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Family and Freinds: Life Behind the Scenes at Home, 1810-1850

Macculloch Hall Historical Museum –

Family and Friends: Life Behind the Scenes at Home, 1810-1850

Thursday June 16th 2011 at 5pm

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Please join us for a special program in the schoolroom gallery at Macculloch Hall Historical Museum.  “Family and Friends: Life Behind the Scenes at Home, 1810-1850” will explore the home experience paralleling the first decades of family life at Macculloch Hall. Guest speaker Elisabeth Garrett Widmer will peek into the specifics of family life and the many challenges in caring for and regulating a household, including the pleasures and inconveniences of hospitality and entertaining.  Ms. Garrett Widmer will base her remarks on such primary source materials as diaries, letters and reminiscences in an attempt to better “listen” to the past— and hear it in their own words. In the process, the audience might want to reflect on any nostalgia for the “good old days.”

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The museum will be open for tours of the home and galleries from 1pm, with extended hours until 5pm, the last tour will leave at 4pm.  Touring will end for the day at 5pm when the program begins.  Prior to the lecture visitors may also enjoy the colorful and elegant gardens, restored in the 1950s by the Garden Club of Morristown. Commodore Matthew Perry, who opened Japan to American trading in the mid-1850s, brought the wisteria on the rear porch arbor as a gift to the family.  Light beverages will be served on the porch from 4pm – 5pm. Following the program visitors are welcome to continue to enjoy the gardens, open dawn ‘til dusk, and may picnic in the grounds.

 

Elisabeth Garrett Widmer is an author, educator and museum consultant. She lectures widely throughout the United States on American decorative arts and is often consulted by museums on historic interiors, the social/cultural contexts of the arts, exhibitions and education.  She is the author of The Antiques Book of Colonial Interiors, The Antiques Book of Victorian Interiors, The Arts of Independence and At Home: The American Family 1750-1870.  The latter was awarded the Charles F. Montgomery Prize of The Decorative Arts Society in 1990; the Henry Russell Hitchcock Award of the Victorian Society in America; and the Colonial Dames of America Book Award.  She is currently working on a book on Childhood in America, 1700-1900.

 

Widmer has served as Director-Curator of the DAR Museum in Washington, DC; Curator at the Abigail Adams Smith Museum in New York; and an editor at The Magazine Antiques.  At Sotheby’s Educational Studies in New York, she directed their graduate-level American Arts Course. She was subsequently a Senior Vice President at Christie’s where she directed Christie’s Classes in Connoisseurship in New York.

 

Macculloch Hall Historical Museum preserves the history of the Macculloch-Miller families, the Morris area community, and the legacy of its founder W. Parsons Todd through its historic site, collections, exhibits, and educational and cultural programs.  In the heart of Morristown’s National Historic District, Macculloch Hall's Offices are open Monday - Friday –   9 a.m. to 4 p.m.  The Museum is open for house and exhibit tours on Wednesdays, Thursdays & Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is $6 Adults; $5 Seniors/Students; 12 years and under and museum members are free.  School tours, adult/senior tours and rentals may be scheduled by appointment.  For information, call the Museum weekdays at (973) 538-2404, visit our website www.maccullochhall.org or find us on Facebook.  Macculloch Hall Historical Museum, 45 Macculloch Ave., Morristown, NJ 07960. Macculloch Hall Historical Museum is a nonprofit educational affiliate of the W. Parsons Todd Foundation.  The Macculloch Hall Historical Museum received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State. 

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