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METROPOLITAN CHAPTER
EVENTS
LECTURE
SERIES
All lectures are held at the The New York New Church (Swedenborgian), 114 E. 35th St., between Park and Lexington Avenues (nearest train is the 6 train at 33rd St.).
The lectures
are FREE, and no reservations are required.
For VSA Members only:
Meet the speakers at our post-lecture receptions!
Tuesday, September 21, 6 PM
Gotham Lost and Found : Uncovering Manhattan's Forgotten Cultural Landmarks
David Freeland, historian, music journalist, author of Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure (NYU Press, 2009), and winner of the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America 2010 Publication Award for Pop Culture and Entertainment.
David Freeland will give a visual tour through present-day New York City, searching for architectural windows into its 19 th and early-20 th century past. Remnants of forgotten cultural landmarks – Bowery beer gardens, a motion picture studio in Union Square, Tin Pan Alley – will be explored, as will the human stories that continue to define us as New Yorkers.
Tuesday, October 12, 6 PM
Leopold Eidlitz: New York Architecture in the Gilded Age
Kate Holliday, architectural historian, Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas Arlington, author of Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age (W.W. Norton, 2008), and winner of a Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America 2009 Architectural Monograph Award.
Although relatively unknown today, architect Leopold Eidlitz designed many of New York City’s most well-known structures, including the Tweed Courthouse, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Temple Emanu-El, St. George’s Episcopal Church, and the early section of West Park Presbyterian Church, in addition to the New York State Capitol in Albany. Dr. Kate Holliday will explore Eidlitz’s New York City work, and how it demonstrates his ideas about the evolution of an organic architecture and the notion of architecture as an “idea in matter.”
Tuesday, November 9, 6 PM
Art for Science’s Sake: The Natural History Diorama
Kevin Avery, associate curator in the Department of American Paintings and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and an adjunct professor in the Art Department of Hunter College, City University of New York.
The natural history dioramas of the early-20 th century continue to regale children and their parents at institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Field Museum in Chicago, and the Smithsonian National Museum in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kevin Avery will investigate how these dioramas evolved from traditions of both scientific collection and art and entertainment reaching back to the late-18 th century. He will also review and illuminate the art of the natural history diorama.
Tuesday, December 14, 6 PM
AJ Downing, William Cullen Bryant, and the American Park Movement
Judith Major, Professor at the University of Kansas School of Architecture, Design, and Planning and author of To Live in the New World: AJ Downing and American Landscape Gardening.
In the mid-19 th century, campaigns for urban parks were led by Andrew Jackson Downing (editor of the Horticulturist) and William Cullen Bryant (editor of the New York Evening Post). Dr. Judith Major will discuss Downing and Bryant and how the social and political conditions of the time were woven into the campaign for Central Park and the winning design by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. She will also explore how 20 th-century critics continue to examine these designs and the creation of green open spaces in American cities.
TOURS
Members receive detailed flyers closer to an event’s
scheduled time. Tours must be reserved
in advance.
To reserve for tours, return flyer’s reservation form with
check. If you are not a member, contact us to receive a flyer.
Further
information on any of the programs may be obtained by calling (212)
886-3742.
VSA Metropolitan Chapter
232 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10003
Email the Metropolitan
Chapter - Victorian Society in America. |
