THE BOSTON WHIRLWIND: JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING IN BOSTON

Boston Symposium group shot at the Shirley Eustis House. Click to enlarge image.

When “All About Boston,” was being planned, Executive Director Penny Hunt commented that the title could be taken two ways: we’d be learning all about Boston, but we’d also be going ALL ABOUT Boston.

We certainly did both! A benefit of being associated with so many professionals in the American arts is the opportunity we have to delve deeper, stay later, see more than we could as casual visitors. Our Boston experiences illustrate that perfectly. At the Portland Museum of Art we saw the State Department’s traveling exhibit, “Becoming a Nation,” in the best possible way: with its curator, Jonathan Fairbanks. The staff at the museum extended themselves to make our visit perfect.

Eighteenth-century carriage belonging to the Royal Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Governor Shirley, at the Shirley Eustis house. Click to enlarge image.

We visited a whole spectrum of domestic arrangements. The streets of Beacon Hill welcomed us on a wind-whipped tour of private and public buildings. In Dedham, the colony’s second-oldest town, we visited the 1636 Fairbanks House, America’s oldest surviving timber frame home. The mid-18th-century Tate House survived un“improved” into the present. The imposing Georgian mansion of Royal governor William Shirley stands, literally, above it all. Sunday took us to Newburyport, to experience the spiritual and the material: the frame Rocky Hill Meeting House, standing just as built; and the Newburyport Historical Society’s enthralling accumulation of its community’s worldly goods.

Jonathan Fairbanks with Gery Ward, The Katherine Lane Weems Senior Curator of Decorative Arts & Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, and the honored Jonathan Fairbanks Lecturer for the Boston Symposium.

Another benefit of the Trust’s professional associations is our access to the best scholarship in all the related fields of arts and letters. Gerald and Barbara McLean Ward, and Jane and Richard Nylander are couples who work at the highest levels, jointly and individually. They are also members of what might be called The Jonathan Corps: all have longtime professional connections to our President.

As the Jonathan L. Fairbanks Lecturer, Gerry Ward used a series of “signature” objects to illumine “Boston’s identity” through furniture. Later we saw many of these pieces in person when Gerry showed us through the American Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts where he is Curator. Barbara Ward showed us “Early Boston Through its Silver.” Richard Nylander traced the astonishing career of Bostonian John Doggett from looking glass and frame maker to art entrepreneur. Jane Nylander took us from the needlework pictures of Mrs. Rowson’s School for Young Ladies (1797-1822) to its impressive educational achievements. Karina Corrigan, Associate Curator of Asian Export Art at Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum (and former Dewey Lee Curtis Scholar), talked about the rules of the China trade, the New England merchants, and the goods traded between East and West.

Trust member Chip Henderson of Womelsdorf, PA, takes to the Pulpit at the 18th century Rocky Hill Meeting House near Newburyport, MA, owned by Historic New England who have kept it in original condition.

When trying to understand an object, this rule applies: ask somebody who’s made one. We had a chance to learn about the 17th century’s significant pieces of furniture from a man who has made their counterparts: Peter Follansbee, carver and joiner of the Plimoth Plantation. Furniture conservator and scholar Robert Mussey described the life and work of the legendary John and Thomas Seymour, helping us to see it as “a multi-facetted transmission of culture” from old England to New England.

Boston’s cemeteries are legend. The gravestones of King’s Chapel and the monuments of Forest Hills showed us the extremes of Boston’s efforts to memorialize its members.

Evenings were very special. We had the fun of attending the 48th Ellis Memorial Antiques Show, eldest of America’s great shows. Members attending our symposiums admit cheerfully that they enjoy shopping and window shopping as much as “talking shop.” We tried some of Boston’s truly fine restaurants. And we visited “Gore Place,” the gracious home of Christopher and Rebecca Gore, for a sumptuous evening reception.

Nineteenth-century wall murals by Rufus Porter were seen in a private house in Portland, ME.

The true summary of the weekend came from Sinclair Hitchings, Boston Public Library’s Keeper of Prints. Saying that no matter how hard we try we don’t quite “get” the early decades of the 17th century, he talked about the puritans’ life here. A hard life, one in which they worked for everything they got, denied themselves goods but bought land instead, and valued education next only to religion. That, he said, is the reason they’re the real founders of our freedoms: because when you turn out youngsters who can read, they read a lot more than their society can control. “The puritan experiment failed but the puritan legacy is central to what we look on ourselves to be.”

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