Lectures & Conferences

In connection with the fall exhibition “The Paradox of Pearls: Accessorizing Identities in the Eighteenth Century,” the Library presents a lecture and a community talk. Both are free and open to the public. Advance registration requested.

Oct. 10 Lecture at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art Register here. 

Nov. 16 Talk at the Lewis Walpole Library Register here. 

Public Lecture 
 
at the Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main St, Hartford, CT 06103
 
Pearl Drops and Blackamoors: The Black Body and Pearlescent Adornment in European Art 
 
with Adrienne L. Childs, Art Historian and Distinguished Scholar at the Leonard A. Lauder Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art
 
October 10, 2024
 
5 pm gallery viewing
6 pm lecture 
 
Nicholaes Berchem, A Moor Offering a Parrot to a Lady (detail), c. 1660-70, oil on canvas, The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1961.29
 
European artists of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries often depicted Black figures wearing pearl ornaments. The dialogue between racial and chromatic blackness paired visually with pearly luminescence resulted in a contrast that evoked notions of luxury, distant lands, and exoticized portrayals of Black bodies. Art historian and curator Adrienne Childs explores the complexities of the Black body that was subjugated and enslaved in one context yet used to showcase luxuries in another. 
 
Meet in the galleries before the lecture to view works from the museum’s European decorative arts collection. 
 
This program is presented by The Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University in partnership with the Wadsworth Atheneum and The Amistad Center for Art & Culture. Additional support provided by the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation Fund at the Wadsworth Atheneum.     
 
Advance registration requested. Register here
 
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Lewis Walpole Library-Farmington Libraries Talk

at the Lewis Walpole Library, 154 Main Street, Farmington, CT

The Paradox of Pearls: Accessorizing Identities in the Eighteenth Century

with exhibition curator Laura Engel, Duquesne University

November 16, 2024

2 pm

half-length colored pastel portrait of a young woman with dark hair, wearing a yellow gown with rose robe trimmed in ermine. Pearls adorn her hair and dress

William Hoare, Portrait of Maria Walpole, c. 1742, pastel on paper, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, LWL Ptg. 152

From Queen Elizabeth I to Harry Styles the legacy of pearls is a story about self-fashioning. Pearls feature prominently in many pictures of celebrated figures from the past. Worn as jewelry—as embellishments of the body and apparel, or embedded in the settings of precious objects—pearls illuminate ideas about beauty, power, and style. Drawing upon materials in the Lewis Walpole Library, this talk considers how the varied and often contradictory meanings of this jewel were represented in period images and the ways in which practices from the past connect us to the enduring presence of pearls today.

Space is limited and advance registration through the Farmington Libraries site is required.  Registration open October 16 - November 16.