CALENDAR 2024-2025
Mon. April 21
Thomas Michie, “New England’s French Connection:
Yankee Entrepreneurs in Post-Revolutionary Paris
7:00 pm Light Refreshments • 7:30 pm Lecture
In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, American merchants eagerly sought new markets and opportunities for trade in Europe and beyond. New England merchants who went to France in the wake of the French Revolution were entrepreneurs and adventurers. Some amassed considerable fortunes, owned mansions in Paris, purchased former royal estates, and imported French furniture and other luxury goods to the United States. Others became overextended and died penniless, their names largely forgotten. Through portraits, architecture, and surviving decorative arts, this illustrated lecture examines the lives of these Yankee entrepreneurs and traces New England’s lasting love affair with France’s Ancien Régime.
Thomas Michie is Senior Curator Emeritus of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He joined the staff of the MFA in 2009. Previously he was curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum in Providence.
He is co-author of catalogs of decorative arts at the MFA, LACMA, RISD, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the U. S. Department of State. A graduate of Williams College, he holds an M. Phil. degree in History of Art from Yale University. He has served on the boards of the Decorative Arts Society, the American Ceramic Circle, and American Friends of Attingham. He currently serves as a trustee and chair of the Collections Committee at the Worcester Art Museum. Please join us in welcoming Thomas to Alexandria!
Mon. May 19
Nick Stagliano, “Hanns Weinberg and the Antique Porcelain Company”
7:00 pm Light Refreshments • 7:30 pm Lecture
Hanns Weinberg (1900–76) fled Germany in 1938 and settled in London, where in 1945 he opened The Antique Porcelain Company – a large shop in New Bond Street that sold carpets, furniture, sculptures, and predominantly porcelain. He became the most important dealer of antique porcelain in England and America in the second half of the twentieth century, with shops opened in New York in 1957 and in Zurich in 1972. The Antique Porcelain Company sold porcelain to every significant collector and to the many important museums, from the Getty to the Met and the Louvre. He was regularly mentioned in the newspapers in London and New York for the astronomical prices he paid for works of art at auction, and he was notorious as much for the huge prices he charged as for his inimitable personality, and always for the quality of his stock. In addition to porcelain, Weinberg also dealt in Renaissance jewels, gold boxes, Chinese jades, French furniture, and more. This richly illustrated lecture will discuss some of the most significant objects that passed through Weinberg’s hands and which today are in some of the greatest collections in the world.
Nick Stagliano is a specialist in eighteenth-century European ceramics and decorative arts. He works at Michele Beiny Inc., the preeminent dealer in antique porcelain in the United States. Nick graduated from Hamilton College and earned his master’s degree in the history of the decorative arts from the program offered jointly by The New School and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where he was a Curatorial Fellow in the Product Design and Decorative Arts department. Prior to graduate school, Nick worked in non-profit fundraising at The Juilliard School and The Frick Collection. He is the Co-Chairman of the French Porcelain Society and a member of the Board of the Connecticut Ceramics Circle. Please join us in welcoming Nick to Alexandria!
PLEASE REGISTER GUESTS WITH karen.d.paul1948@gmail.com. Suggested contribution for guests attending a one-time lecture is $10.
SNOW POLICY: In the event we must cancel a lecture at the last moment, we will attempt to notify you by email and post the cancellation on our site. If you do not have email, or do not see it on the site (as we may not have had enough time to get the message up), please phone the Lyceum, 703-838-4994, to see if it is open before starting out.