitement that spurred a national impulse to "Buy American." Forum speakers and demonstrators will include Peter Benes, Deborah Child, David Jaffee, Amanda Lange, Ned Lazaro, William McMillen, Mary Cheek Mills, Sumpter Priddy, Andrew Raftery, Christine Ritok, and Philip Zea.

Old Sturbridge Village has a remarkable collection of early American objects - the furniture, tools, clothing, toys, decorative arts and other artifacts of life in rural, inland New England during the period 1790 to 1840.

Old Sturbridge Village regularly hosts Collectors' Forums in order to focus on this collection, bringing together curators, experts, collectors and the public to examine a large sampling from the collection and learn about new scholarship and perspectives on the collection. This annual event is being held in conjunction with the opening of our new exhibit, Kindred Spirits: A.B. Wells, Malcolm Watkins and the Origins of Old Sturbridge Village.

The use of both factory woven and homemade hearth rugs coincides with the increasing use of carpeting in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as people sought to protect their investments in woven floor coverings and participate in a growing fashion trend. Homeowners discovered that carpets became worn and developed holes at that spot in front of the fireplace where people gathered to warm themselves. As a result, protective hearth rugs soon became a standard component in rooms with room-sized carpets. Placed over the carpet in wintertime and over the hearthstone in summer, these rugs added a powerful ornamental feature to the domestic setting throughout the year.

Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea, which is now on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine, explores the artist’s lifelong fascination with the sea. Maurice Prendergast, a pioneering post-Impressionist painter, spent much of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century capturing modern life on the coast of New England.

 By the Sea is the first retrospective of Prendergast’s oeuvre in over two decades. The exhibition presents more than 90 works in a variety of media from over 30 public and private collections in addition to Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s own holdings. The exhibition traces the development of Prendergast’s highly personal style, which is recognized for its use of jewel-like colors and pattern-like compositions containing flattened, free-form figures. The exhibition also includes Prendergast’s sketchbooks and oil studies, allowing visitors to see into the Modernist artist’s creative process.

Highlights include the watercolor The Balloon, which is part of a private collection and has not been included in earlier Prendergast retrospectives; St. Malo, a bright watercolor on loan from the Williams College Museum of Art, which was lauded as one of the first American introductions of the bold European Post-Impressionist avant-garde; and a number of works that the artist contributed to the seminal Armory Show of 1913 (also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art).

Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea will be on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through October 13, 2013.

On Saturday, May 11, 2013, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art In Bentonville, Arkansas launched two exhibitions dedicated to American genre painting. Genre painting, which became popular during the mid-19^th century, involved the depiction ordinary scenes of everyday life. As religious artworks waned in prevalence, genre painting struck a chord with the public as they could easily relate to the narratives, which spanned various races, regions, and classes.

American Encounters: Genre Painting and Everyday Life presents five paintings by a handful of the most well known artists from the movement including George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), and Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait (1819-1905). Between Bingham, who painted scenes of life on the American frontier, Johnson, who captured the true spirits of the people of New England, the western frontier, the slavery-ridden south, and prominent Americans, and Tait, whose subject of choice was wildlife, the three artists come together to communicate a varied and comprehensive American experience.

The works in American Encounters are accompanied by two paintings from the Louvre – one is from the Dutch genre painting school and another from the English interpretation of the movement. American Encounters is also complemented b the exhibition Genre Scenes on Paper from Crystal Bridges’ Permanent Collection.

Genre Scenes on Paper provides a sampling of the museum’s 19^th century watercolors and drawings, many of which have never been on public view. The exhibition explores themes of work and leisure in the city and country and features works by Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Thomas Waterman Wood (1823-1903), and John Lewis Krimmel (1786-1821). Just as the paintings in American Encounters, these works come together to show how a variety of artists interpreted daily life in a young country still coming into its own.

American Encounters and Genre Scenes on Paper will be on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum through August 12, 2013. American Encounters, which is the second exhibition in a four-year partnership between Crystal Bridges, the Louvre and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, will then travel to the High where it will be on view from September 14, 2013 through January 14, 2014.

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY is currently hosting the exhibition Albert Bierstadt in New York & New England. Guest curated by Anne Blaugrund, former director of National Academy Museum in New York, the exhibition features a wide selection of Albert Bierstadt’s (1830-1902) east coast paintings.

Bierstadt (1830-1902) a German-American painter best known for his lush landscapes of the American west, also spent time capturing the natural beauty of the White Mountains, the Hudson Valley, and New England in his work. All of the works on view were created between the late 1850s and 1880s and range from oil sketches to finished paintings. Albert Bierstadt in New York & New England is the 10^th annual presentation of 19^th century landscape paintings at the Thomas Cole site.

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site, which is also known as Cedar Grove, is comprised of the home and studios of Thomas Cole (1801-1848), the founder of the Hudson River School of painting. A National Historic Landmark, the site aims to communicate Cole’s profound influence on American art to a broader modern audience.

Albert Bierstadt in New York & New England is on view through November 3, 2013.

A rare and early reclining armchair designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is currently on view at the Currier Museum in Manchester, NH. A pioneer of modern architecture, Wright designed the chair between 1902 and 1903 and it features the minimal aesthetic and linear design that he is best known for. The chair was originally designed for his prairie style Francis W. Little House in Peoria, IL but he used different variations of the chair over the course of the next decade, including in his own studio in Chicago’s Oak Park.  

The presentation of the chair coincides with the reopening of the Currier’s Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman House (1950), which Wright designed. Along with the exterior, Wright devised the House’s interiors, furniture, gardens, and even its mailbox. The Zimmermans left the house to the Currier in 1988 and it opened for public tours in 1990. Besides being able to view a Wright masterpiece, visitors are offered a glimpse of the Zimmermans’ personal collection of modern art, pottery, and sculpture. The Zimmerman House is the only Wright home open to the public in New England. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Tours of the Zimmerman House are offered ten times a week and require a reservation.

23 years after the notorious Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist took place in Boston, the FBI announced that they have identified the thieves responsible for the crime. Officials stated in a press release that the unnamed suspects are from a “criminal organization” based in the Mid-Atlantic States and New England. It is believed that some of the stolen artworks were transported to the Connecticut and Philadelphia regions, where they were offered for sale.

While the works have yet to be recovered, the FBI is reaching out to the public for helpful information and a $5 million reward is being offered for the paintings’ safe return. Today at a news conference, federal law enforcement officials announced that they will launch a comprehensive public awareness campaign that will include a dedicated FBI website, video postings on FBI social media sites, digital billboards, and a podcast.

On March 18, 1990 two thieves posing as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made off with thirteen works of art valued at $500 million. The stolen masterpieces include Johannes Vermeer’s (1632-1675) The Concert, one of only 34 known works by the artist in the world; three works by Rembrandt (1606-1669) including his only known seascape; five drawings by Edgar Degas (1834-1917); and an ancient Chinese vessel from the Shang Dynasty. The Gardner heist remains the largest private property theft ever.

Thirty years ago a Pennsylvania couple purchased a plot of land in the rolling countryside of Bucks County. Their plans were to build a home emulating an early Pennsylvania house. Their mind was swayed, however, after a visit to Shelburne Museum in Vermont. The husband walked into the "Stencil House," an early "saltbox," and had an epiphany, deciding on the spot that he wanted instead a New England-style home, despite their living in Pennsylvania. Their saltbox was custom built for the couple, incorporating eighteenth-century techniques with modern technology. To add elements of authenticity, the couple spent many months acquiring historic components from resources they knew in Connecticut, which their builder integrated into the structure. Twenty-six eighteenth-century white pine doors are used throughout the house, made with board and batten construction with leather washers on the hinges. The 16 to 22-inch wide floorboards and ceiling beams are historic. Old, paper-thin glass was used in making the new windows; a Connecticut craftsman provided frames necessary to achieve the period look. The five fireplaces feeding into the generous center chimney have been outfitted with period firebacks and sets of period tools. The paint used throughout the house has a historic appearance and was made with a secret formula created by the artisan. In homage to the Shelburne Museum, the front hall is painted with stencils replicating, minus the eagles, those applied sometime between 1820 and 1830 to the 1804 Stencil House.

Well before the term "historic preservation" came into vogue, New Englanders were saving old houses. The first documented preservation effort in America was launched at Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1847, where residents joined forces to save the Old Indian House, survivor of an infamous 1704 attack on the village. Although the house was torn down, consciousness had been raised and a number of subsequent campaigns, like those for Mount Vernon and Independence Hall, were successful. In New England, preservation victories were tempered by major losses; most notably the 1863 demolition of Boston's venerable 1737 John Hancock House (Fig. 1). Throughout the nineteenth century, individuals like Henry David Thoreau championed saving old houses for their aesthetic value. Antiquarians like Deerfield's George Sheldon and Cummings Davis in Concord, regularly accessed neighbors" attics and cellars to "rescue" early artifacts and documents. Often viewed as eccentrics, these avocational preservationists were building a compelling case for the need to protect the material culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England.