Boston Flora

Tag: Massachusetts Historical Society

  • Wednesday, May 4, 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Boston Park Rangers Mounted Unit 4th Annual Derby Dash

    Mystic, Frederick, Liberty, Otis, Baron and Winston invite to a fabulous evening Wednesday, May 4, from 6 – 8:30 at the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street in Boston.  Let’s break out the hats in preparation for the 142nd Kentucky Derby.  Festivities include a spirited Hat Contest for both gentlemen and ladies.  Ticket price includes complimentary libations and hors d’oeuvre.   Tickets are $150 ($125 under 35 years old) and may be purchased online at www.savebostonshorses.org using PayPal.  You may also mail checks made out to the Friends of the Boston Park Rangers Mounted Unit to PO Box 67147, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467.

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  • Tuesday, October 6, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Brother Gardeners

    Historian Andrea Wulf will speak at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum on Tuesday, October 6, from 7 – 8:30. Bringing to life the science and adventure of eighteenth-century plant collecting, The Brother Gardeners is the story of how six men created the modern garden and changed the horticultural world in the process. It is a story of a garden revolution that began in America. In 1733, colonial farmer John Bartram shipped two boxes of precious American plants and seeds to Peter Collinson in London. Around these men formed the nucleus of a botany movement, which included famous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus; Philip Miller, bestselling author of The Gardeners Dictionary; and Joseph Banks and David Solander, two botanist explorers, who scoured the globe for plant life aboard Captain Cook’s Endeavor. As they cultivated exotic blooms from around the world, they helped make Britain an epicenter of horticultural and botanical expertise. The Brother Gardeners paints a vivid portrait of an emerging world of knowledge and gardening as we know it today.
    Fee: free for sponsor members, $20 nonmembers. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277. Offered with the Massachusetts Historical Society.

  • Monday, October 5, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm – The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

    Andrea Wulf reveals in her new book the extraordinary life of the visionary German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and how he created the way we understand nature today. She will speak on Monday, October 5 beginning at 5:30 at the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street in Boston.

    Though almost forgotten today, his name lingers everywhere from the Humboldt Current to the Humboldt penguin. Humboldt was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. Wulf traces Humboldt’s influences through the great minds he inspired in revolution, evolution, ecology, conservation, art and literature. In The Invention of Nature, Wulf brings this lost hero to science and the forgotten father of environmentalism back to life. Fee: free for Arnold Arboretum and Massachusetts Historical Society members, $20 nonmembers. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

  • Wednesday, September 30, 5:30 pm – Wilderness in America: A History of America and the Land from Conquest to Conservation

    America has a conservation legacy unmatched anywhere in the world. Almost 30 percent of the land in the United States—National Parks, National Forests, wild rivers, wilderness and other lands—are owned by the people of the United States. This film, Wilderness in America, tells the story of four centuries of American history and describes a changing view of the land by a number of leaders, writers, artists, photographers, teachers, and organizations. Join the Arnold Arboretum and the Massachusetts Historical Society on Wednesday, September 30 for a reception at 5:30 pm at the MHS headquarters, 1154 Boylston Street in Boston, followed by a Fulcrum Film screening at 6. Free, but registration requested at www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu or by calling 617-384-5277.  You may see a trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvbyLW-rdU4.

  • Wednesday, March 18, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm – Arthur Shurcliff

    The next lecture sponsored by the Massachusetts Historical Society will take place Wednesday, March 18, from 5:30 – 7, on Arthur Shurcliff. In 1928 Boston landscape architect Arthur A. Shurcliff began what became one of the most important examples of the American Colonial Revival landscape—Colonial Williamsburg, a project that stretched into the 1940s and included town and highway planning as well as residential and institutional gardens. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894, Shurcliff immediately went back to school at Harvard University where his mentor, Charles Eliot, helped him piece together a program in the Art History Department, the Lawrence Scientific School and the Bussey Institute. Upon graduation with a second Bachelor of Science, he worked in Frederick Law Olmsted’s office for eight years, acquiring a broad and sophisticated knowledge of the profession. When he opened his practice in 1904, Shurcliff emphasized his expertise in town planning. Two decades later, when he was tapped to be Chief Landscape Architect at Colonial Williamsburg, he was a seasoned professional whose commissions included his Boston work, campus design, town planning, and a robust practice in private domestic design. How he utilized the skills he acquired over the years, and how his professional expertise intermingled with his avocational interests in history, craftsmanship, and design is the subject of Cushing’s biography—a story that inexorably sweeps him to his work in the restoration and recreation at Colonial Williamsburg.

    Elizabeth Hope Cushing, Ph.D., is the author of a newly published book about Boston landscape architect Arthur A. Shurcliff (1870–1957), based on her doctoral dissertation for the American and New England Studies program at Boston University. She is also a coauthor, with Keith N. Morgan and Roger Reed, of Community by Design, released in 2013. Cushing is a practicing landscape historian who consults, writes, and lectures on landscape matters. She has written cultural landscape history reports for the Taft Art Museum in Cincinnati, The National Park Service, the Department of Conservation and Recreation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and other institutions and agencies. Her contributor credits include Pioneers of American Landscape Design (McGraw Hill Companies, 2000), Design with Culture: Claiming America’s Landscape Heritage (University of Virginia Press, 2005), Shaping the American Landscape (University of Virginia Press, 2009), and Drawing Toward Home (Historic New England, 2010). She has received a grant from the Gill Family Foundation to write a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., which she is currently researching.

    This series has been made possible by the generous underwriting of Stephen Stimson Associates Landscape Architects and is cosponsored by the Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Nichols House Museum.  $10 fee, (no charge for Fellows and Members of the MHS, Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Nichols House Museum) and pre-registration required at https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/EventDetail.asp?cguid=76FBBAD5-59FC-442D-8347-A5AE40DBF561&eid=50860&sid=A801527F-4B9A-49B4-9B54-FCBE293D2EFE

  • Wednesday, March 11, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm – The Brookline Troika: Olmsted, Richardson, Sargent and the Planning of a “Model Community”

    The Massachusetts Historical Society presents The Brookline Troika: Olmsted, Richardson, Sargent and the Planning of a “Model Community” on Wednesday, March 11, at their offices at 1154 Boylston Street, with a reception at 5:30 and lecture at 6:00.  Keith Morgan, Director of Architectural Studies at Boston University is the featured speaker.

    Derived from the recently publish book, Community by Design: The Olmsted Office and the Making of Brookline, Massachusetts, this lecture will explore the close and dynamic relationship of the country’s leading landscape architect, architect, and horticulturalist in the evolution of Boston’s premier suburb. These three men lived within easy walking distance of each other in the Green Hill section of Brookline and used their private residences and landscapes as teaching and professional spaces as well. Their friendships and (occasional) conflicts informed the character of the suburban development for a community that called itself “the richest town in the world” and believed that its model was worthy of emulation.

    Keith N. Morgan is a Professor of the History of Art & Architecture and American & New England Studies at Boston University, where he has taught since 1980. He currently direct BU’s Architectural Studies Program and is a former national president of the Society of Architectural Historians. Written in collaboration with Elizabeth Hope Cushing and Roger Reed, Community by Design was published in 2013 by the University of Massachusetts Press for the Library of American Landscape History and received the Ruth Emery Prize of the Victorian Society in America.

    This series has been made possible by the generous underwriting of Stephen Stimson Associates Landscape Architects and is cosponsored by the Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Nichols House Museum. $10 fee (no charge for Fellows and Members of the MHS, Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Nichols House Museum.) Register online at https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/EventDetail.asp?cguid=76FBBAD5-59FC-442D-8347-A5AE40DBF561&eid=50859&sid=28E3AC1C-BE75-4D62-BB6E-EC1C9D0EE6AB

  • Tuesday, March 10, 5:15 pm – 7:30 pm – Fear of an Open Beach: The Privatization of the Connecticut Shore and the Fate of Coastal America

    The Massachusetts Historical Society will present a free lecture on Tuesday, March 10 at their offices at Massachusetts Avenue in Boston.  Andrew W. Kahrl of University of Virginia will speak on Fear of an Open Beach: The Privatization of the Connecticut Shore and the Fate of Coastal America.  Comments will be made by Karl Haglund of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. This essay traces the rise of private beaches along the Connecticut shore and the efforts of municipalities to protect exclusionary laws from the effects of civil rights movements. It argues that overdeveloped coastlines have been the product of racial and class segregation; thus, the battle over public access to the nation’s shoreline during the 1970s sheds light on the roots of the environmental crisis facing America’s coast.

    Please rsvp by emailing seminars@masshist.org. You may receive advance copies of the seminar paper.

  • Wednesday, March 4, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm – Charles Eliot and the Modernization of Boston’s Landscape

    Charles Eliot was the son of Harvard President Charles William Eliot, a visionary landscape architect, and protégé of Frederick Law Olmsted. He inspired the 1891 Trustees of Public Reservations — what is now the oldest regional land trust in the world — and had a central role in shaping the Boston Metropolitan Park System. He was the guiding vision behind the transformation of the banks of Charles River in Cambridge and, although he did not live to see his plans reach fruition, his work accelerated the rescue of the Charles from a virtual sewer to one of the most picturesque features of region’s landscape. On Wednesday, March 4, from 5:30 – 7 pm, at the Massachusetts Historical Society offices at 1154 Boylston Street in Boston, Professor Anita Berizbeitia will talk about Eliot’s work and his legacy in landscape design.

    Anita Berrizbeitia is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Degree Programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her research focuses on design theories of modern and contemporary landscape architecture, the productive aspects of landscapes, and Latin American cities and landscapes. Berrizbeitia has taught design theory and studio, most recently at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, where she was Associate Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. Her studios investigate innovative approaches to the conceptualization of public space, especially on sites where urbanism, globalization, and local cultural conditions intersect. From 1987 to 1993, she practiced with Child Associates, Inc., in Boston, where she collaborated on many award-winning projects. She was awarded the 2005/2006 Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, she studied architecture at the Universidad Simon Bolivar before receiving a BA from Wellesley College and an MLA from the GSD.

    The Landscape Architects series of the Massachusetts Historical Society has been made possible by the generous underwriting of Stephen Stimson Associates Landscape Architects and is cosponsored by the Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Nichols House Museum. $10 fee (no charge for Fellows and Members of MHS, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and the Nichols House Museum.) Register online at https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/EventDetail.asp?cguid=76FBBAD5-59FC-442D-8347-A5AE40DBF561&eid=50858&sid=30B92800-1EE0-40A8-94EC-6D7F80E0E8E9

  • Wednesday, July 30, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm – John Barleycorn vs. Sir Richard Rum: Alcohol, the Atlantic, and the Distilling of Colonial Identity

    The Massachusetts Historical Society will hold a free Brown Bag lunch lecture on Wednesday, July 30 entitled John Barleycorn vs. Sir Richard Rum: Alcohol, the Atlantic, and the Distilling of Colonial Identity, 1650 – 1800.  The speaker is Kristen Burton of University of Texas at Arlington.  Kristen’s project examines the shifting perceptions of spirituous liquors in the Atlantic World throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Focusing on the rise of commercial distilling, particularly in regard to rum, gin, and whiskey, her research explores the evolution of liquors from their use a wholesome source of medicine to a pernicious, societal threat. The talk will take place at 1154 Boylston Street in Boston.  For more information visit www.masshist.org. Image from www.history.org.

  • Saturday, March 29, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Tell It With Pride

    The Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) and the Friends of the Public Garden are co-presenting a special event of talks and exhibit tours related to the MHS Tell It with Pride exhibition. The event is in commemoration of the memorial designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens that honors the 1863 Civil War battle of Fort Wagner led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. Unveiled on May 31st, 1897, and located on the edge of the Boston Common facing the State House, the Shaw/54th Memorial is an important landmark in Boston, a monument created in gratitude to Shaw and the 54th Regiment’s bravery in battle.

    On Saturday, March 29th, visitors are encouraged to come and celebrate both the iconic statue and the people keeping its spirit alive. At 1:00 p.m. that day, you can meet the men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment Company A, a group of civilian re-enactors who do living historical displays, educational lessons and Civil War period encampments and re-enactments. This group is also very involved in Making History on the Common, an event hosted annually by the Friends of the Public Garden.

    At 2:00 p.m. that same day, listen to a talk by Kathryn Greenthal, author of the book Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Master Sculptor, and Henry Duffy, the curator of the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site (located in Cornish, New Hampshire) about the creator of this landmark.

    This event is open to the public and free of charge, but registration is required. If you are interested in attending, please register online at this link or call the MHS reservations line at 617-646-0560.

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