Great Gatsby Tea
2019-11-03 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States
The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum’s Great Gatsby Tea will be a luxurious whirlwind of delicious refreshments that will immerse our guests into the grand and extravagant era of Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s dashing and daring anti-hero.
The event, chaired by LMMM Trustee Hunter Arton will feature a talk entitled, Fashion for a New Era: Clothing the Modern Woman, by Barnum Curator and Clothing Historian Adrienne Saint-Pierre. Come experience this memorable teatime, with a menu worthy of the Great Gatsby.
Women’s clothing styles were transformed in the 1910s and 20s by the need—and desire—for more practical garments than those worn in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. More women were entering the workforce, and the impacts of World War I were pervasive, even affecting the fashion and textile industries. Perhaps most intriguing to us today is that this was the era when women’s voices were finally heard and the cause for suffrage won its long-fought battle. Join us for a fascinating look at what women wore and why, from everyday togs to the most glamorous gowns. Ms. Saint-Pierre will present an illustrated talk about fashion of the teens and twenties and how it defined “the modern woman.”
Photo credit: Detail of Film star and “flapper” icon Mary Louise Brooks poses in a satin dress and fur-trimmed velvet coat, 1927, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

12:00 p.m. Holiday Exhibit Tour: Toys, Trains, and Magnificent Trees
2019-11-20 12:00 - 2020-01-05 13:00 | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States
The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum kicks off the Holiday Season with a new exhibition entitled, Toys, Trains and Magnificent Trees: Illuminating Christmas at the Mansion.
The exhibit, curated by Trustee Mimi Findlay and the LMMM Curatorial Committee will capture the enchantment of the holiday season, with glamorous tree displays, while paying special tribute to the sesquicentennial of the Transcontinental Railroad. Toy trains will be displayed under the tree in the Museum’s Library to mark the railroad’s anniversary and highlight LeGrand Lockwood‘s invention known as the Palace Car. Vintage toy trains on display are from the LMMM Permanent Collection as well as on loan from the Wilton Historical Society.
The Mansion will also feature 21st century holiday decorations with magnificent trees and seasonal displays by renowned interior designer Victoria Vandamm of Vandamm Interiors and award-winning Trudy Dujardin of Dujardin Design Associates, Inc. The Herter Brothers’ grand Victorian staircase will be adorned by silk floral designer Danna DiElsi, owner of The Silk Touch.

1:00 p.m. Holiday Exhibit Tour: Toys, Trains, and Magnificent Trees
2019-11-20 13:00 - 2020-01-05 14:00 | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States

2:00 p.m. Holiday Exhibit Tour: Toys, Trains, and Magnificent Trees
2019-11-20 14:00 - 2020-01-05 15:00 | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States

3:00 p.m. Holiday Exhibit Tour: Toys, Trains, and Magnificent Trees
2019-11-20 15:00 - 2020-01-05 16:00 | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States

12:30 p.m. Holiday Exhibit Tour: Toys, Trains, and Magnificent Trees
2019-11-27 12:30 - 2020-01-05 13:30 | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States

1:30 p.m. Holiday Exhibit Tour: Toys, Trains, and Magnificent Trees
2019-11-27 13:30 - 2020-01-05 14:30 | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States

2:30 p.m. Holiday Exhibit Tour: Toys, Trains, and Magnificent Trees
2019-11-27 14:30 - 2020-01-05 15:30 | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States

"'The Work Must Be Done': Women of Color & The Right to Vote" by the Connecticut Historical Society
2020-06-11 17:30 - 18:30 | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States
As the nation, and Connecticut, prepare to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment which legalized women’s right to vote, attention is growing about the critical need to identify and raise up the stories of the women of color who participated in the fight for suffrage and those who, like their white counterparts, were against the enfranchisement of women. Historically, research about the fight to win the right to vote has focused on the white women who were both for and against this act. Due to the internalized racism of many of the national and state-wide suffrage organizations, women of color, and particularly African American women, were denied agency within these activist organizations. This does not mean that women of color were not involved in the fight for and against suffrage. They absolutely were. Women of color were active leaders who developed their own associations, both nationwide and state-based, to achieve social and political reforms, including working for woman suffrage.
Ilene Frank, Chief Curator, and Karen Li Miller, Research Historian at the Connecticut Historical Society with Professor Brittney Yancy, Goodwin College, will present new research about Connecticut’s women of color who were involved in the woman suffrage movement, such as Mary Townsend Seymour, Rose Payton, Minnie Glover, Daisy Daniels, and others. The program will include conversation on the importance of having a history that is inclusive and participants will examine how this history ties into current civic issues around voting.
Funding for this project is made possible by the State of Connecticut and the National Endowment for the Humanities, both of which provide significant support to Connecticut Humanities.
Admission:
Free or $5 suggested donation. Please consider making a donation to the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum to support its virtual educational and cultural programs during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Image credit: Colored Women’s Business League Broadside, 1921. Connecticut Historical Society Collection

A Virtual Talk on American Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams
2020-07-12 14:00 - 15:00 | CT
A Virtual Talk on American Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams by Author & Scholar Eve Kahn

Revolutionary artist Mary Rogers Williams (1857—1907), a baker’s daughter from Hartford, Connecticut, biked and hiked from the Arctic Circle to Naples, exhibited from Paris to Indianapolis, trained at the Art Students League, chafed against art world rules that favored men, wrote thousands of pages about her travels and work, taught at Smith College for nearly two decades, but sadly ended up almost totally obscure.
The book, Forever Seeing New Beauties, reproduces her unpublished artworks that capture pensive gowned women, Norwegian slopes reflected in icy waters, saw-tooth rooflines on French chateaus, and incense hazes in Italian chapels, and it offers a vivid portrayal of an adventurer, defying her era’s expectations.
Author Eve M. Kahn is an independent scholar specializing in art and architectural history, design and preservation, and was weekly Antiques columnist at The New York Times, 2008—2016. She contributes regularly to the Times, The Magazine Antiques, Apollo, and Atlas Obscura.

Photo Credits: Waterford: Early Morning—Waterford (also called Aurore and Morning Waterford), 1897 pastel, 5½ x 7 in. Mary’s view of theConnecticut shoreline hamlet where her artist friend
Henry Cooke White lived, and long preserved her artworks and archives. Eve M. Kahn collection and
Eve Kahn photo courtesy of Katherine Lanza

Guided 45 Minute Tour: 12:00pm - 12:45pm
2020-07-29 12:00 - 12:45, 2020-08-01 12:00 - 12:45, 2020-08-02 12:00 - 12:45, 2020-08-05 12:00 - 12:45, 2020-08-08 12:00 - 12:45, 2020-08-09 12:00 - 12:45, 2020-08-12 12:00 - 12:45, 2020-08-15 12:00 - 12:45 and 2 more dates | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States
Enjoy the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum on a Guided Tour. At 45 minutes, the Tour includes the majestic first floor of the Mansion.

Guided 45 Minute Tour: 2:00pm - 2:45pm
2020-07-29 14:00 - 14:45, 2020-08-01 14:00 - 14:45, 2020-08-02 14:00 - 14:45, 2020-08-05 14:00 - 14:45, 2020-08-08 14:00 - 14:45, 2020-08-09 14:00 - 14:45, 2020-08-12 14:00 - 14:45, 2020-08-15 14:00 - 14:45 and 1 more date | Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, 06850, United States

A Virtual Talk on Francis Scott Fitzgerald by Author Richard “Deej” Webb
2020-08-06 17:30 - 18:30 | CT
A Virtual Talk on Francis Scott Fitzgerald by Author Richard “Deej” Webb

On Thursday, August 6, 2020, at 5:30 p.m., the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum will present author Richard “Deej” Webb for an illustrated virtual talk and live reading of his book titled, Boats Against the Current. Deej will take questions from viewers after his presentation.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned for five months in the summer of 1920 in a modest gray house in Westport, Connecticut. It was an experience that had a more profound impact on both of their collective works than any other place they lived. It was, for Scott and Zelda, their honeymoon. Having just gotten married and after being kicked out of some of New York City’s finest hotels, they were, for the first time, in their very own place, albeit for only five months. It was a time that Scott Fitzgerald called “the happiest year since I was eighteen.” He had, after all, just achieved success with his first novel, This Side of Paradise, and was suddenly awash with money.
The Fitzgeralds lived a wild life of drinking, driving and endless partying while living in suburban Connecticut. As it happens, living near the beach, they were neighbors to a larger-than-life reclusive multi-millionaire, F.E. Lewis.
Historian Richard Webb grew up in Westport a few doors down the street from where the Fitzgeralds had lived some forty years earlier. Fascinated with the Fitzgeralds, when Webb learned that author Barbara Probst Solomon, who grew up across the river from the F.E. Lewis estate, proposed in The New Yorker that Westport was the real setting for Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, he was stirred to actively research her claim.
Boats Against the Current, illustrated with never-before-seen photos from the Lewis family, tells the real story behind the famous novel and its tragic hero, debunking the long-held belief that the book was solely inspired by the Fitzgerald’s time in Great Neck, across the Sound in Long Island.
Richard “Deej” Webb is an author, an award-winning educator, and a documentary filmmaker. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, he taught history for twenty-four years at both the high school and college levels. A featured presenter in the Connecticut Public Broadcasting documentary Prohibition: Connecticut Goes Dry, Webb is also co-creator and co-producer with Robert Williams of a documentary film about the Fitzgeralds in Connecticut, Gatsby in Connecticut: The Untold Story, which is a companion to this book. Webb serves as an advisor and board member to many local and national Libraries, Museums and History Societies.
