By Elaine Grublin

If you are in the neighborhood at lunch time on Wednesday, 1 August, plan to attend our brown-bag lunch.Research fellow Justin Clark, University of Southern California, will present “Training the Eyes: Romantic Vision and Class Formation in Boston, 1830-1870.” Clark will describe his work examining why, in the spectacular world of the nineteenth-century city, Boston’s Transcendentalists, clairvoyants, blind autobiographers, naturalists, artists, photographers, and numerous others became invested in seeing more than meets the eye, leaving time for discussion with audience members.

Before or after lunch — or anytime between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM, Monday through Saturday — take some time to explore our latest exhibition, Mr. Madison’s War: The Controversial War of 1812, showcasing a number of letters, broadsides, artifacts, and images from the Society’s rich collections including a midshipman’s log of the USS Constitution describing the ship’s first great victory, letters written by John Quincy Adams to his mother while serving as the American minister to Russia, and a brass cannon captured from the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

And on Saturday, 4 August, do not miss “The History and Collections of the MHS,” our regular building tour. The 90-minute tour departs our front lobby promptly at 10:00 AM.