Interest in the history of color has been growing in recent decades, but few studies have examined color’s impact on specific cultural regions, such as New England. Historic Deerfield’s 2024 Fall Forum, Coloring New England’s Past (to be held in Deerfield on September 13-14, 2024) aims to address and examine this topic by convening a group of experts in the field to explore the vast subject of color and its history. Historic Deerfield invites paper proposals for its two-day forum. Submissions due by June 3, 2024.
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The Blog of Historic Deerfield
Historic Deerfield to Host Second Venue of American Folk Art Museum’s Unnamed Figures Exhibition
Historic Deerfield is thrilled to announce that it will be the second and only other location for the American Folk Art Museum’s exhibition, Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North. The exhibition will be on view at Historic Deerfield’s Flynt Center of Early American Life from May 1 to August 4, 2024.
Historic Deerfield Receives Gift of Rufus Porter Art
Image: Portrait Miniature of Sarah Hilliard. Attributed to Rufus Porter (1792– 1884) Cambridge, Massachusetts, ca. 1825. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper. Gift of Juliene and Carl M. Lindberg 2023.8.10
This large-scale acquisition includes several components related to Rufus Porter’s career as an artist, inventor, and publisher. A significant portion of the gift comprises close to thirty miniature portraits attributed to Porter and illustrates his entire career as an artist.
Historic Deerfield Debuts Vermont Furniture Exhibition
Image: Blanket Box (c. 1825) from the workshop of Thomas Matteson. Eastern white pine and paint. Gift of Patricia Passmore Alley and F. William Alley (2023.9.10)
The recent recipient of a generous donation of Vermont furniture and related decorative arts from the collection of William and Patricia Passmore Alley, Historic Deerfield is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition, Vermont Furniture from the Alley Collection.
Call for Papers – 2024 Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (founded in 1976) is pleased to announce the subject of its 2024 gathering, Into the Woods: New England Forests in Fact and Imagination, to be held at Historic Deerfield June 28-29, 2024. The seminar invites proposals for papers and presentations that address the rich and varied histories of the relationship between the peoples of New England and adjacent areas and their forests.
Historic Deerfield Now Accepting Applications for 2024 Undergraduate Summer Fellowship Program in Early American History and Material Culture
Historic Deerfield invites applications from college juniors and seniors to take part in an intensive, nine-week Summer Fellowship Program in History and Material Culture.
Historic Deerfield Appoints Lauren Whitley as Curator of Historic Textiles and Clothing
Whitley worked for many years as Senior Curator in the Department of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and in 2020 received the honorary designation of Senior Curator emerita. While at the MFA, Boston Lauren curated several exhibitions…
Call for Papers: The Arts and Crafts Movement in America’s Northeast
Historic Deerfield is thrilled to announce the acquisition of a masterpiece of Arts and Crafts furniture constructed by Madeline Yale Wynne (1847-1918), Deerfield’s leading proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Known as Garden of Hearts, the chest, with finely crafted, forged, hammered, carved, and painted elements, was made in 1903 and is an important example of Arts and Crafts furniture by a groundbreaking female artist.
Historic Deerfield Opens for the Season April 15
Welcome back! Historic Deerfield will soon reopen to the public in full! Over the long winter, only the Flynt Center of Early New England Life has been open, and only on the weekends. Starting April 15th, Historic Deerfield will be fully open to the public, Wednesday through Sundays and Holiday Mondays.
We are particularly excited to announce…
Historic Deerfield Reopens for the Season April 16
At Historic Deerfield, our spring tasks aren’t the same as those recommended to the rural New Englanders of over 150 years go. We don’t get our potatoes in the ground early, set up our asparagus beds, nor plow. But the same spirit of renewal and preparation holds sway for us as we prepare to receive our own favorite crop: visitors!