Needlework: “Death of General Wolfe,” Margaret Ansell, Tottenham, England, c. 1774-1776. Textile: worsted wool, linen; wood: pine; gesso, bole and gold leaf; glass framed: 22 1/8 x 29 x 2 5/8 in. Historic Deerfield, HD 66.198.
Join us for “Reawakening Materials: American Art, Empire, and Material Histories in Historic Deerfield’s Collection”: a public colloquium centered on Historic Deerfield’s collection of paintings, works on paper, and decorative arts from November 7-8, 2024. Questions of “empire” emerged from an interest in scholars rethinking the American experience from the lens of global European empires (England, Spain, France, The Netherlands, etc.) and U.S. imperialism. Historic Deerfield’s collection focuses on 18th-and 19th-century American art and material culture, and it is based in a landscape tied to Indigenous communities, histories of enslaved and free people of African descent, and settler colonialism. Our colloquium and speakers will explore relationships between empire and the materials of artworks in the collection, specifically asking how these art historical topics can be generative for recontextualizing HD’s place in the study of New England history, art, and culture. The program will engage with interpretations of settler colonialism through Historic Deerfield’s collection and ask how objects with their material histories broaden understandings of American empire, especially ones tied to the New England landscape and Indigenous histories.
The program will also workshop methods for telling these narratives and interpretive strategies through historic interiors, including objects tied to violence, trauma, and absence, and opportunities to bring in stories of joy and survivance. Our program reconsiders how empire and materials in Deerfield’s collection can be understood within a more complicated and entangled historical narrative, generating knowledge and new frameworks that can speak to the complexity of American art. The program includes invited scholars working in the fields of historical American art, African American and Diasporic Studies, Native American Studies, Conservation, and other allied fields. Speakers will investigate materials that reveal new ideas of empire, including: pastels, lacquer, birch, engravings on paper, and linen. Rather than limiting the discussion to traditional fine arts materials, scholars discuss material often neglected or forgotten in narratives of American art to uncover new ways we can reveal ideas of empire.
