Tuesday, May 1st from 6-7pm at Rosecliff, 548 Bellevue Avenue
In his 1882 lecture “The House Beautiful,” Oscar Wilde urged American audiences to reform their lives by redecorating their houses, and he presented the Peacock Room—the infamous London interior by expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler—as a model to emulate. Dr. Lee Glazer, Curator of American Art at the Freer/Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC, will trace the story of the room’s creation, its place in the history of the Aesthetic movement, and its lingering afterlife in the twentieth century and beyond.
Lee Glazer specializes in the American art of the Gilded Age. Since joining the Freer/ Sackler in 2007, Dr. Glazer has organized a number of exhibitions and is the author of A Perfect Harmony: The American Collection in the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art (2013), co-editor of James McNeill Whistler in Context (2008), East West Interchanges in American Art (2012), and Palaces of Art: Whistler and the Art Worlds of Aestheticism (2013). In 2011 she led the reinstallation the Peacock Room to its 1908 appearance, when its shelves were filled with Asian ceramics collected and arranged by museum founder Charles Lang Freer, and she is the author of the accompanying publication, The Peacock Room Comes to America (2012). Dr. Glazer is currently working with the Freer/Sackler’s Department of Conservation and Scientific Research on a cross-disciplinary study of Whistler’s watercolors that will be the basis of a special exhibition and publication planned for 2018.
Advance ticket purchase is required. Preservation Society Members $10 / General Public $15. Purchase tickets online or call 401-847-1000 ext. 178
