Reawakening Materials: American Art, Empire, and Material Histories in Historic Deerfield’s Collection

Image: Dr. Horatio Arnold Hamilton’s medicine chest, early to mid 19 th century. Leather, brass, tinned sheet metal, paint, wood, glass, cork, paper, ink, drugs, textile. Historic Deerfield, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh B. Vanderbilt Fund for Curatorial Acquisitions, HD 2001.7

Join us for “Reawakening Materials: American Art, Empire, and Material Histories in Historic Deerfield’s Collection”: a public colloquium centered on Historic Deerfield’s collection of paintings, works on paper, and decorative arts from November 7-8, 2024. HD’s collection focuses on 18th-and 19th-century American art and material culture, and it is embedded in a landscape tied to Indigenous communities, histories of enslaved people and free people of African descent, and settler colonialism. Our colloquium and speakers will explore relationships between empire, materials of objects, and settler colonialism in the collection, specifically asking how these art historical topics can be generative for recontextualizing HD’s place in the study of New England history, art, and culture. Speakers will investigate materials that can reveal new ideas of empire, including: pastels, lacquer, maple, engraving, and shells. The program will also workshop methods for telling these narratives and interpretive strategies through historic interiors, including objects tied to violence, trauma, and absence, and opportunities to bring in stories of joy and survivance.

Registration coming soon!