Art Appreciation   

Explore Glenview, an 1877 home on the National Register of Historic Places, designed by esteemed architect Charles W. Clinton. On a guided tour, discover the six fully restored period rooms, showcasing fine woodwork, furnishings, artwork, and architectural features that make it one of the most significant early Gilded Age residences open to the public. Glenview appears in HBO’s Emmy Award-winning series The Gilded Age as the home of socialite Mrs. Astor.

Join us for an illustrated discussion of a bold new history of American photography as depicted in "The New Art: American Photography, 1839–1910" exhibit at The Met (April 11-July 20, 2025). The show will feature a range of photographic formats from daguerreotypes to stereographs and cyanotypes by major artists and obscure and unknowns alike, who created works in small towns highlighting the dramatic changes to photography as a medium throughout the years. We’ll discuss and explore the evolution of photography as a cultural, commercial, artistic, and psychological preoccupation through the works presented in this exhibit.

Based on the Metropolitan Museum exhibition “Sargent and Paris” (April 27 - August 3, 2025), which focuses on the Paris decade of his youth, we will explore the full breadth of John Singer Sargent’s career. As one of the most popular American artists of the 19th century, Sargent has been hailed to unimaginable heights and severely criticized, achieved great fame, and created equally great scandals. This presentation will also include works by Sargent’s friend Claude Monet and his near contemporary Thomas Eakins, to create a comparative experience of his work.

With spring as our backdrop, we will explore eight timeless myths of gods and mortals—tales of love, transformation, and the changing of seasons—brought to life through Western art. From Psyche and Cupid to Persephone’s return from the underworld, the fleeting beauty of Hyacinth, and the fateful race of Atalanta, these stories symbolize renewal and rebirth, and along with countless other Greek and Roman myths, they have inspired a multitude of works of art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art alone holds over 14,000 related works. This lecture features more than 100 artworks from private collections and over 90 museums, including the Louvre, the Prado, the Tate, and the Met. Join us for a journey through myth and masterpiece, where gods and mortals meet in moments of passion, metamorphosis, and the eternal cycle of nature.