"Gilded Mansions" Lecture at Ventfort Hall
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Craven’s slide lecture will bring to life the relationship between America’s first millionaire society and the most sumptuous architecture and decorative arts that money could buy. The audience will learn about the decorators, artists and architects hired by the wealthy elite and the trials and tribulations that unfolded within their spectacular homes. With an emphasis on New York society, Craven will also discuss the fashionable retreats at Newport, RI and the magnificent Biltmore estate in Asheville, NC.
Prominent families like the Astors, Whitneys and Vanderbilts lined Fifth Avenue in New York City with mansions that were the American equivalent of such European structures as French chateaus and Italian palazzos. The Vanderbilts, for instance, were noted for having eleven opulent homes along the avenue, the most of any one family, let alone elegant homes in Newport, Lenox, the Adirondacks and elsewhere.
The families instructed their architects and decorators to hunt down European masterpieces by Raphael and Rembrandt, Renaissance wedding chests, 18th century French paneling, a 16th century carved stone fireplace from a French nunnery, or an ornate ceiling from the Doges Palace in Venice. They also commissioned new work by contemporary artists and artisans, among them the Herter Brothers, John La Farge, Allard et Fils and Pierre Victor Galland, who designed spectacular interiors. To add luster to their new positions in society, wealthy Gilded Age Americans married their offspring to titled Europeans.
Craven is the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Professor of Art History, Emeritus, at the University of Delaware. He is the author of American Art: History and Culture, Sculpture in America and Stanford White: Decorator in Opulence.
Tickets are $15 per person for nonmembers and $12 for members and may be purchased by calling Ventfort Hall at 413-637-3206. The historic mansion is located at 104 Walker Street in Lenox.
This program is supported in part by grants from the Alford-Egremont Cultural Council, the Sandisfield Cultural Council, the Sheffield Cultural Council, and the West Stockbridge Cultural Council, local agencies which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
An Official Project of Save America’s Treasures, Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum offers tours of the historic mansion, as well as lectures, concerts, teas, theater and other programs. This elegant Elizabethan-Revival Berkshire “cottage,” listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is open to the public year-around and is available for private rental. Built in 1893 for George and Sarah Morgan (sister of the financier, J. P. Morgan), Ventfort Hall has undergone substantial restoration, which continues.
