American Revolutionaries tours in April at The Clark

This April, the Clark Art Institute celebrates the 250th anniversary of the United States with a series of gallery talks given by members of the curatorial team. Each Wednesday talk highlights artworks from the Burrows Gallery of American Decorative Arts, including silver from the Henry Morris and Elizabeth H. Burrows collection, which came to the Clark from an anonymous loan to celebrate the bicentennial of the United States in 1976. Tours meet at noon in the Manton Research Center reading room.

On April 1, Alexis Goodin, curator of decorative arts, kicks off the series with a discussion of silver crafted by Paul Revere Jr. and his father, from whom he learned the trade. Explore Revere’s prominent role in the American Revolution.

On April 8 hear Oliver Hess, curatorial intern and graduate student in the Williams College/Clark Graduate Program in the History of Art (Class of 2027), trace the public’s fascination with George Washington’s likeness, from formal portraits made during his life to the explosion of mourning imagery after death. In looking at paintings, print culture, and funerary porcelain, among other objects, Hess reveals how a new nation’s unified grief and patriotic fervor created a market for an early American icon.

April 15, Alexis Goodin returns to present “Tea, Sociability, and Revolution,” a discussion on the importance of tea in the daily life of colonial Americans, with an exploration of works of silver and furniture. Goodin focuses on the women who helped organize a boycott of the hot beverage after the British government imposed the Tea Act of 1773.

American Revolutionaries tours are free with gallery admission. No registration required.

For accessibility questions, call (413) 458-0570.

For more details go to events.clarkart.edu.