Loan Exhibition:
"From Colonial to Modern: A Century of Collecting at Historic New England"
Lecture #1:
"Heritage from the Home: Do House Museums Still Matter?"
Presented by: Carl R. Nold, CEO & President of Historic New England
Historic New England is the oldeast and largest regional historical preservation organization in America. It runs thirty-six properties and protects more than seventy other sites through easements. This year Historic New England celebrates its cenntenial anniversary.
"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."
Marcus Garvey
What is the role of the house? What role does it play in our lives? What is our personal idea of the house, of home? These are the questions that need to be asked and answered when the field of historic preservation is expected to explain and defend the existence of historic homes.
Historic homes and the decorative objects housed in them are a personal refeflection of history. The previous owners of the house come to life. History comes to life.
This begs the following qustion though-"What is history?" The concept of history itselfis transient and fluid. What is contemporary one day becomes historythe next day. Two acqusitions of Historic New England are prime exaples of this flux. The first is Roseland Cottage. It is Victorian house located in Woodstock, Connecticut. When the organization took in this property, it was considered very controversial. At the time when they recieved it, Victorian architecture was considered subpar and inferior. The other property, a more recent acqusition, is the Gropius House. It was designed by the prolific Modernism architect Walter Gropius. It has only been very recentlythatModernist buildings have been recieving attention fromthe field of historic preservation. What is particularly ironic is that the designers and patrons for the Moderism movement were doing everything they could to avoid being associated with history. Moderism has now joined the ranks of history in the world of historic preservation. Just in the past year the National Trust for Historic Preservation official perodical Preservation did a cover article on Moderism. As the illustrious archiitecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable once wrote in reference to Modern architecture, "history always wins".
To fully comprehend the development of the historic home in the United States one must first understand how the shift in tastes went from European to American in this nation. During the 1930s-1950s there was a fervor of what is now know as"patrotic collecting". This collecting was carried out by several individuals and instiutions. Interestingly enough, this rise in "nationalism collecting" coinsided with the insurge and waves of immigrants the nation was absording at that time.
It was the actions of individual collectors in correlation with their personal interests and taste did the genre of Americana cometo be in the field of art and antiques.
(entry will be completed on jan 25th)
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