Please Join us for a lecture from Stephen T. Moskey and Isabel L. Taube.

Isabel Weld Perkins (1876–1948) and Larz Anderson (1866–1937) were a wealthy, well-connected, cosmopolitan, and intellectually curious Gilded Age couple who traveled the globe assembling a collection of objects that they displayed in their homes in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC. They regarded themselves as citizens of the world and visually reinforced this idea with the arrangements of their collection in their homes. After an introduction to the Andersons’ approach to collecting and displaying objects, this presentation will explore one case study in depth—their acquisition and arrangement of Native American pots and blankets, primarily Zuni, acquired in New Mexico in 1904 with the help of a now-controversial Smithsonian ethnologist, Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1849–1915). The speakers were responsible for the 2014 rediscovery of the Andersons’ Native American collection, once presumed to be lost, in long-term storage at a Boston museum. The presentation is drawn from an ongoing study of the highly eclectic Gilded Age interiors of both Anderson homes and will include many rare period views of interiors and collections.

Isabel L. Taube, PhD, is an art historian who specializes in Gilded Age art and interior decoration and teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, and the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has curated exhibitions of historical and contemporary art, including a multi-venue, traveling exhibition of Walter Gay’s interior scenes for the Frick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh (2012–2013), for which she was the lead author for the catalogue, Impressions of Interiors: Gilded Age Paintings by Walter Gay (2012). She also serves as Executive Editor for the online journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide.

Stephen T. Moskey, PhD, is a historical researcher in Washington, DC, who specializes in American cultural history, 1865–1940. His publications include The Turkish Ambassador’s Residence and the Cultural History of Washington, DC (2013) and Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age (2016).