Past Events

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    The American Sublime and the Civil War

    October 23, 2008

    Landscape painting ranks among the supreme achievements of American culture in the half century before the Civil War. We tend to associate landscape painting with the picturesque virtues of the countryside, an escape from the political and economic problems of the city and the nation. Yet, as this lecture reveals, landscape painters responded to the threat, and onset, of Civil War with powerful and troubled compositions which register the nation’s trauma. Among the artists to be discussed will be Frederic Church, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Martin Johnson Heade and Winslow Homer. The lecture closes with a re-examination of the role of landscape in the decades of reconstruction after the Civil War, when the Armory was built.

    Born and educated in England, Tim Barringer is Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. He has written widely on British and American art and was co-curator of the award-winning exhibition American Sublime, organized by Tate Britain in London, and seen at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art in Philadelphia. His books include Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain, and co-edited collections Art and the British Empire and Frederic Leighton. Recent exhibition catalogues include Opulence and Anxiety: Landscape Paintings from the Royal Academy and Art and Emancipation in Jamaica.

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    Stanford White, Architect

    November 12, 2008

    By the time of his death at fifty-three, Stanford White had transformed himself into the most celebrated architect in America. He was also one of its most prolific designers, a tastemaker of such stature that Harper’s Weekly declared he should be appointed Commissioner of Public Beauty. White’s passion for beauty was accompanied by an evolving taste. Early designs such as his collaboration on the Armory’s Veterans’ Room embraced the generous and inventive attributes of the Aesthetic Movement, while the work of his maturity reveals the same powerful imagination applied to a more traditional classical idiom. In spite of the diversity of architectural imagery in White’s portfolio, evidence of the hand and eye of the designer emerge with remarkable consistency, allowing us to develop a profile of the taste of Stanford White.

    This lecture coincides with the publication of Stanford White, Architect (Rizzoli, 2008) by Samuel G. White and Elizabeth White. Their previous collaboration, McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks, published in 2003, documents the institutional and commercial designs of America’s most famous architectural office. Mr. White’s first book, The Houses of McKim, Mead & White, is the definitive monograph of their residential commissions. As a practicing architect and a great-grandson of Stanford White, Sam White brings a unique perspective to his discussion of the work of that firm.

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    They Screamed Their Delight

    December 9, 2008

    It is unsurprising that, early in its history, the Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory hosted “monster” concerts featuring the music of Wagner. The late Gilded Age was the heyday of Wagnerism in America. Anton Seidl, the raven-haired high priest of New York’s Wagner cult, led summer con-certs at Coney Island 14 times a week; Wagner Nights sold out the 3,000-seat seaside Music Pavilion. When Tristan was given at the Met, a religious silence followed the final curtain, after which women in the audience “stood on their chairs and screamed their delight for what seemed hours” (The Musical Courier). In fact, Wagnerism in America was a progressive, even subversive, women’s movement. Joseph Horowitz will share a recording and inquire: How was the Liebestod experienced in 1890?

    Joseph Horowitz’s eight books include his award-winning Wagner Nights: An American History. His Classical Music in America (2005), which also revisits Gilded Age New York in detail, was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist. His most recent book is Artists in Exile: How Refugees from 20th Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts.  A former Executive Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, he has long served as an artistic advisor to various American orchestras. In 2001 he co-founded Post-Classical Ensemble of Washington, D.C., for which he serves as Artistic Director. He has curated many festivals and events celebrating Dvorak in New York (1892-95), including two concerts in October 2008 for the New York Philharmonic.