2023 Fall Speaker Series | Mary Fish Silliman: A Woman in Revolutionary America
- This event has passed.
Schedule
-
October 1, 2023
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Location
-
370 Beach Road
Fairfield, CT 06824 United States
Join Patricia E. Kane, Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery, for a special lecture “Mary Fish Silliman: A Woman in Revolutionary America” at the Fairfield Museum and History Center. Letters, a journal, and a reminiscence provide unusually rich documentation of Mary’s life and were the basis of a biography The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America published by Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr. in 1987. Mary’s descendants preserved many of her material possessions. Drawing on the biography, this lecture contextualizes Mary’s world from her education in Stonington, Connecticut in the 1740s to her first marriage to John Noyes in New Haven in the 1750s to her second marriage to Gold Selleck Silliman in Fairfield, Connecticut in the 1770s.
About the Presenter
Patricia E. Kane, Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery, has been at Yale since receiving her M.A. from the University of Delaware, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture in 1968. Her publications include The American Clock, 1725-1865: The Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (with Edwin A. Battison, 1973), 300 Years of American Seating Furniture: Chairs and Beds from the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (1976), and Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers: A Biographical Dictionary based on the Notes of Francis Hill Bigelow and John Marshall Phillips (1998). Throughout her career Kane has organized many exhibitions and contributed to their publications at the New Haven Museum, the Speed Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Birmingham Museum of Art in addition to the Yale University Art Gallery. Since 2002 Kane has directed the Rhode Island Furniture Archive at the Art Gallery, a study that documents furniture and furniture making in Rhode Island from the time of first European colonization in 1636 through the early nineteenth century. The results of this research are disseminated in a publication Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture 1650–1830 that accompanied an acclaimed exhibition shown at the Art Gallery in 2016–2017 and through a website that continues to grow.
About the 2023 Fall Speaker Series – Calling Fairfield Home: Stories from Creating Community
Join the Fairfield Museum and History Center for the 2023 Fall Speaker Series, exploring the new research and discoveries featured in the Museum’s renovated flagship exhibition Creating Community: 400 Years of Fairfield Stories. Discover the people and stories unique to Fairfield directly from historians and experts from throughout Connecticut.
Additional Lectures in the Series:
November 5 | Stories of the Survival of the Indigenous Peoples of Connecticut | Darlene Kascak
Light refreshments provided. Registration is required. $15 per talk | $35 for the series, $30 for Members
Image: Installation view of Creating Community: 400 Years of Fairfield Stories, Fairfield Museum and History Center. Photo: Kate Eisemann