Boston Flora

Tag: Metropolitan Museum Of Art

  • Friday, June 12, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm – Florence Griswold Museum Annual Garden Luncheon

    Join friends at the Florence Griswold Museum on Friday, June 12 for a day brimming with art, beauty, & nature — while helping them care for an historic landscape.

    The day begins with prosecco and a garden-fresh lunch. Then hear from American art scholar Elliot Bostwick Davis— a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who will invite you into the world of one of America’s most iconic artists. The author of Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape will share how Hopper’s summers in 1920s Gloucester, Massachusetts set the stage for his monumental career, as well as how his wife and fellow artist, Josephine Nivison, became the driving force behind Hopper’s artistic evolution.

    Tour Miss Florence’s gardens in bloom, take in the stunning exhibition, “Revelations: A Decade of Collecting, 2016-2026,” and be delighted by Blooms with a View — floral arrangements inspired by works on view.

    Elegant dining by Gourmet Galley. Garden party attire suggested (and hats encouraged!). Tickets ($150) on sale at https://flogris.org/calendar/annual-garden-luncheon-2026/

  • Monday, October 16 – Saturday, October 21 – A Tour of Florence (Reservation Deadline March 6)

    This autumn, October 16 – 21, join The Royal Oak Foundation for a special tour in Florence. The cradle of the Renaissance, Florence was endowed with magnificent buildings and works of art by the illustrious Medici dynasty. Exploring the city, we will appreciate the endless fascination which it has held for British and American travelers and residents, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

    Highlights will include admiring Cosimo de Medici’s library of manuscripts in the monastery of San Marco, exclusive visits to Villa La Pietra, home and art collection of the late Sir Harold Acton, and to a villa set in a vast garden – landscaped in the English style – as well as hosted dinners at two of the great Florentine Renaissance palaces.

    Traveling with Royal Oak Heritage Circle members is Frank Dabell. Mr. Dabell is a specialist in the Italian Renaissance and teaches history of art at Temple University’s program in Rome, where he has lived for 20 years. Educated in England at Shrewsbury School, he is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and a former Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and lectures for the Met and other museums throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, including past journeys on Sea Cloud II where the Royal Oak Foundation was the co-sponsor with the Met. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and was recently on the advisory committee for the restoration of Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection in Sansepolcro. Deadline to reserve is March 6. View the Brochure and details at https://www.royal-oak.org//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ROF-FlorenceBrochure.pdf

  • Tuesday, January 4, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm – The Cloisters Museum and Gardens: Medieval Europe in Manhattan Webinar

    While New York City is well known for its towering modern skyscrapers, one of its most famous museums contains rooms and art that date back hundreds of years. But how exactly did a collection of old European chapels and structures find their way to New York, and what historic items were acquired to fill the gothic spaces to make it the premier collections of medieval art in America? It’s time to uncover the story behind the incredible art, architecture, and gardens of New York’s very own European medieval monastery.

    Join New York Adventure Club on January 4 as we explore the Cloisters museum and gardens in Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park — owned and governed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this museum in the neighborhood of Washington Heights is composed of architectural elements from various historic structures mostly in France and Spain along with prized medieval artworks including paintings and sculptures, stained glass windows, illuminated books, and more.

    Led by Sylvia Laudien-Meo — art historian, museum educator, and NYC tour guide — this virtual journey surrounding the MET Cloisters, which gives great insight into life during medieval times, will include:

    • The history of The Cloisters’ foundation and its general architecture within Fort Tryon Park
    • A virtual slideshow through the museum with its beautiful gardens and vistas
    • A discussion of the museum’s collection of medieval architecture and sculpture, artfully integrated into the modern museum architecture
    • An overview of the enchanting cloister gardens, planted with culinary and medicinal plants, as well as those used for dyeing fabrics like tapestries
    • A close look at many of the masterpieces of the collection, including paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts
    • A special focus on the Unicorn Tapestries and Robert Campin’s Merode Altarpiece

    Afterward, we’ll have a Q&A with Sylvia — any and all questions about the Cloisters are welcomed and encouraged!

    Can’t make it live? Don’t worry, you’ll have access to the full replay for one week!

    See you there, virtually! $10. Register HERE.

    *Immediately upon registering, you will receive a separate, automated email containing the link to join this webinar

  • Tuesday, March 16, 6:30 pm – Glebe House & Gertrude Jekyll’s Garden, Online

    The Glebe House, built about 1740, is celebrating its 96th year in operation in 2021 as an historic house museum and garden. It was the home of Rev. John Rutgers Marshall, his wife Sarah, nine children and three slaves from 1771 to 1786 and is furnished with period furniture including a wonderful collection of furniture made in Woodbury during the 18th century. By the 1920s the house had passed through several owners and fallen into great disrepair. The Glebe House was restored in 1923 under the direction of Henry Watson Kent, a pioneer of early American decorative arts and founder of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. One of the early historic house museums in the country, The Glebe House opened its doors to the public in 1925.

    In 1926, the famed English horticultural designer and writer Gertrude Jekyll was commissioned by board member Annie Burr Jennings (Colonial Dame, heiress to the Standard Oil fortune, living in Fairfield, Connecticut, Connecticut Trustee at Mount Vernon) to create an “old fashioned” garden to enhance the newly created museum. Although a small garden, when compared with the some 400 more elaborate designs she completed in England and on the continent, the Gertrude Jekyll Garden includes a classic English style mixed border and foundation plantings, and a planted stone terrace. For reasons unknown today, the garden Miss Jekyll planned was never fully installed in the 1920s and its very existence was forgotten. After the rediscovery of the plans in the late 1970s the project began in earnest in the late 1980s and is now being completed according to the original plans.

    This online lecture sponsored by Morven Museum & Garden and underwritten by KellerWilliams Realty, takes place online on March 16 at 6:30, and the speaker is LoriAnn Witte, Director of Glebe House. $18 Friends of Morven, $25 general public. Register HERE

  • Thursday, June 27, 6:30 pm – 7:45 pm – Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees

    William Bryant Logan, Certified Arborist, Founder and President of Urban Arborists, Inc., and author, will speak on June 27 at the Arnold Arboretum’s Hunnewell Building beginning at 6:30 pm.

    When his company was asked to pollard trees in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, William Bryant Logan was stymied. This prompted him to research and learn this ancient way of pruning that prompts thick nests of sprouts to form on major branches.

    The irony here is that pollarding (and the similar practice of coppicing) had been the preeminent way in which humans had tended trees from the last ice age to the Industrial Revolution. What would have seemed the most mundane of tasks to a villager in the Middle Ages had slipped from use, and even memory, in the twenty first century.

    Hear Logan speak of the many ways in which these lost ancient arts (including pruning, hazel creating living hedges, growing oak for ships) created and supported human cultures all over the world and how we once lived closely as partners with trees, as we can only hope to do again. Logan offers both practical knowledge about how to live with trees to mutual benefit and hope that humans may again learn what the persistence and generosity of trees can teach.

    William Bryant Logan is a practicing arborist and author of three acclaimed books on nature, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, and Air: The Restless Shaper of the World. In his book, Sprout Lands, Logan uncovers the millennial story of the call-and-response by which people and trees have lived together in the world. He reflects deeply on how we helped woodlands, but also how in a rapidly changing world, the sprouting of trees can save us.

    Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

  • Friday, October 3, 8:00 am – 3:30 pm – Nichols House Museum Symposium: In the House and on the Web, 21st Century Strategies for Interpreting Historic Interiors

    On Friday, October 3, five speakers from Europe and the United States will come together to share experiences from their museums and heritage sites which have successfully integrated technology into interpretations of their historic interiors and landscapes. From mobile applications to virtual recreations, learn from these 21st-century innovators and come away with cutting-edge ideas from museum professionals around the world. Please join The Nichols House Museum for this full-day event, 8 – 3:30, at The Boston Athenaeum, 10 1/2 Beacon Street in Boston. $75 fee.

    Speakers:

    Lee Glazer, PhD- Associate Curator, American Art, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
    Victoria Kastner – Historian, Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California
    Annie Kemkaran-Smith – Curator (Art Collections) Down House, National Collections Group, London, UK (pictured below)
    John A. Sibbald – Founder and First Chairman, Virtual Hamilton Palace Trust, Hamilton, Scotland
    Loic Tallon – Senior Mobile Manager, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
    Optional Activities

    Lunch is available either at the Union Club (additional $45 per person) or on your own. More information coming soon on a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to tour two recently re-installed British period rooms, the dining room from Hamilton Palace (1700) and the drawing room from Newland House (1748), with Thomas S. Michie, Russell B. and Andree Beauchamp Stearns Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of Europe. Additional fee will be required.
    Cancellation Policy

    Full refunds will be given for cancellations received by Friday, September 26, 2014. No refunds will be made after September 26, 2014. Register by calling 617-227-6993, email info@nicholshousemuseum.org, or register online at www.nicholshousemuseum.org/symposium_2014.php.

  • Wednesday, August 20, 4:00 pm – Monet: Painter, Plantsman

    Throughout his long life, Monet displayed a passionate regard for the beauty of nature. His principal activity was the creation of paintings that capture the sweep and colorful brilliance of the French landscape. Simultaneously, the artist seized every available opportunity to cultivate his own personal landscapes and sunny domestic gardens that, in turn, lent inspiration to his activity as a painter. His outstanding horticultural achievement, the vast flower garden adorning his house and studio at Giverny, is the perfect spot from which to view this Impressionist’s extraordinary genius. Hear about Monet in a lecture by Colta Ives at the Berkshire Botanical Garden on Wednesday, August 20, beginning at 4 pm in the Education Center. BBG members $15, non-members $20. Register at http://www.berkshirebotanical.org/ai1ec_event/monet-painter-plantsman/?instance_id=2606.

    Colta Ives retired from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, with the title Curator Emerita. She organized many exhibitions at the Museum, notably on 19th-century artists, including Bonnard, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh. She lectures at museums throughout America, as well as in Paris, Sydney and Melbourne, and is returning to the Metropolitan Museum soon, as Guest Curator for an exhibition on French Public Parks and Private Gardens in the Age of Impressionism, to be shown in 2016.

    http://0.tqn.com/d/arthistory/1/7/A/y/cdc_nga_2010-11_24.jpg

  • Saturday, November 7, 10 am – 12 noon – Impressionist in the Garden

    Gardening became a popular pastime in nineteenth-century France when exotic plants began arriving in quantity and rapid advances were made in hybridizing.  At the same time, vast renovations to its boulevards and parks turned Paris into an urban garden. The Impressionist painters recognized and appreciated the new interest in horticulture and hastened to picture it, as this lecture at the Berkshire Botanical Garden in West Stockbridge will show, as a sign of their modernity.  Colta Ives is Curator Emeritus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York where she has prepared exhibitions on Manet, Degas, Gauguin, Bonnard, and Van Gogh (see catalog cover below).  She has cultivated a woodland garden in Monterey, Massachusetts for more than thirty years and holds an M.S. in Landscape Design from Columbia University.  She is currently designing gardens in the Berkshires, Westchester County, and New York City. The date is Saturday, November 7, from 10 – noon, and the cost for BBG members is $16, non-members $21.  For more information, log on to www.berkshirebotanical.org.

    http://rgr-static1.tangentlabs.co.uk/media/9780300107203/vincent-van-gogh-the-drawings.jpg