Past Events

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    A Tale of Two Lockwoods

    September 29, 2014

    Seventh Regiment member and artist Lockwood de Forest was one of the primary importers of East Indian crafts and design to America in the late 19th century, an influence which can be viewed in the Armory’s period decoration. His admiration for the skills of Indian woodcarvers introduced a new decorative element into the American interior — the elegantly perforated jali screen. De Forest, a charismatic, swashbuckling figure who began as a landscape painter but soon expanded his interests into the decorative arts, developed his passion for Indian art and architecture under the tutelage of an older man, his friend and business partner Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was one of the most fascinating figures in the history of the British Raj. A brilliant illustrator and a professor of sculpture at the School of Art in Lahore, he met de Forest when the American visited India with his new wife in 1880. Lockwood Kipling’s son Rudyard based the Jungle Book stories on experiences from this period in the life of his family. Between them, Lockwood Kipling and Lockwood de Forest Indianized the decorative arts of Britain and the United States. Professor Tim Barringer explores the relationship between the two Lockwoods and their impact, which can still be felt today.

    Tim Barringer is the Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. His books include Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (1999; new edition, 2012) and Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain (2005). He co-authored American Sublime, and co-edited Art and the British Empire and Art and Emancipation in Jamaica. He is currently completing the book Broken Pastoral: Art and Music in Britain, Gothic Revival to Punk Rock and is co-curator of Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde (Tate, London 2012, Washington, Moscow and Tokyo 2013).

    Special Event
    This talk will be followed by a reception hosted by The Olana Partnership in association with their exhibition “All the Raj, Frederic Church and Lockwood de Forest: Painting, Decorating and Collecting at Olana” on display through November 2, 2014. The exhibition features oil sketches and paintings by Church and his student Lockwood de Forest, and a rare 19th century collection of decorative arts from India designed and provided by de Forest for the house at Olana. The reception will be open to all members of The Olana Partnership and Park Avenue Armory.

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment

    November 4, 2014

    Saint-Gaudens’ masterpiece of memorial sculpture The Shaw Memorial commemorates the service and sacrifice of the first regiment of African-Americans formed in the North during the Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment, and their commander Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (a former Seventh Regiment member). Dedicated in 1897 on the Boston Commons, the work is an artistic essay on loyalty, self-sacrifice, and commitment. Using classical forms of art and symbolism with a thoroughly modern theme, the artist presents a commanding image of uncommon courage. The continuing power of the monument rests partially in its accuracy of historical detail and its combination of the “ideal with the real” as Saint-Gaudens expressed it. Curator Sarah Greenough examines the enduring significance of this beloved monument. Original daguerreotypes and carte-de-visite portraits of the actual members of the 54th Massachusetts along with works by such contemporary artists as Richard Benson and Carrie Mae Weems tell the story of the legacy of the 54th’s celebrated Battle of Fort Wagner and their enduring significance.

    Sarah Greenough is the Senior Curator and Head of the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. She has organized numerous exhibitions for the Gallery, including Alfred Stieglitz (1983), On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: 150 Years of Photography (1989), and Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans (2009). She was also co-curator of Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840 – 1860, (2008), Tell It with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial (2013), and curator of Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg (2010). Greenough is the author of many publications, including My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Volume One, 1915 – 1933, Yale University Press, 2011. Her exhibitions and publications have won many awards, including the International Center of Photography Publications Award for On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: 150 Years of Photography and the George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award for Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set.

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    Stepchild Regiment

    November 18, 2014

    The campaign to establish New York State’s first black National Guard regiment emanates from the belief that martial institutions are an instrument of full and equal citizenship. New York, far from progressive on matters of race, refused to recognize black militias in the Civil War and witnessed the deadly and destructive Draft Riots of 1863, targeting helpless and innocent black citizens, their homes, businesses, and institutions. With no recognition in the Spanish-American War, black New Yorkers, buoyed by their growing numbers as well as economic and political influence, determined to organize an institution dedicated to that end. Under pressure, the State recognized the mostly African-American Fifteenth New York National Guard in 1916. The Fifteenth Regiment, Harlem’s “Rattlers,” went on to fight in France in 1917 and 1918, but their experience in training and combat differed sharply from that of the other two Upper East Side regiments, the Seventh Regiment and Squadron A. In the end, the Harlem Rattlers became one of the most decorated United States units in World War I.

    Jeffrey Sammons is a professor of history at New York University, where he has taught since 1989. He is a graduate of Rutgers College and earned his masters degree in history from Tufts University followed by his Ph.D. in American History at the University of North Carolina. From there, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston and in 1983 – 84 was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cape Town. In 1987, Sammons was named Henry Rutgers Research Fellow at Rutgers University-Camden and completed his critically acclaimed Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society. In 2001 he was awarded a fellowship by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and soon after received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2002 – 2003 in support of Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War which was published in April 2014 by the University Press of Kansas.

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    An Aristocracy of Wealth

    December 1, 2014

    The Gilded Years of the late 19th century were a vital and glamorous era in New York City. Families of great fortune sought to demonstrate their new status by building vast Fifth Avenue mansions filled with precious objects and important painting collections and hosting elaborate fêtes and balls. This is the moment of Mrs. Astor’s “Four Hundred,” the rise of the Vanderbilts and Morgans, Maison Worth, Tiffany & Co., Duveen, and Allard. Old and new wealth competed in excess expenditures, and members of our own Seventh Regiment (Van Rensselaers, Livingstons, Kemps, Harrimans, Belmonts, and Stewarts) were some of the best examples. Curator Jeannine Falino surveys the social and cultural history of these years through the lens of the architecture, furniture, fashion, and jewelry of the time.

    Jeannine Falino is an independent curator and museum consultant. She was formerly the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Currently she is adjunct curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, where she will open What Would Mrs. Webb Do? A Founder’s Vision in September. She is also co-curator of the Museum of the City of New York exhibition entitled Gilded New York: Design, Fashion & Society. Falino was co-curator for the major survey exhibition entitled Crafting Modernism: Mid-Century American Art and Design (Museum of Arts and Design, 2011), lead author and co-editor of Silver of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Vol. 3 (2008), guest co-curator for Artistic Luxury: Fabergé-Tiffany-Lalique (Cleveland Museum of Art, 2008), co-author and co-editor for American Luxury: Jewels from the House of Tiffany (Antique Collectors Club, 2008), and curator for Edge of the Sublime: Enamels by Jamie Bennett (Fuller Craft Museum, 2008).