Submission Deadline: March 10th, 2021     Emerging Scholars Lecture Event: May 10th, 2021 The Victorian Society New York invites university student historians and recent graduates to submit proposals by March 10 for its annual "Emerging Scholars" event, to be held by Zoom on May 10, 2021. The Victorian Society New York, founded in 1966, supports scholarship about […]

About this Event Historian Francesca Beauman, author of Matrimony, Inc.: from personal ads to swiping right, a story of America looking for love (2020), explores the history of personal ads in New York. One Thursday morning in 1861, a woman named Ethel placed an ad for a husband in the New York Herald. She explained that she […]

Wed, March 17, 2021 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT About this Event DOCTORS BLACKWELL looks closely at the sisters Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, English immigrants who, in quick succession, became the first and third women, respectively, in the U.S. to earn medical degrees—and who, in 1857, founded the very first hospital staffed by women, […]

Tue, March 30, 2021 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT About this Event Pamela Colman Smith’s illustrations for the Rider Waite tarot deck are known to millions worldwide, but her many other contributions as an artist, folklorist, editor, and suffragist have received relatively little attention until recently. She was active from the 1890s through the […]

Wed, April 7, 2021 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT About this Event Before there was Isadora Duncan, there was Loïe Fuller (American, 1862-1928), the American creator of modern dance. A ground-breaking inventor, she created a completely new spectacle that combined dance, light, fabric and movement, premiering it at the Folies Bergère in Paris in […]

Alice Austen, The Age of Innocence, and Ice Skating and Fashion   About this Event   Winners of the Victorian Society New York's annual Emerging Scholars contest will speak on a fascinating array of topics. Margaret Simons, a collections and development specialist at the Alice Austen House on Staten Island, earning her master's degree in […]

Wed, September 22, 2021 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT   Two new books shed light on 19th-century sea journeys for refuge seekers. About this event Before the Civil War, Irish and Black people escaping horrific conditions in their homelands arrived at New York's harbors via sea passages, which are the subject of groundbreaking new […]

Wednesday, September 29, 2021 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT The reinstalled Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite Collection at the Delaware Art Museum. About this event In August of 2021 the Delaware Art Museum completed a five-year reinterpretation and reinstallation plan for the collection of Pre-Raphaelite art assembled by turn of the century Quaker industrialist Samuel Bancroft. With […]

This tour will take place in person on: Wednesday, October 20th, 2021 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM   Location: Brooklyn Museum 200 Eastern Parkway Brooklyn, NY 11238   About this event An in-person, after-hours tour of the Brooklyn Museum's acclaimed exhibition, Modern Gothic: The Inventive Furniture of Kimbel and Cabus, 1863–82. The show's guest curator, […]

Wednesday, October 27th, 2021 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM About this event Revisiting America: The Prints of Currier & Ives is an exhibition of 65 lithographs by the legendary New York firm, now on view at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Site curator Amy Kurtz Lansing will offer a virtual tour of […]

Featuring Metropolitan Museum of Art curators from the American, Japanese, and Islamic Art Departments About this event Medill Higgins Harvey, Ruth Bigelow Wriston Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts and Manager, The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts Deniz […]

About this event During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian working-class immigrants in the United States staged religious feste (street feasts) in honor of the Madonna and Catholic saints. The feasts’ focus were free-standing, Baroque-style chapels, many reaching four stories high, temporarily erected on city sidewalks to display the image of the feted […]

Thursday, January 20th, 2022 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM   About this event Author Jeffrey I. Richman will tell the captivating story of how a bridge of unprecedented size and technology was built over the East River, connecting, for the first time, the then independent cities of Brooklyn and New York. This awe-inspiring structure—built during […]

Know someone who is working on a neat preservation project? Tell them to apply to the Margot Gayle Fund! The deadline is February 14th.  Please see the Margot Gayle Fund Page on our website for full details on how to apply.

Author Rachel Feltman will talk about her forthcoming book. About this event Roman physicians told female patients they should sneeze out as much semen as possible after intercourse to avoid pregnancy. Historical treatments for erectile dysfunction included goat testicle transplants. Sex has changed in a million ways since Adam and Eve, the original awkward virgins, […]

Wealthy American women—as consumers and as influencers—helped shape French couture of the late nineteenth century. About this event Join us for a conversation with Elizabeth L. Block, PhD, author of Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion (MIT Press). French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic —think […]

The Victorian Society New York invites university student historians and recent graduates to submit proposals by March 14, 2022, for its annual “Emerging Scholars” evening event on May 16, 2022. The nonprofit VSNY, founded in 1966, supports scholarship about every aspect of 19th-century and early-20th-century culture, including architecture, literature, theater, fine and decorative art, immigration, […]

About this event An in-person curator-led tour of a new exhibit at Poster House in Manhattan, Ethel Reed: I Am My Own Property. Angelina Lippert, Poster House's chief curator, will lead attendees through a retrospective of the artist and designer Ethel Reed (1874-1912). In 1895, Reed shot to fame as a fresh talent in the male-dominated […]

In-person Margot Gayle Benefit Tour   This special tour will focus on the Bailey mansion’s ongoing restoration and will be led by the current owners, followed by a toast. Completed in 1888 for the celebrated circus director James A. Bailey of Barnum & Bailey Circus, the striking limestone Bailey mansion was built to impress. Evoking […]