Start your weekend off with a Friday evening in the Trumbauer-designed Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a private curator’s tour focusing on classical revival in American decorative arts of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Dr. David Barquist, the H. Richard Dietrich Jr. Curator of American Decorative Arts, will compare established European decorative antecedents with local examples.
The tour will begin with English precursors, such as the drawing room from Lansdowne House in London by Robert Adam, and compare it with American translations such as the interior elements from the Ezekiel Hershey Derby House by Charles Bullfinch in Salem, Massachusetts. Barquist will also compare works by European artisans – such as Josiah Wedgwood, Paul Storr, and Georges Jacob – to those made by the American craftsmen they influenced.
The objects on view in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s American collection will demonstrate the stylistic changes from the later 18th-century, Adamesque classicism to more archaeological classicism (aka Greek Revival) of the early 19th century.
Dr. David Barquist is the H. Richard Dietrich Jr. Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and was previously the Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale University Art Gallery. As a major authority on American silver, Barquist has written Myer Myers: Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York (2001), among other publications. He holds a B.A. degree in fine arts from Harvard University, an M.A. degree from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University.
Tour registration includes two-day entry to the museum’s permanent collections and non-ticketed exhibitions, as well as the Rodin Museum and Perelman Building.
Registration/Fees:
ICAA members: $20
General public: $25
Advance registration is required as spots are limited.