This Month at the MHS
Exhibition
The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825
Open 11 May to 14 September 2018 Details
| «July 2018 | August 2018 |
September 2018» | ||||
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
|
|
|||||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
|
|
|
|
|||
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
|
|
|
||||
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
|
|
|
|
|||
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
|
|
|||||
Virtually forgotten for 200 years, Isaac Vose and his brilliant furniture are revealed in a new exhibition and accompanying volume. Beginning with a modest pair of collection boxes he made for his localBoston church in 1788, Vose went on to build a substantial business empire and to make furniture for the most prominent Boston families. The exhibition and catalog restore Vose from relative obscurity to his rightful position as one of Boston’s most important craftsmen. Opening at the MHS on May 11, the exhibition will be on view through September 14.
The complementary book, Rather Elegant Than Showy (May 2018), by Robert Mussey and Clark Pearce, will be available for sale at the MHS.
Image: Couch, Isaac Vose & Son, with Thomas Wightman, carver, Boston, 1824. Historic New England, Gift of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1923.507); photograph by David Bohl.
In 1775, New York City merchant Frederick Rhinelander told a friend, “if this province ever fights, it will be for the King.” Yet Rhinelander’s reasons were not based on New Yorkers’ blind loyalty to George III or Great Britain. Instead, for him and many of his friends, loyalism was a tool to challenge political opponents.
closeThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825.
close
Despite their reputation as sites of abuse and neglect, 19th-century hospitals for the insane were originally envisioned as “technological marvels” that would solve the national mental health crisis. This talk examines how New England lunatic hospitals were designed to mobilize sensory experience to cure mental illness, and how these designs shaped patient experiences.
closeThis workshop has been POSTPONED until Summer 2019. We will post further information here when it is rescheduled.
This workshop will explore the era and legacy of Reconstruction in American history and society, from the aftermath of the war to the role it plays in current issues today. We will discuss the effects of Reconstruction on African American and Native American communities, its civic and legal legacies, memory of the period and of the violence that followed, and local heroes who fought for civil rights in the wake of the Civil War.
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 45 Professional Development Points or 2 graduate credits (for an additional fee).
If you have any questions, please contact Kate Melchior at kmelchior@masshist.org or 617-646-0588.
closeThis talk focuses on the commercial and cultural connections between New Englanders and Parsis in Bombay from the 1770s to the 1850s. Commercially, the Parsis began to act as agent-brokers for Massachusetts merchants in the late 1780s. But Parsi Zoroastrian religious ideas and rituals were already known to at least a few readers in New England by spring of 1772, when the first European translations of Zoroastrian texts were sent, at Benjamin Franklin’s recommendation, to the Redwood Athenaeum’s librarian.
close"The Shade of Private Life": The Right to Privacy and the Press in American Art, 1875-1900 10 August 2018.Friday, 12:00PM - 1:00PM Nicole Williams, Yale University
This brown bag is postponed to a later date.
This talk considers how American artists at the close of the nineteenth century advanced a new, modern notion of privacy in response to the rise of tabloid journalism and the emergence of invasive reporting genres like the gossip column and the personal exposé. It examines a diverse series of paintings, sculptures, and photographs in relation to period critiques of the press and the emerging legal concept of "the right to privacy."
closeThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825.
close
Lawrence v. Texas and LGBTQ Rights 15 August 2018 to 17 August 2018 Registration fee: $50 per person
This workshop has been POSTPONED until Summer 2019. We will post further information here when it is rescheduled.
In 2003, the pivotal case of Lawrence v. Texas overturned the Texas Homosexuality Conduct Law, decriminalizing “homosexuality” and paving the way for marriage equality. During the case, lawyers and justices of the United States Supreme Court relied heavily on historical precedent, referencing everything from colonial sodomy laws to interracial marriage in their exploration of fundamental rights. Working with partners at History UnErased, we will examine the road to Lawrence v. Texas and its legacy in American society.
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 45 Professional Development Points or 2 graduate credits (for an additional fee).
If you have any questions, please contact Kate Melchior at kmelchior@masshist.org or 617-646-0588.
closeThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825.
close
This talk traces how the federal government surveyed immigrants in the early-20th century and how such attempts helped solidify the racial boundary-making for the nation. By dissecting the tenuous connections between racist ideology, state power, and social science knowledge, this talk provides an empirical account of how categories such as race and ethnicity emerge from confusion and contradiction in knowledge production.
closeEducation: Equality and Access registration required 23 August 2018 to 24 August 2018 Registration fee: $35 per person
This workshop has been POSTPONED. Further information will be posted here when it is rescheduled.
This program will investigate the history of education access in Massachusetts and the United States, with a particular focus on access to education for African American students. Participants will learn more about Massachusetts residents who influenced national education policies, Massachusetts court cases that changed the course of national education policy, and the legacy of segregation and desegregation practices that impact Massachusetts schools to this day.
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 45 Professional Development Points or 2 graduate credits (for an additional fee).
closeDuring the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European scholars made significant advances in the historical and critical study of the Bible, often with highly controversial and factious results. This talk will examine how such exciting but potentially subversive European scholarship was received and transformed by its early American readers, through a close study of the books owned and annotated by seventeenth-century readers in New England and elsewhere.
closeThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825.
close
The turn of the nineteenth century was a time of missionary mobilization for evangelicals in Britain, the United States, and continental Europe. This talk explains why Americans bought into the missions movement and how they domesticated it within a republican vision of civilization building on the frontier.
closeDuring the colonial period, captains acted as powerful auxiliaries for their vessel owners in markets far from the owners’ direct oversight. This talk explores why the economic services ship captains provided transformed as the Atlantic trading economy became more complex, capital intensive, and informed in the eighteenth century.
close