Victorian Society Spring Programs
From METROPOLITAN CHAPTER of THE VICTORIAN SOCIETY IN AMERICA
Exciting Programs Kick Off the Spring Season!
LECTURE and BOOK SIGNING: Tuesday, February 13
Bound for Freedom: Inventing the Underground Railroad in 19th-Century New York
Fergus M. Bordewich, author of Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of New York and Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century
The nation’s first interracial political movement, the Underground Railroad asserted the principle of personal, active responsibility for others’ human rights. New York lay astride one of its main arteries, facilitating the northward flight of thousands of fugitive slaves before the Civil War. The creation of the Underground Railroad in New York and the Hudson River Valley and how it worked will be explored in this lecture.
Mr. Bordewich will be selling and signing his book, Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of New York, at the Members’ Reception immediately following the lecture.
Also, check out Mr. Bordewich’s recent Op-Ed, “History’s Tangled Threads,” in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/opinion/02bordewich.html
All lectures are at the Donnell Library Auditorium, 20 W. 53rd Street, New York City
Admission is FREE; no reservations required
TOUR: Saturday, February 17
Tour of Louis Comfort Tiffany and Josef Hoffmann Exhibitions
Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton hall: An Artist’s Country Estate
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Laurelton Hall, Louis Comfort Tiffany’s extraordinary country estate in Oyster Bay, New York, completed in 1905, where Tiffany designed every aspect of the project inside and out, creating a total aesthetic environment. Although the house tragically burned to the ground in 1957, the exhibition brings together many of its surviving architectural elements and interior features. In addition, the exhibition features Tiffany’s personal collections of his own work—breathtaking stained-glass windows, paintings, glass and ceramic vases—as well as the artist’s collections of Japanese, Chinese, and Native American works of art.*
*Group tours of the Tiffany exhibition are not generally allowed on weekends, so this is truly an exclusive for our members and guests!
Josef Hoffmann Interiors, 1902-1913
The Neue Galerie
Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) is recognized as one of the leading figures in the modern movement. There are four interiors featured in this exhibit. Each interior will be furnished with numerous objects original to those rooms: furniture, wall to floor coverings, textiles, lighting, ceramics, glass, and metalwork. Many of these products were produced under the auspices of the influential Wiener Werkstatte, of which Hoffmann was the director.
Time: 9:30 a.m. (the event is expected to end around 1:15 p.m.)
Meeting Place: the main Fifth Avenue and 82nd St. entrance of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Reservations: Must be received with full payment by February 10, with checks payable to Metropolitan Chapter VSA. Reservation forms may be obtained by contacting [email protected] or calling (212) 886-3742.