An American Silence: Walker Evans and Edward Hopper – documentation of common people their lives and places
Speaker: Jeffrey Allison
4:00 – 6:00 | $10
The photographer Walker Evans and painter Edward Hopper were part of the generation of American artists who tore themselves away from European ideals at the start of the 20th century. Join Jeffrey Allison as he explores these artists who celebrated America without filter focusing on common people in common lives and places. Within those scenes lie a powerful silence in which directness creates a visual anxiety as we wonder what has just happened and what will happen next.
APRIL 13
Geology of Menokin and Formation of the Chesapeake Bay
Speaker: Dr. Christopher “Chuck” Bailey, W&M
4:00 – 6:00 | $10
Curiosity about the origins of the iron-infused sandstone of which Menokin is built has led Dr. Bailey on a deeper exploration of the geologic history of the Northern Neck and how it relates to the formation of the Chesapeake Bay.
MAY 18
Mapping the Indigenous Cultural Landscape
Speaker: Scott Strickland, St. Mary’s College, MD
4:00 – 6:00 | $10
The project was undertaken as an initiative of the National Park Service Chesapeake Bay office to identify and represent the Rappahannock Indigenous Cultural Landscape between Port Royal/Port Conway and Urbanna. It was administered by the Chesapeake Conservancy and the fieldwork undertaken and report prepared by St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
JUNE 8
The Archaeology of Menokin
Speaker: David Brown, Fairfield Foundation
4:00 – 6:00 | $10
Dr. David Brown and his colleague, Thane Harpole, have been the archaeologists of record at Menokin for over a decade. This session will incorporate an outdoor “Adventures in Preservation” program as well as an indepth look into the past, present and future archaeology at Menokin.
JULY 18
The Virginia Signers of the Declaration of Independence
Speaker: Robert Teagle, Historic Christ Church
11:45 – 1:45 | $25*
This lecture examines the history of the Declaration of Independence and its seven Virginia signers. How did the Declaration come to be written and what ideas did it express? What Enlightenment philosophers and theories influenced Jefferson as he crafted this remarkable document? What were the differences between Jefferson’s original manuscript and the one Congress adopted? Who were the seven Virginians who signed it, and what role did they play in the creation of the new nation? And how has the meaning and commemoration of the Declaration evolved since 1776?
Robert Teagle has been the Education Director & Curator at the Foundation for Historic Christ Church since 2000. He received an M.A. in American History from Virginia Tech and a B.A. in History from William and Mary.
*This lecture will take place at Ingleside Winery in Westmoreland County. Lunch is available by reservation and is included in the cost of the ticket.
AUGUST 17
Trees Up Close: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees*
Speaker: Nancy Ross Hugo
4:00 – 6:00 | $15
Nancy Ross Hugo describes the joy of discovering unfamiliar features of familiar trees and how carefully observing seeds, catkins, flowers, resting buds, emerging leaves, and other small phenomena of ordinary backyard and roadside trees can provide insight into tree biology and reveal a whole new universe of tree beauty. She also shares what decades planting and observing trees has taught her about which trees make the best landscape investments and the importance of planting long-lived, legacy trees.
*This lecture will take place off-site due to the Smithsonian WaterWays Exhibit in the Menokin Visitor’s Center. Location TBD. A tree walk at Menokin will take place at the conclusion of the lecture.
SEPTEMBER 23-24
Menokin Sleepover Conference
Speakers: Frank Vagnone (One Night Stand) and Joseph McGill (The Slave Dwelling Project)
Frank Vagnone
Joe McGill
These two innovative and well-known historians and speakers will converge at Menokin for an extraordinary weekend of historical reflection, discourse and lessons on new ways to explore and experience historic places and the people who inhabited them.
More details about related programming will be shared as plans are solidified.
Now in its 4th year, the 2017 Menokin Speaker Series promises not to disappoint.
The program starts in March 2017 and will feature one speaker a month through September. We’re moving the programs a little later in the day in hopes that working folks might find it more convenient.
Some returning favorites and some new, but sure-to-become-favorite speakers, will be on hand. Here’s a preview of the first two programs:
MARCH 16, 2017
An American Silence: Walker Evans and Edward Hopper – documentation of common people their lives and places
4:00 – 6:00 | $10 | Speaker: Jeffrey Allison
Menokin Visitors Center | 4037 Menokin Road | Warsaw, VA
The photographer Walker Evans and painter Edward Hopper were part of the generation of American artists who tore themselves away from European ideals at the start of the 20th century. Join Jeffrey Allison as he explores these artists who celebrated America without filter focusing on common people in common lives and places. Within those scenes lie a powerful silence in which directness creates a visual anxiety as we wonder what has just happened and what will happen next.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Jeffrey Allison Photography historian and Manager of Statewide Programs and Exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts.
APRIL 13, 2017
Geology of Menokin and Formation of the Chesapeake Bay
4:00 – 6:00 | $10 | Speaker: Chuck Bailey
Menokin Visitors Center | 4037 Menokin Road | Warsaw, VA
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Christopher “Chuck” Bailey Professor and Chair: Geology Department, College of William & Mary
Dr. Bailey is a structural geologist whose research focuses on the geometry and tectonic history of deformed rocks as well as the physical and chemical processes that control rock deformation. He is particularly interested in ductile fault zones (high-strain zones) and work to understand both the deformation path experienced by mylonitic rocks as well as elucidate the tectonic history recorded by these important crustal structures.
SPEAKERS ON THE ARTS This program has been organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and is supported, in part, by the Paul Mellon Endowment and the Jean Stafford Camp Memorial Fund. Menokin is a community partner of the VMFA.
This premiere lecture centers on reconstructions, i.e. lost works of architecture that have been completely rebuilt such as the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg. The structures are not limited to the United States but include examples in Germany, Russia, Italy, England, China, etc. Menokin’s Glass Project will be featured as a special case.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Calder Loth – Retired Architectural Historian with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and Honorary Trustee of the Menokin Foundation.
In a career spanning four decades, Calder Loth, as senior architectural historian at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, shaped the direction of historic preservation programs from survey and National Register listings to rehabilitation tax credits, review and compliance, and preservation easements. Calder is a long-standing member of the Virginia Art and Architecture Review Board. His expertise has shaped the preservation and renovation of many buildings including the Virginia State Capital and the historic executive mansion. He continues to give back to the preservation community as a staunch advocate and widely published author for “architectural literacy” giving lectures to museums, universities, and professional societies worldwide. In 2008, Calder received the first annual “Secretary of the Interior Historic Preservation Award” given by Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. He has been an Honorary Trustee of the Menokin Foundation since its inception in 1994.
Purchase tickets online.
PREVIOUS LECTURES IN THE 2016 SERIES
JULY 28, 2016
Menokin Geology: The Anomoly of Iron-infused Sandstone
2:00 – 4:00 | $10 | Speaker: Dr. Christopher “Chuck” Bailey
Menokin Visitors Center | 4037 Menokin Road | Warsaw, VA
Geological map of VirginiaStudents in Dr. Bailey’s geology class posing in front of Menokin
In eastern Virginia stone houses are rare. Important colonial buildings in the Tidewater region are primarily constructed of brick. This makes sense, as the Atlantic Coastal Plain is rich with sand and clay, the main ingredients in bricks, and rocks are rare on the Coastal Plain. Professor and Chair of the Geology Department at the College of William and Mary, Chuck Bailey, will discuss the unique geological phenomena that allowed for sandstone to be present on the property, an uncommon material in Tidewater Virginia. This natural occurrence allowed for the Menokin House to be built from iron infused sandstone.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Dr. Christopher “Chuck” Bailey
Education
Ph.D. & M.A., Johns Hopkins University
B.S., College of William & Mary
Research Interests
Structural Geology, Tectonics, & Landscape History
I’m a structural geologist whose research focuses on the geometry and tectonic history of deformed rocks as well as the physical and chemical processes that control rock deformation. I am particularly interested in ductile fault zones (high-strain zones) and work to understand both the deformation path experienced by mylonitic rocks as well as elucidate the tectonic history recorded by these important crustal structures.
With William & Mary undergraduates I’ve studied deformed rocks in the Appalachian Mountains, the low deserts of southern Arizona, the high plateaus of Utah, the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, and most recently in Oman examining its vast and well-exposed ophiolite. Although the Appalachians Mountains have been studied for over two centuries, many key aspects of their history remain unanswered. Our studies in the Blue Ridge and Piedmont provinces are wide-ranging and integrate structural analysis with petrology, sedimentology, geochronology, and geologic mapping. In Utah our research focuses on understanding the interplay between volcanism, tectonics, and surface processes in the transition region between the Colorado Plateau and the Basin & Range.
Over the past 18 years I’ve advised more than 100 undergraduate thesis projects at William & Mary.
JUNE 23, 2016
(Rescheduled from February, 2016)
Henry Box Brown: Famous Fugitive, Trans-Atlantic Performer
2:00 – 4:00 | $10 | Speaker: Jeffrey Ruggles
Menokin Visitors Center | 4037 Menokin Road | Warsaw, VA
Henry “Box” Brown The resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia. Who escaped from Richmond Va in a Box 3 feet long 2 1/2 ft deep and 2 ft wide entered according to act of Congress the year 1850 by Henry Box Brown in the clerk’s office of the District Court of Massachusetts
Henry Brown escaped from slavery by shipping himself in a box from Richmond to Philadelphia. This bold feat was only the first act of a remarkable career. “Resurrected” from the box as Henry Box Brown, he appeared at antislavery meetings as a singer and speaker. In 1850, Brown produced a moving panorama, a kind of giant painted scroll presented in a theater, called Mirror of Slavery and toured it around New England and then across the Atlantic. Trace this remarkable journey with Jeffrey Ruggles, former Curator of Prints and Photographs, Virginia Historical Society, and author of The Unboxing of Henry Brown, Library of Virginia, 2003.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Jeffrey Ruggles is an historian and photographer with interests in the history of American culture, Virginia, and visual art. His book The Unboxing of Henry Brown (Library of Va., 2003) is a biography of the fugitive slave and performer Henry Box Brown. From 2002–10 Mr. Ruggles worked at Virginia Historical Society where he served as Curator of Prints and Photographs. His Photography in Virginia (2008) is a companion book to a 2008–09 exhibition at VHS. Other VHS exhibitions were Early Images of Virginia Indians (2003) and Organized Labor in Virginia (2010), and a long-term installation at Battle Abbey, The Virginia Manufactory of Arms (2005-15). Mr. Ruggles has degrees from the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University, and is an administrator at the Virginia Center on Aging at VCU in Richmond.
MAY 26, 2016
Great Road Style: The Decorative Arts Legacy Of Southwest Virginia 2:00 – 4:00 | $10 | Speaker: Betsy White
Menokin Visitors Center | 4037 Menokin Road | Warsaw, VA
For the past 15 years, Betsy White and her team of scholars have been delving into the decorative arts traditions of southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee, parts of two states linked geographically, culturally, and historically. Settled during the last years of the 18th and first years of the 19th centuries, it became America’s first frontier, connecting the eastern seaboard with Kentucky, Tennessee, and beyond. Its settlers came down the Valley of Virginia on the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road or simply the Great Road, as it was known locally. Artisans followed settlers, bringing with them the material culture of their homelands. What sprang up was a lively blend of cultural traditions that formed a distinctive style of furniture, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, and music. Join Betsy White as she leads us through the friendly country forms of pie safes and quilts, overshot coverlets woven from wool and flax grown on the homeplace, elegant high-style furniture made by Philadelphia-trained cabinetmakers, and pottery decorated with splotches, daubs, and streaks. White’s field work has resulted in more than 2,000 records. Taken together, they create a Great Road style, one that is beginning to take its place in American decorative arts.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Betsy White, an art historian and a member of the Virginia Cultural Heritage Commission, graduated from Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC.
APRIL 28, 2016
America’s First Daughter 2:00 – 4:00 | $10 | Speaker: Laura Kamoie
Menokin Visitors Center | 4037 Menokin Road | Warsaw, VA
In a compelling, richly researched novel that draws from thousands of letters and original sources, bestselling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph—a woman who kept the secrets of our most enigmatic founding father and shaped an American legacy.
From her earliest days, Patsy Jefferson knows that though her father loves his family dearly, his devotion to his country runs deeper still. As Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, she becomes his helpmate, protector, and constant companion in the wake of her mother’s death, traveling with him when he becomes American minister to France.
It is in Paris, at the glittering court and among the first tumultuous days of revolution, that fifteen-year-old Patsy learns about her father’s troubling liaison with Sally Hemings, a slave girl her own age. Meanwhile, Patsy has fallen in love—with her father’s protégé William Short, a staunch abolitionist and ambitious diplomat. Torn between love, principles, and the bonds of family, Patsy questions whether she can choose a life as William’s wife and still be a devoted daughter.
Her choice will follow her in the years to come, to Virginia farmland, Monticello, and even the White House. And as scandal, tragedy, and poverty threaten her family, Patsy must decide how much she will sacrifice to protect her father’s reputation, in the process defining not just his political legacy, but that of the nation he founded.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Laura Kamoie has always been fascinated by the people, stories, and physical presence of the past, which led her to a lifetime of historical and archaeological study and training. She holds a doctoral degree in early American history from The College of William and Mary, published two non-fiction books on early America, and most recently held the position of Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy before transitioning to a full-time career writing genre fiction. Her debut historical novel, America’s First Daughter, co-authored with Stephanie Dray, allowed her the exciting opportunity to combine her love of history with her passion for storytelling. Laura lives among the colonial charm of Annapolis, Maryland with her husband and two daughters.
MARCH 24, 2016
From Mirador To Mayfair: Nancy Lancaster And The Country House Style
2:00 – 4:00 | $10 | Speaker: Susan J. Rawles, PhD
Menokin Visitors Center | 4037 Menokin Road | Warsaw, VA
Virginia-born tastemaker Nancy Lancaster (1897 – 1994) is a widely recognized source of the international design movement known as the British Country House Style. The style’s blending of key forms and materials, which resulted in domestic environments with historicist inflections, recalls Lancaster’s experience of her six-generation family home, Mirador, near Charlottesville. From post-Civil War Virginia to post-World War II England, Mirador to Mayfair examines the inspiration, implementation, and patronage of the Country House Style toward a better understanding of the role of interior decoration in the fashioning of individual and cultural identity.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Dr. Susan J. Rawles has been the Assistant Curator of American Decorative Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 2008, serving previously as Research Associate for the American department from 1995. She received a PhD in American studies from the College of William and Mary, an MA in the history of art from Rice University, and a BA in economics and government from Smith College. A specialist in American material culture of the colonial and revolutionary periods, she is particularly interested in the socio-historical context of art and has written and lectured on topics ranging from colonial portraiture to period interiors. Part of the 2010 reinstallation team for VMFA’s American art galleries, she co-authored the accompanying publication, American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2010).
We have some great programs on the roster for 2016. Here’s a peak at our February event.
Henry “Box” Brown The resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia. Who escaped from Richmond Va in a Box 3 feet long 2 1/2 ft deep and 2 ft wide entered according to act of Congress the year 1850 by Henry Box Brown in the clerk’s office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
Earlier that afternoon, some of Menokin’s Trustees were on hand to greet Dr. Dunn and his family as they arrived from a previous engagement in Charlottesville. Sarah Pope, Executive Director, made a brief presentation about Menokin and it’s revolutionary preservation plan to conserve and interpret this National Historic Landmark.
Guests, staff and trustees mingled with the Dunns, giving them a taste of Northern Neck hospitality, and some personal insights into the Glass House Project.
Dr. Dunn and his wife, Mary Maples Dunn, are greeted by Sarah Pope, Executive Director of Menokin.
Even Dr. Dunn could not resist the charms of Helen Murphy, former trustee of Menokin.
Sarah gave an overview of Menokin’s bold plan.
Tayloe Murphy, Foundation President, spoke with Jim Rogers and Beverly Rowland.
Trustee Rosemary Basile King explains the Menokin landscape to Tod and Barry Salisbury.
Then it was off to RCC. People came from far and near to attend the lecture. With space at a premium, many arrived early to get a good spot. The auditorium was full to capacity, with an overflow room taking those who were unable to make reservations.
The lecture wrapped up with a Q&A from the audience and a book signing.
Dr. Richard S. Dunn
Shout out to RCC for being such a generous and helpful host.
A capacity crowd with a live feed to an overflow room.
Guests lined up to purchase the book and made donations to Menokin.
Dr. Dunn was a trooper and signed many, many copies!
Guests then attended a lovely reception hosted by Catherine and Tayloe Emery at nearby Mount Airy. Because Mount Airy and owner John Tayloe III were a focus of the book, it felt most appropriate for attendees to gather there to engage and be inspired.
Sarah Pope (l) and Catherine Emery (r) at the Mount Airy reception
Looking toward the carriage entrance from the porch at Mount Airy.
Gwynne Tayloe of Mount Airy discusses the portraits in the great hall with the Dunns.
Tod and Barry Salisbury enjoyed the evening.
Menokin staff Mavora Donoghue (l) and Alice French (r) enjoyed relaxing with Trustees Ro King (2l) and Penelope Saffer (2r).
The lecture was video-taped and I’ll be sure to post a link to you tube as soon as it’s ready to share.