Page 4 – Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library

IRUG16: 16th Conference and Workshop of the Infrared and Raman User’s Group

For over three decades, the Infrared and Raman Users Group (IRUG) has been at the forefront of advancing spectroscopic analysis in cultural heritage conservation. Every few years, this vibrant international community gathers to share groundbreaking research, innovative techniques, and the latest developments in infrared and Raman spectroscopy for the analysis and conservation of cultural materials. In October 2026, IRUG 16 will bring together an international cohort of conservation scientists, conservators, researchers, and industry specialists working across diverse collections. This conference will showcase cutting-edge research and methodologies that are essential for advancing our understanding and preservation of cultural heritage materials.

For inquiries about IRUG 16, please contact the organizing committee at irug16@winterthur.org

For general IRUG information, visit www.irug.org

Abstract Submission

Please submit your abstracts online using this form: https://forms.office.com/r/ySYgFDeBDP

The deadline for abstract submission is January 31.

Registration will open in April 2026.

Program Schedule

October 7-9, 2026

The program will include oral and poster presentations; networking events; time for museum, garden, and gallery visits; and an optional tour of the Winterthur conservation department.

There will be an optional conference workshop on Tuesday, October 6.

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Roger Turner | Spectroscopy as Cultural Heritage

The history of spectroscopy is much more than a timeline of landmark papers and advances in instrumentation. Scientific instruments can also be markers that people use to organize themselves and define systems of meaning. What does spectroscopy look like when we view it as a set of cultural practices and social groups? While celebrated figures like Bunsen and Kirchhoff still matter, a social and cultural perspective reveals significant contributions by less famous, and sometimes minoritized, individuals. Women played crucial roles by coordinating groups to create shared community resources, like Clara Smith Craver’s work in building spectra libraries. Communities of spectroscopists were created through short courses like the Fisk University Infrared Spectroscopy Institute founded by James Raymond Lawson and Nelson Fuson. The Science History Institute’s collections offer a window on spectroscopy’s surprising and playful cultural heritage, from a 1954 photo of brawling spectrophotometer salesmen to an aftermarket label warning users about an NMR spectrometer’s “Emotional Crisis Detector.”

Biography

Dr. Roger Turner is the curator of instruments and artifacts at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. He enjoys translating the history of science for different audiences, from chemists at Pittcon to museum visitors and students of all ages. He has recently written museum displays that situate spectrophotometry as part of the Institute’s temporary exhibits Downstream and Lunchtime. He holds a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Accommodations

If you will not have a car, we suggest staying in Wilmington or the Wilmington Riverfront for access to restaurants and public transportation. The conference will provide one shuttle trip to Winterthur each morning and one return trip to Wilmington each evening for all attendees.

There are plenty of options for short-term housing rentals in Wilmington and the nearby area, but below are hotel options for Wilmington and the Wilmington Riverfront.

Hotels

Wilmington

Sheraton Suites Wilmington Downtown
422 Delaware Ave., Wilmington, DE 19801
Courtyard Wilmington / Downtown by Marriott
1102 West St., Wilmington, DE 19801
DoubleTree by Hilton Downtown
700 N. King St., Wilmington, DE 19801
Residence Inn Wilmington Downtown
1300 North Market St., Wilmington, DE 19801

Riverfront

Hyatt Place Wilmington Riverfront
760 S. Justison St., Wilmington, DE 19801
Westin Wilmington
818 Shipyard Dr., Wilmington, DE 19801

Getting Around

Traveling to Delaware

Wilmington, Delaware, is conveniently located just 30 minutes from Philadelphia International Airport and is served by rail connections to major cities along the East Coast.

Getting to Winterthur

Complimentary shuttle buses will run daily between Wilmington/Wilmington Riverfront and Winterthur for all registered attendees. There will be one morning shuttle trip to deliver attendees to the conference and one evening shuttle to return attendees to Wilmington/Wilmington Riverfront.

If you prefer to drive, ample free parking is available at Winterthur. Directions can be found online.

Please note that Winterthur is not accessible by public transportation. However, rideshare services and taxis (e.g., Delaware Express) provide easy and reliable transportation to the site.

This symposium is made possible with the support of the following partners:

Looking Back to the Future: Realizing the “Afric-American Picture Gallery”

A Winterthur Symposium

Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery brings to life William J. Wilson’s 1859 fantastical essay, exploring various methodological approaches to narrate this seemingly esoteric aspect of African American history and literature. At this symposium, we will “look back to the future” to demonstrate how this narrative can be integrated into broader American history and how it connects to the legacy of Henry Francis du Pont and the history of Winterthur. These inquiries are designed to engage a diverse audience, including educators on the college and secondary levels, museum professionals, experts, and enthusiasts of African American history and the wider Wilmington community.

$150; Members $125. If you received a link for discounted admission, please enter code at checkout. Students: please fill out this form to receive your discount admission code and enter code at checkout. Questions? Email us at ContinuingEducation@winterthur.org.

Registration is now closed.

Program Schedule

Friday, November 14, 2025

8:30 am
Registration and coffee at the Visitor Center Café

9:00 am
Welcome, Copeland Lecture Hall
Chris Strand, Charles F. Montgomery Director and CEO, Winterthur
Alexandra Deutsch, John L. and Marjorie P. McGraw Director of Collections, Winterthur

9:20 am
The Afric-American Picture Gallery and Antebellum Afro-bohemia
Britt Rusert, Professor of Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst and Executive Editor of the Massachusetts Review

10:10 am
Sketch as History: History as Sketch in the Anglo-African Magazine
Derrick R. Spires, Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware

11:00 am
Coffee break, Visitor Center Café

11:30 am
Artworks Made, Unmade, and Remade: Ephemerality and Iconoclasm
Jennifer Van Horn, Professor of Art History and History at the University of Delaware

12:20 pm
Lunch Break – Offerings available for purchase in the Visitor Center Café

1:20 pm
Almost Unknown: Colored Conventions and the Art of Memory
Gabrielle Foreman, Professor of English, African American Studies, and History, Penn State University (no live stream)

2:10 pm
From Picture Galleries to Underground Archives in the Black Intellectual Tradition
Laura E. Helton, Associate Professor of English and History and Associate Director, Center for Material Studies, University of Delaware

3:00 pm
Sarah Shimm’s Wonderful Sofa: Stitching L’Ouverture in Silk at the Cotton Centennial
Mariah Kupfner, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Public Heritage at Penn State University

3:50 pm
Unseen Images in the Gardens of Atlantic Melancholy
Jonathan D. S. Schroeder, Lecturer in Literary Arts and Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design

5:00–6:30 pm
Reception, Winterthur Museum Galleries

Saturday, November 15, 2025

8:30 am
Coffee at the Visitor Center Café

9:00 am
These Walls Can Talk: Reclaiming the Picture Gallery Through Black Imagination
Dr. Jonathan Michael Square, Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design

9:50 am
A Look Back to the Future
Conversation between Dr. Jonathan Michael Square, Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design, and Reed Gochberg, Curator at the Boston Athenaeum

10:40 am
Coffee break, Visitor Center Café

11:10 am
Moving Pictures: Looking for Tom in the Picture Gallery
John Ernest, Judge Hugh M. Morris Professor and Chair of the Department of English, University of Delaware

12:00 pm
Lunch Break – Offerings available for purchase in the Visitor Center Café

1:00 pm
Through Gimlet Holes: New Visions for American Art
Stephanie Sparling Williams, Ph.D. Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum

1:50 pm
Building Communion: Black Place-Making, Sacred Kinships, and the Spirit of Delaware
Hannah Grantham, director of the Jane and Littleton Mitchell Center for African American Heritage at the Delaware Historical Society

2:50 pm
Mining the Museum . . . Again
Fred Wilson, Mixed-Media Artist
Q&A with Alexandra Deutsch, Winterthur

3:50 pm
Closing remarks

Speaker Bios

Alexandra Deutsch

Alexandra Deutsch, a graduate of Vassar College and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, is the John L. and Marjorie P. McGraw Director of Collections at Winterthur Museum. She leads Winterthur’s Collections and Interpretation Division, which oversees the museum, exhibitions, public programming, and interpretation. Prior to arriving at Winterthur in 2019, she was vice president of collections and interpretation and chief curator at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, formerly the Maryland Historical Society. She has held curatorial positions at the Bennington Museum in Vermont, the Chapman Historical Society in New York, and the Historic Annapolis Foundation in Maryland. Since arriving at Winterthur, she has spearheaded a re-envisioning of the museum’s gallery building and overseen the creation of multiple exhibitions.

John Ernest

John Ernest, the Judge Hugh M. Morris Professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Delaware, is the author of more than forty-five essays and author or editor of thirteen books, including Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794–1861 (2004), Chaotic Justice: Rethinking African American Literary History (2009), The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative (2014), Race in American Literature and Culture (2022), and The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature (2024). With Joycelyn K. Moody, he is the co-editor of the Regenerations series for the University of Delaware Press. With Stephanie Lee, he is the co-editor of the series Elements in Race in American Literature and Culture for Cambridge University Press.

P. Gabrielle Foreman

P. Gabrielle Foreman is the founding faculty director of the award-winning Colored Conventions Project and the inaugural co-director of Penn State’s Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk (Digitize Black Records, Excavate Black History, Dignify Black Communities, Love Black People). For a decade, she has been part of a collective led by Lynnette Young Overby that engages choreographers, poets, student researchers, and community members in bringing early Black history to the stage. She is the author of five books and editions, most recently, The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (2021) and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter: Art and Poetry for David Drake (2023). Foreman is a 2022 MacArthur fellow and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She holds an endowed chair at Penn State and is an affiliate faculty at the University of Delaware, where she taught when the Colored Conventions Project was founded.

Reed Gochberg

Reed Gochberg is a curator at the Boston Athenaeum. Her research interests include early and 19th-century American culture, material culture, museum studies, and the history of science and technology. Her book, Useful Objects: Museums, Science, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America (2021), is a literary and cultural history of the development of American museums. Before joining the Boston Athenaeum in May 2025, she was the associate curator and director of exhibitions at the Concord Museum, where she curated numerous special exhibitions, including

Whose Revolution (2025); Chemacheg Menukhi: Paddle Strong (2025); Portrait Mode (2024); and Interwoven: Women’s Lives Written in Thread (2023–2024). She previously taught as assistant director of studies and a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. She received her A.B. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from Boston University

Hannah Grantham

Hannah Grantham is the director of the Jane and Littleton Mitchell Center for African American Heritage at the Delaware Historical Society. A cultural heritage professional, she has worked collaboratively to curate exhibitions, care for mixed-media collections, and develop public programming that bring together history, entertainment, and social relationships. She is passionate about sharing the stories of women living and participating in American jazz culture as performers, artists, business entrepreneurs, and audience members. Her dissertation research at the University of Delaware re-examines the early decades of the jazz entertainment industry by investigating the collections women assembled that documented their involvement in the art form and lives of women in jazz, particularly focusing on their roles as wives. It re-examines the history of jazz through the perspectives of women who preserved, archived, and documented this art form as it evolved.

Laura E. Helton

Laura E. Helton is an associate professor of English and history at the University of Delaware, where she teaches African American literature, archival studies, and public humanities. Her work chronicles the emergence of African diasporic archives in the United States and asks how information practices—the work of collecting, curating, and cataloging—shape the literary and historical imagination. Her book, Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History (2024), won the Merle Curti Intellectual History Award from the Organization of American Historians and the Arline Custer Memorial Book Prize from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, and was shortlisted for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s 2025 Book Prize. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Bibliographical Society of America, and her essay writing has garnered awards from the American Library Association and the African American Intellectual History Society. She serves as a scholar-editor of “Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg,” a collaborative digital project with Fisk University and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Mariah Kupfner

Mariah Kupfner is an assistant professor of American studies and public heritage and program coordinator for the graduate certificate in heritage and museum practice at Penn State Harrisburg. Kupfner received her Ph.D. in American and New England studies from Boston University in 2021, where her dissertation was awarded the Keith N. Morgan prize for the best doctoral dissertation in history of art and architecture. Kupfner’s current book project—Crafting Womanhood: Needlework, Gender, and Politics in the United States, 1810–1920—examines the political resonances and applications of American women’s decorative needlework. She explores the abolition of slavery, women’s property rights, girlhood education, and the suffrage movement through the lens of the stitch and argues that gender is itself a crafted form. Her work appears in Winterthur Portfolio, Material Culture Review, and Social History/Histoire Sociale, and has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Library Company, the Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections, Winterthur, the Center for Craft, and the Decorative Arts Trust. Kupfner currently serves as co-chair for the Material Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association and as the faculty advisor for a student knitting and crochet club at Penn State Harrisburg.

Britt Rusert

Britt Rusert is a professor of Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst and executive editor of the Massachusetts Review. She is a 2024–25 NEH fellow at the American Antiquarian Society and was a 2023–24 fellow in the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Rusert is the author of Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (2017) and co-editor of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (2018). Fugitive Science received sole finalist mention for the Lora Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association as well as an honorable mention for the MLA’s Prize for a First Book. Her current project, The Care Underground: Mutual Aid in the Age of Slavery and Abolition, is under contract with Verso. Rusert has been teaching and researching William J. Wilson and his picture gallery for the past ten years. With Leif Eckstrom, she edited a digital edition of the text for the American Antiquarian Society’s Just Teach One initiative. Her monograph on the Afric-American Picture Gallery is forthcoming from Duke University Press. She is also working on a co-edited collection of Wilson’s writings with Derrick Spires, Ivy Wilson, and Ben Fagan.

Jonathan D. S. Schroeder

Jonathan D. S. Schroeder is a historian, literary critic, and lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2024, he republished John Swanson Jacobs’s long-lost autobiographical slave narrative, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery, after discovering itin an Australian archive and spending eight years writing the first full-length biography of Harriet Jacobs’s globe-spanning brother, No Longer Yours: The Lives of John Swanson Jacobs. His edition of Despots was profiled in the New York Times, “All Things Considered,” Boston Globe, PBS, and elsewhere, and received a 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Schroeder is also co-editor of Ahab Unbound: Melville and the Materialist Turn, and co-director of Congress of the Birds, a wildlife rehabilitation center that annually rescues, rehabilitates, and releases more than 2,000 native and migratory birds. A recipient of long-term fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Carter Brown Library, and the American Antiquarian Society, he is currently editing Lauren Berlant: A Reader, writing Prisoners of Loss: An Atlantic History of Nostalgia, and building a forty-five-acre forest wildlife rehabilitation center on unceded Nipmuc and Narragansett land in Chepachet, Rhode Island.

Derrick R. Spires

Derrick R. Spires is a John and Patricia Cochran Scholar of Inclusive Excellence and associate professor of English at the University of Delaware, where he specializes in early Black print culture, citizenship studies, and African American intellectual history. His first book, The Practice of Citizenship (2019), traces how Black writers articulated an expansive theory of citizenship through a robust print culture, including Black newspapers, the Colored Conventions movement, and other ephemera. Spires co-edits the book series Black Print and Organizing in the Long Nineteenth Century with P. Gabrielle Foreman and Shirley Moody-Turner at the University of Pennsylvania Press and is curator of the Black Print: African American Writing, 1773–1910exhibition at Cornell University (2024–2025).

Dr. Jonathan Michael Square

Dr. Jonathan Michael Square is the assistant professor of Black visual culture at Parsons School of Design. He earned his Ph.D. from New York University, his M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and his B.A. from Cornell University. Most recently, Square taught at Harvard University’s Committee on Degrees in History and Literature and served as a fellow with the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His curatorial work includes the exhibition Past Is Present: Black Artists Respond to the Complicated Histories of Slavery at the Herron School of Art and Design and the co-curated project Rendering Revolution, an exploration of the visual legacy of the Haitian Revolution through fashion and textile art. He is the curator of the exhibition Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery, currently on view at Winterthur. A champion of digital scholarship and radical pedagogy, he also leads the digital humanities initiative Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom.

Jennifer Van Horn

Jennifer Van Horn holds a joint appointment as professor in the departments of art history and history at the University of Delaware. She is the author of Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery (2022) and The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America (2017). She is currently co-editing a collected volume entitled The Disabled Gaze: Multi-Sensory Perspectives of Art, Bodies & Objects. She is the president of HECAA (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture) and serves on the editorial board for The Art Bulletin.

Stephanie Sparling Williams

Stephanie Sparling Williams is the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Her curatorial practice is predicated on interdisciplinary research, writing, and teaching on American art and foregrounds Black feminist space making. Her scholarly work is invested in the space of the museum, with a focus on African American art and culture, and the work of United States–based artists of color. Related interests include material histories, cross-cultural exchange, strategies of address, and contemporary art that engages with the history of the United States.

Photo by Hector René Membreño-Canales.

Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson challenges assumptions of history, culture, race, and conventions of display with his work. By reframing objects and cultural symbols, he alters traditional interpretations, encouraging viewers to reconsider social and historical narratives. Since his exhibition Mining the Museum in 1992 at the Maryland Historical Society, Wilson has been the subject of many solo exhibitions, including the retrospective Objects and Installations, 1979–2000, which was organized by the Center for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Wilson’s work is held in over forty public collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum; Cleveland Museum of Art; Denver Art Museum; Detroit Institute of Arts; Hammer Museum; Harvard Art Museums; High Museum of Art; Hood Museum of Art; Jewish Museum; Museum of Fine Arts; The Museum of Fine Art; The Museum of Modern Art; National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; National Gallery of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem; Tate Modern, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In 2003, Wilson represented the United States at the 50th Venice Biennale with the solo exhibition Speak of Me as I Am. He was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” Grant (1999); the Alain Locke Award from The Friends of African and African American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts (2013); a Lifetime Achievement Award from Howard University (2017); and an Art of Change fellowship from the Ford Foundation (2017).

Wilson has served on the board of trustees for the American Academy in Rome, Creative Capital, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He recently created a permanent outdoor installation for the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina. In 2021, he was commissioned to create a three-story site-specific installation titled “Mother” in the Delta Terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, New York.

Photo courtesy of the Pace Gallery.

Presentation Summaries

The Afric-American Picture Gallery and Antebellum Afro-bohemia

Britt Rusert, Professor of Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst and Executive Editor of the Massachusetts Review

This talk places William J. Wilson’s “Afric-American Picture Gallery” in a vibrant world of Afro-bohemian writing, intellectualism, and culture in late antebellum New York. Writing in dialogic, and sometimes divisive, exchange within and beyond the periodical sphere, Wilson and his cohort were conceiving of experimental Black aesthetics in a nation on the cusp of civil war. They also raised crucial questions about the role of art in an industrializing, slaveholding society.

Sketch as History: History as Sketch in the Anglo-African Magazine

Derrick R. Spires, Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware

This talk examines how writers for the Anglo-African Magazine drew on the sketch genre’s grounding in print, visual, and scientific cultures to map out a method for public history and civic pedagogy. The sketch was uniquely suited for articulating the contingencies of Black life on the verge of enslavement and freedom in the late 1850s. It eschewed narrative closure in favor of open-ended speculation and cultivated the sense that the future as well as the past were always in the making and open for critique and revision. Through the pages of the Anglo-African Magazine, writers like Frances E. W. Harper and William J. Wilson used the form to sketch future histories of Black liberation and artistic cultures.

Artworks Made, Unmade, and Remade: Ephemerality and Iconoclasm

Jennifer Van Horn, Professor of Art History and History at the University of Delaware

This talk takes as its starting point images by African American artists of the 18th and 19th centuries that do not survive or were never able to be made. I place these alongside artworks that enslaved African Americans repurposed, destroyed, or creatively altered. How does thinking about images’ material ephemerality, fluidity, and changeability enable us to better understand practices of subversion, of resistance, and of being otherwise that enslaved African Americans mobilized in the early United States? Made from chalk, charcoal, paint, or imagined solely in the mind, these artworks left vital traces of African American creative assertions of self and community that still resonate for contemporary audiences.

Almost Unknown: Colored Conventions and the Art of Memory

Gabrielle Foreman, Professor of American Literature and Professor of African American Studies and History at Penn State

How is it possible for history to have sidelined seven full decades of early African American organizing? In this talk, attendees will learn about an ongoing campaign for Black rights which served as the prequel to the NAACP and Civil Rights movements. From 1830 through the beginning of the new century, free, fugitive, and freed Black Americans held multi-day “Colored Conventions” across North America. African American leaders and lay people not only came together to demand Black freedom but to advocate for all it entails, then as now: educational equity, labor justice, voting, jury, and political rights, as well as freedom from state-sanctioned violence. Wilson featured these conventions in his Afric-American Picture Gallery, but until recently, they were all but lost to the general public. Why didn’t we know?

From Picture Galleries to Underground Archives in the Black Intellectual Tradition

Laura E. Helton, Assistant Professor, English and History at the University of Delaware

In his 1859 essay, William J. Wilson invited readers to imagine themselves in a transformative picture gallery—a space suffused with images made by Black artists, books penned by Black authors, and other objects depicting the richness of African diasporic history. In the decades that followed publication of the “Afric American Picture Gallery,” a cadre of Black collectors and bibliophiles created—in real life—what Wilson had envisaged. These turn-of-the-century spaces included a remarkable gallery of artifacts kept by William Henry Dorsey in his Philadelphia rowhouse, the parlor library of famed bibliophile Arturo Schomburg in Brooklyn, and the richly appointed collection of Ella and Samuel Elbert at their home in Wilmington, Delaware. At a moment when Black art and writing were missing from most mainstream cultural institutions—and when Black visitors were too often barred from entering their hometown libraries and museums—these collectors created DIY museums that preserved, displayed, and transformed Black history.

Sarah Shimm’s Wonderful Sofa: Stitching L’Ouverture in Silk at the Cotton Centennial

Mariah Kupfner, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Public Heritage at Penn State University

In 1884, Sarah Shimm embroidered a sofa and sent it to New Orleans. She was a public school teacher in the segregated school system in Washington, D.C., a columnist for the local Black press, and an accomplished needleworker. She sent her ornately decorated sofa to be featured in an exhibition of Black Americans’ work at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans; it was a luxurious object that celebrated Black women’s skill, sumptuous use of materials, and artful composition. This was a potent act in the post-Reconstruction South.

Featured in the midst of a celebration of cotton, Shimm’s silk sofa complicated the fair’s framing of Black history. It insisted upon a long, global history of Black self-determination, not tethered to the recency of the Emancipation Proclamation. Her sofa displayed a visual history of the Haitian Revolution and lauded its most prominent leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture. Her sofa named L’Ouverture as a global figure of Black pride, nation-building, and resistance. This talk seeks to reanimate this absent sofa and traces Shimm’s methods, which reveal her embeddedness in historical and contemporary networks of Black activism, scholarship, and making. Her sofa looked to the past to articulate and shape the future.

Unseen Images in the Gardens of Atlantic Melancholy

Jonathan D. S. Schroeder, Lecturer in Literary Arts and Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design

For this generation of scholars, the chief obstacle posed by the circum-Atlantic archive is invisibility: “the problem of the unseen, the problem of nonappearance, the problem of blocked vision,” in Ian Baucom’s words. In response to an archival landscape defined more by what’s missing than what’s there, they often assume the critical demeanor of what Stephen Best calls “melancholy historicism,” namely, the “view that history consists in the taking possession of such grievous experience and archival loss.”

This talk taxonomizes the lost image and turns to the historical epistemology of melancholy to advance the debate concerning melancholy historicism. Paintings that disappeared or never existed, daguerreotypes with unknown sitters, descriptions of an image that can no longer be located—these are some of the best places to create new discourses of possibility regarding the critical styles that scholars might adopt and the affective intimacy between scholars and their objects of study. One case I will draw upon is my own work identifying the only known image of John Swanson Jacobs.

These Walls Can Talk: Reclaiming the Picture Gallery Through Black Imagination

Dr. Jonathan Michael Square

This talk traces the evolution of the picture gallery from its classical origins to its reinvention in contemporary black cultural practice. Beginning with William J. Wilson’s visionary 1859 essay “Afric-American Picture Gallery,” this presentation explores how Black artists, intellectuals, and curators have reimagined the gallery as a space not just for aesthetic contemplation but for historical intervention. From Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum to Faith Ringgold’s Dancing at the Louvre and Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s modern interventions, we consider how the gallery becomes a site of resistance, memory, and speculative possibility.

A Look Back to the Future

Conversation between Dr. Jonathan Michael Square and Reed Gochberg, Curator at the Boston Athenaeum

Reed Gochberg and Dr. Jonathan Michael Square are longtime friends and colleagues, having shared an office and co-taught courses at Harvard University. Reed played a pivotal role in the origins of this exhibition by introducing Jonathan to the “Afric-American Picture Gallery” during that time. In this portion of the symposium, they will reflect on their collaborative work through the lens of the text, exploring how it has shaped their scholarship, teaching, and curatorial practice. Their conversation will move fluidly between the historical significance of the essay and its broader impact on their curation and pedagogy.

Moving Pictures: Looking for Tom in the Picture Gallery

John Ernest, Professor of English at the University of Delaware

Among the various images featured in the essay “Afric-American Picture Gallery” is one identified as “A New Picture,” a picture of a boy—Thomas Onward, or “Tom for shortness.” By the time “Afric-American Picture Gallery” was published, of course, the name Tom had acquired special significance, most notably through Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe’s novel helped feature other notable Toms, some of them not originally named Tom, and became a way of thinking about both Black male piety and Black male achievement—and, over time, Black male submission to white priorities. Noting that it is important to observe that we encounter words rather than images, and that the words confound any attempt to imagine a simple understanding of Thomas Onward, Ernest will consider the presence of a few significant Black Toms in American culture and suggest ways of thinking about his, or their, presence in the “Afric-American Picture Gallery.”

Through Gimlet Holes: New Visions for American Art

Stephanie Sparling Williams, Ph.D. Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum

In 1861, a self-liberated Black woman named Harriet Jacobs published her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In a pivotal moment in the book, Jacobs escapes from her enslaver and seeks refuge in her grandmother’s garret, a space she refers to as her “loophole of retreat.” Determined to remain close to her children, Jacobs spends seven years hidden in this crawl space, passing the time sewing and reading the Bible. Fortunately, she discovers a gimlet, a tool she uses to pierce the walls and floorboards, allowing her to see her children. Jacobs’s deployment of a gimlet to better see the world around her serves as a powerful metaphor for the tools—and a catalyst for the conversations—that might be used to liberate museum practice from its own confinement. In the spirit of Jacobs, this talk offers its own set of gimlet holes as a way to open fresh apertures into historic American art and its display.

Building Communion: Black Place-Making, Sacred Kinships, and the Spirit of Delaware

Hannah Grantham, Director of the Jane and Littleton Mitchell Center for African American Heritage; Rev. Dr. Stephany D. Graham Walker, Hanover Presbyterian Church; Rev. Dr. Vernon Bryant, Hockessin United Methodist Church; and Rev. Dr. Ronald W. Whitaker II, Mother African Union Church

Black faith leaders and the churches they preside over have been actively guiding American communities for generations. These spaces have served as venues where pastors delivered stirring speeches, professionalized their ministry practices of care, and advocated for citizenship and peace. Their critical voices have played a significant role throughout American history, from the years following the American Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement and into the present day. In Building Communion, Hannah Grantham, director of the Delaware Historical Society’s Mitchell Center for African American Heritage, will join leaders of historic churches in the Wilmington area to discuss the significance of Black faith spaces in Delaware and how they continue the ministerial traditions of their predecessors.

Mining the Museum . . . Again

Fred Wilson, Mixed-Media Artist
Q&A with Alexandra Deutsch, John L. and Marjorie P. McGraw Director of Collections, Winterthur Museum

A pioneering artist with an interdisciplinary practice, Wilson’s groundbreaking, 1992 exhibition, “Mining the Museum” at the Maryland Historical Society (now the Maryland Center for History and Culture) interrogated the museum’s vast collections, unlocking long-ignored histories and awakening new dialogues. Today, it is a reference point in the history of museums. His seminal works and installations have been exhibited and collected by institutions throughout the world and have inspired generations of scholars, curators, and artists.

This conversation will explore the history of Wilson’s work, his artistic practices, and his approach to intervening in museum environments and reinterpreting museum collections. Prior to arriving at Winterthur in 2019, Deutsch enjoyed a long tenure at the Maryland Center for History and Culture where the impact of Mining the Museum lingers decades after its installation. Her perspective on both that exhibition and her role in the creation of Almost Unknown will be woven into this exploration of Wilson’s globally influential art creation and Dr. Jonathan Michael Square’s innovative curation of Almost Unknown: The Afric-American Picture Gallery at Winterthur.

Accommodations

Hotels near Winterthur:

Transportation

Winterthur is approximately 45 minutes from Philadelphia International Airport and 15 minutes from the Amtrak Station in Wilmington.

Cabs, Ubers, and Lyfts are not readily available near the property and must be pre-arranged. We recommend Delaware Express.

This symposium is made possible with the support of the Terra Foundation for American Art.

About the Terra Foundation for American Art

The Terra Foundation for American Art expands narratives of American art through our grants, collection, and initiatives. With offices in Chicago and Paris, we work with organizations to foster intercultural dialogues and encourage transformative practices, locally and globally.

“A Superior Looking Man”: Power, Portraiture, and Pageantry

By Dr. Jonathan Michael Square

Faustin Soulouque plays a central role in my exhibition at Winterthur—Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery. While Toussaint Louverture is the more familiar figure featured in “Afric-American Picture Gallery,” the 1859 essay by William J. Wilson that serves as the foundation of Almost Unknown, Soulouque was the reigning monarch of Haiti when the essay was published. His reign, which began in 1847 and culminated in his self-coronation as Emperor Faustin I in 1849, marked a period of intense visual and political spectacle. While some saw him as a symbol of Black empowerment and resistance to neocolonial influence, others—both in Haiti and abroad—viewed his rule as a caricature of monarchy and a descent into despotism.

Known for his affinity for ritual, ceremonial dress, and imperial pageantry, Soulouque cultivated a public image that exuded opulence and authority. This is vividly captured in a posthumous portrait of him featured in what I call the “Haiti section” of the exhibition. The painting is one of fifteen oil portraits of Haitian heads of state completed by artist Louis Rigaud between 1877 and 1881. The portraits were exhibited at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans and were acquired by the Smithsonian in 1885. However, the portraits were determined to be of questionable value because they were assessed through a Western art-historical framework that privileged originality, formal innovation, and linear notions of artistic development. The Smithsonian transferred them to the Yale Peabody Museum in 1963, where they remain in the museum’s collection as an important visual archive of Haitian political history.

Wilson describes Soulouque as “a superior looking man,” which speaks to his physical appearance and the aura of regality that he projected. In Rigaud’s painting, Soulouque is depicted in full regalia, wearing a vivid red military coat adorned with medals and gold epaulettes, as well as a blue sash. Like his public persona, his garments were strategic visual assertions of Black sovereignty in the post-emancipation Atlantic world, designed to reframe the terms of power, liberation, and legitimacy on Haiti’s own terms.

One of the most striking artifacts that further illuminates Soulouque’s political performance through dress is a ceremonial sword presented to him by the Grand Masonic Lodge of Haiti in 1850. Later gifted to US Consul Henry Delafield, this opulent weapon functioned as a diplomatic gesture and an emblem of imperial authority. It is currently on display in my exhibition Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it helps frame a conversation about the global entanglements of Black fashion, political aesthetics, and statecraft.

*Sword with Scabbard of Faustin I (1782–1867), Emperor of Haiti*, Robert Mole, Birmingham, UK, 1850. Bequest of William S. Delafield Sr. 2012.204 A, B

Faustin Soulouque’s legacy, both in terms of his image and material culture, offers a powerful counternarrative to the dominant Western histories of sovereignty. His visual performance of power is essential to understanding the intersection of fashion, freedom, and Black political imagination.

Experience Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery on view in the Winterthur Galleries through January 4, 2026.

Apply to Holiday Market

November 22, 2025 | 10:00 am–6:00 pm

Celebrate the spirit of the season and showcase your craft at one of the region’s most beloved holiday traditions. Holiday Market at Winterthur marks the festive beginning of the Yuletide season, drawing thousands of visitors eager to experience the magic of handmade artistry and timeless holiday charm.

Rooted in Winterthur’s rich heritage, this event highlights the work of talented regional artisans across a variety of disciplines including art, textiles, ceramics, glass, woodworking, antiques, and gardening—categories that reflect the museum’s legacy and mission.

We invite you to apply to be part of this cherished seasonal celebration and unique opportunity to connect with an appreciative and enthusiastic audience.

Applications for the 2025 Holiday Market are currently closed. Sign up to receive a reminder when applications are live.

Vendor Details

Date & Time

Holiday Market 2025 is a one-day market on November 22, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm. Timed tickets will be sold to guests for morning and afternoon time slots. All artisans must join for the entire day of the market.

Application Details

Applications open on July 14, 2025, with a deadline to apply of September 1. Final decisions will be made by September 10, 2025.
Accepted artisans will receive an acceptance letter via email by September 10, 2025, and will have five (5) business days to submit payment to reserve their space. Review the payment link in your acceptance email. After September 15, 2025, any artisan who has not submitted payment will relinquish their space.
The deadline to cancel space for Holiday Market is September 22. No refunds will be given after this date. No exceptions will be made.
Should an artisan no longer be able to attend, written notice must be made to Winterthur no later than September 22, 2025, to receive a full refund. After September 22, 2025, no refunds will be issued. No exceptions are able to be made.
Should an artist not be accepted because spaces are filled, artists may re-apply for the summer Artisan Market July 17–19, in January 2026.

Types of Artisans

Please note that all artisans of the Holiday Market must craft handmade items to be considered. Examples of such include:

Antiques
Artwork (any medium)
Clothing and Accessories (handcrafted)
Garden and floral items
Glasswork
Gourmet packaged culinary goods (small batch, artisanal style)
Handcrafted Beauty Products
Handmade Furniture and home décor items
Jewelry
Metalwork
Pet accessories
Pottery
Sculptures
Textiles
Woodworking

How Applications Are Evaluated

Artisans must create handcrafted products only. (See “Types of Artisans” for more information.) We hope to showcase innovative items that are differentiated, small-batch and connect to Winterthur’s history and mission.
Applicants are reviewed based on ingenuity, originality, design, and aesthetic with the hope of weaving the connection of modern-day wares with that of Winterthur and its history.
A connection to your community and an active social media presence are required since this is a collaborative market with many cross-promotional opportunities to engage and connect communities.The Holiday Market Team reviews all social media for each applicant, and this is a factor when considering artisans each year.
We strongly consider artisans with a positive, energetic, and collaborative attitude.
Artisans must remain for the full day of the market. No shows or early departures will result in not being welcomed back in the future.
The Holiday Market team will visit artisans’ websites and social media channels during the review process to determine the wares, aesthetic, style, and quality align with the goals of the Holiday Market. With acceptance to the Holiday Market, Winterthur reserves the right to select any brand, product or company-related photos from the artisan’s website and/or social media to use for marketing and promotional purposes for this year’s Holiday Market at Winterthur. Winterthur will tag/credit the artisan in any photography or videography used for promotional purposes.

Artisan Locations, Spaces, and Fees

Artisans will be located under shared Marquee tents at the Visitor Center Patio, Greenhouse Area, or West Gallery Circle. Each space includes an 8′ table, chair, and linen. There will be a total of about 50+ artisans joining the Holiday Market. The space fee to join is $300 per artisan.

Load-In/Breakdown

Load-In takes place the morning of the market, 8:00–9:00 am. Artisans should arrive no later than 7:30 am to check-in at the Picnic House to be escorted to their location for the day. Spaces must be ready for guest arrival at 10:00 am.
After check-in, all artisans will park in the Greenhouse Parking Lot for the day. This will be within walking distance to each of the hub spaces in case there is a need to replenish inventory throughout the day. There are many one-way roads throughout Winterthur, please do not navigate away from your designated areas.
Cars can be parked within 50 feet of tent area. Artisans are responsible for their own setup and breakdown. Please be adequately prepared. Accepted artisans are welcome to visit Winterthur prior to the market to view their location and consider logistics. Vehicles may not be driven during the Market Hours to replenish—please make your way on foot for any replenishment needs.
Winterthur staff cannot provide assistance. Should you need help with Load-In or Load-Out, you are welcome to have helpers accompany you during those times.
Artisans must remain in their spaces all day. Winterthur cannot provide “booth sitters” for breaks. Please plan accordingly with additional assistance or become friendly with your booth neighbors. Restrooms and water are located nearby to each location for a quick trip when needed and as always, we encourage you to make friends with your fellow artisan neighbors! Each artisan will receive (2) two “Vendor Artisan Badges” to allow additional assistance in their space. For any additional help required, please plan to reserve a ticket for Holiday Market either online or with the reservations team over the phone (800.448.3888 ext. 7029).
All artisans are expected to present a clean and aesthetically pleasing space for the entirety of the Market (no trash, boxes, clutter, etc., should be visible to guests).
Electricity and wifi are not available to you for the Market. Please be sure to provide your own hotspot or necessary means to process electronic payments (credit cards + cash to be accepted). Where available on the estate, Winterthur’s wifi is spotty and unpredictable. Winterthur’s guest wifi password is “winterthur”
While Winterthur has 24-hour security, we cannot assume responsibility for your items. Please plan accordingly. Insurance is required for all vendors (COI).
As this Market will proceed rain or shine (within safety parameters), please come prepared with tarps, bins, or other water protective materials.
No booths or items may be taken down or removed prior to the end of each day of the Market. Should an artisan dismantle their space prior to the end of the day, that artisan will not be welcomed back.
All load-out must occur on Saturday, November 22 by 7:00 pm. Artisan should be off the property by 7:30 pm. We are not able to arrange for next-day pick up of your inventory.
Lighting will be sparse, given the early sunset, so we encourage you to move as quickly as possible. Please pack all items from your space prior to moving your car close by to load. If you are able to move items via dolly or similar, please do so. There will be lingering guests on the estate so be mindful of pedestrians.
Trash cans will be located throughout the vendor spaces. All boxes must be broken down and no trash is to remain at or near your space each day. Please leave the space as you found it. Once you have finished breaking down your space, you may depart Winterthur grounds.
This day is about community and showcasing the exceptional talent of all of you. It is a large undertaking for the Winterthur team, and we strive to create a positive and enjoyable atmosphere for artisans, staff, and guests. We expect the same from all vendors that join. Any vendor that does not reciprocate will not be welcomed back.

Terrain

The terrain at Winterthur varies, with uneven surfaces and unpaved paths. All artisan spaces will require you to walk some distance to transport items during Load-In/Load-Out. Cars cannot be parked near artisan spaces.

Please be mindful that Winterthur is a historic garden, and all areas of the estate should be respected and navigated by the rules put in place by staff. No driving on grass is permitted. Should you wish to visit ahead of time to see the space and plan logistics, you are welcome to do so.

Fees

The space fee to join is $300 per artisan.

Notification of Acceptance

Artisans are notified via the email address listed on the application. Should an artisan not be selected, they will be placed on a waitlist and may be contacted should a space become available. We do not offer rolling acceptance; instead we will review and then contact all applicants at the same time (no later than September 10).

Payment

After the acceptance notification emails have gone out (by September 10, 2025, via email), artisans will have five (5) business days to remit payment in full for their space(s). After September 15, 2025, if payment has not been received, that artisan space will be relinquished and offered to another artisan.
A specialized link will be included with the acceptance notification email that will direct artisans to a payment portal. Payment may be made online with a credit or over the phone with Winterthur’s reservation team (800.448.3883 ext. 7029).
For questions about payment, please contact Abigail Miller at amiller@winterthur.org.

Waitlists

A small waitlist of applicants who submitted materials by the application deadline is kept to fill cancellations and artisans may be contacted up until the day preceding Holiday Market day to fill last-minute openings.
We thank you for your interest in joining Holiday Market at Winterthur. If you are not accepted, please do not be discouraged from applying again. The goal of the market is to allow an equal opportunity for all artisans to share their craft with visitors while connecting the event to Winterthur’s history and mission.

Cancellations

Should an artisan no longer be able to attend, written notice must be made to Winterthur no later than September 22, 2025, to receive a full refund. No refunds will be given after September 22, 2025, to artisans who can no longer attend. No exceptions will be made.

Insurance and Licenses

Winterthur is not responsible for insuring artisan items or displays and cannot accept responsibility for theft or damage. All accepted artisans are required to have liability insurance, and artisans must add Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library to their liability insurance and provide documentation showing this addition, along with a copy of their liability insurance declaration page. All products requiring licensing must have a copy of the appropriate license on file with Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.

You are welcome to use whatever insurance you wish. Should you need assistance with insurance options, we have negotiated a discount with Artist Crafters & Tradesmen (ACT) insurance for non-food liability coverage and Food Liability Insurance Program (FLIP) for food vendor liability coverage. The discount coupon code for $5 off your policy is winterthur5. Use the links below to purchase coverage:

Accepted artisans only, please submit proof of insurance by November 1, 2025.

Artisans are expected to obtain any and all licenses or permits required for offsite events for their respective business and have a hard copy onsite.

Promotion

Holiday Market will be promoted through an integrated marketing strategy across paid, owned, and earned channels.

The Holiday Market will be featured in Winterthur’s Calendar of Events, which is mailed to 22,000 homes each quarter and in weekly emails, which go to approximately 62K recipients.

Vendor photos will be used to promote each artisan on social media. Acceptance and payment for a vendor location grants Winterthur and its agents the right to videotape, film, and photograph you and use your likeness and any photos submitted in connection with the commercial production and in the distribution and exhibition thereof. Please contact amiller@winterthur.org with questions.

All artisans are expected to actively partner with Winterthur to help promote Holiday Market. Ticketing for Holiday Market opens November 3, 2025! Reservations are required and the potential to sell-out is likely.

Please share Holiday Market details through emails, printed promotional materials and social media channels. When posting on social media, please tag @winterthurmuse and location (Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library) for reposting and sharing opportunities.

Photography

The Winterthur Holiday Market team will visit artisans’ websites and social media channels during the review process to determine the wares, aesthetic, style, and quality align with the goals of the Holiday Market. With acceptance to the Holiday Market, Winterthur reserves the right to select any brand, product, or company-related photos from the artisan’s website and/or social media to use for marketing and promotional purposes for this year’s Holiday Market at Winterthur. Winterthur will tag/credit the artisan in any photography or videography used for promotional purposes.

Weather and Refunds

The Holiday Market will take place rain or shine or snow. In preparation for inclement weather, please plan accordingly for your spaces. As display areas will be under marquee tents with no sides, it is subject to weather. No refunds will be given should the Holiday Market have to be canceled or shortened due to unpredicted threatening or unsafe weather.

Concierge Service

For guests who purchase any items that are oversized (e.g. furniture, lawn items, paintings, etc.) and unable to be carried by hand or taken on the tram/shuttle, guests are welcome to use the Concierge Product Delivery service provided by the Winterthur team.

To request this service, a contact will be provided for you within the welcome packet. Within the text include:

Artisan Location (VC Patio, Greenhouse, or West Gallery)
Artisan Name
Item description (painting, sculpture, etc.)

Please text—do not call—with the details stated above. Winterthur is an expansive estate and navigating the grounds does take time. Please be mindful of that when waiting for an item to be retrieved.

Please communicate this service to your guests as they visit your space, it’s a great selling tool!

Items will be delivered to the Visitor Center Lobby where guests can pick them up as they depart for the day. Let guests know to visit the front desk as they depart. They will need their slip as well to retrieve their item, so make sure all are filled out properly.

Security

Winterthur is not responsible for insuring artisan items or displays and cannot accept responsibility for theft or damage. All artisans are required to have their own Certificate of Insurance (COI) for the Holiday Market.

Artisan Market Press Release

New at Winterthur’s fifth annual Artisan Market July 18–20: 50 more vendors, make-and-take workshops, signature cocktails, wine tasting & an open-air farmers market

WINTERTHUR, DE (June 26, 2025) —Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library continues to expand and enhance its wildly popular Artisan Market, now in its fifth year. Scheduled for July 18–20, this year’s event includes 150 vendors—an increase of 50—along with new custom fragrance and candlemaking workshops, wine tastings, signature cocktails, and an open-air farmers market.

In addition to antiques, furniture, home décor, architectural salvage, and garden items, Artisan Market vendors will sell a variety of unique handcrafted goods including jewelry, pottery, textiles, photography, prints and original art in various media, refashioned sustainable clothing, artisanal and small-batch gourmet food products, and much more.

Artisans will be in several locations throughout the estate. Guests can also enjoy live music, pause for a bite to eat, and meander through Winterthur’s lush 60-acre wild garden.

“The Artisan Market showcases exceptional craftsmanship and reflects Winterthur’s mission to inspire and educate through decorative arts and design,” said Abigail Miller, associate manager of audience engagement. “Each market location offers immersive experiences in an idyllic country estate setting. Guests can also explore the museum and galleries. There’s truly nothing like it.”

Artisan Market Vendors

From handmade soaps and leather goods, baby products, pet placemats, wind chimes, fire cresset baskets, wood bowls and cutting boards, to wearable fashion and artwork in every style —Artisan Market truly offers something for everyone.

About 70 merchants are repeat vendors and customer favorites. Fairhope Graphics, from New England, joins Artisan Market again this year, offering cards, wrapping paper, and more featuring natural history illustrations of plants and animals from woodlands to oceans.

Among dozens of new vendors this year is artisan Tia Tumminello from Husk Brooms, who creates brooms and brushes from natural materials and driftwood from the shores of Lake Erie.

Also new are Beth Kephart and William Sulit of Bind Arts, a husband-and-wife duo who have been creating award-winning paper art, ceramics, and other art for nearly four decades. New York-based Otto Finn will offer sustainable fashion products, including tops, vests, accessories, and handcrafted Anoushka jackets made from upcycled kantha quilts.

Self-taught oil painter Jon Carraher from Lancaster County, Pa., who creates works that blend nature, folklore, myth and magic, will participate for the first time, as will encaustic artist AnnMarie Carmack from Havertown, Pa. Encaustic is an ancient technique that combines beeswax and resin paint with other media that Carmack uses to create dreamy, delicate nature paintings.

Participating artists who have been featured in national consumer press such as Vogue, InStyle, Town & Country, and more include SantM luxury footwear; Jennifer Hoertz Millinery; LouLou Clayton Custom Pet Portraits; and Home & Loft, which sells pajamas, kaftans, and Turkish towels and napkins.

Johanna Howard Home, which offers sustainably produced table linens, throws, pillows, candles, and apparel, is also scheduled to participate, along with jewelry artist Alex Hossick, who has designed for Tiffanys, Tory Burch, and now luxury jewelry brand John Hardy based in Bali, Indonesia.

Activities & Tours

Each day, three plein air artists located throughout the estate will capture Winterthur’s tranquil beauty and picturesque scenery as they create original works of art in real time. The completed artwork will be available for purchase.

Damon Smith, horticulturalist, Philadelphia Flower Show judge, and quilter, will demonstrate basketweaving and share how his love of plants influences his quiltmaking. Smith was among the 30-plus artists whose works were showcased in the Transformations: Contemporary Artists at Winterthur exhibition in 2024.

Also included with Artisan Market admission is the self-paced tour of Henry Francis du Pont’s former family home-turned-museum, as well as access to Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery and all exhibitions. House tours begin at 10 a.m. and the last tour starts at 3:15 p.m. Capacity is limited.

Creativity in Bloom Workshops

Make-and-take experiences for an additional cost include the Signature Scent Workshop from 11 a.m. to noon each day, where participants will create two custom 30 mL bottles of perfume or cologne using premium essential oils. The Candle-Making Workshop is scheduled from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. each day. Participants will create their own one-of-a-kind soy candle from a selection of scents and dried flowers.

For an additional fee, guests can enjoy a wine tasting and talk by the Reflecting Pool. Tickets include a curated tasting of three wines from Penns Woods Winery and a stemless wine glass. In addition, participants will learn about winemaking using grapes grown in Pennsylvania’s climate and soil, innovative techniques, and the stories behind each bottle. The 45-minute tastings begin at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

“Through these interactive experiences, we invite guests to dive into the creative process,” said Miller. “The celebration of artistry throughout the market is designed to engage all the senses.”

Musical Entertainment & Epicurean Delights

The weekend will feature live musical performances by CMZ Jazz Trio, John Emil, Matt Richards, The Midnighters, Naked Blue, Newark Ukesters, Nicole Zell, Sharon & Shawn, and Will Ott.

Food trucks, including Lucky Shot Coffee Co., Dixie’s Down Home Cooking, Natalie’s Fine Foods, Circe Fine Foods, Cousins Maine Lobster, Koi on the Go, On the Roll, Buddy’s Burgers, Gotta Lotta Gelata, and The Missing Piece, will be in various areas throughout the estate.

Epicurean delights for purchase range from all-American, Asian-inspired, and Greek foods, including burgers, crab cakes, fish tacos, lobster roll sandwiches, pulled pork, pit beef, chicken tenders, cheesesteaks, crab fries, mac and cheese, and more.

New this year, Artisan Market guests aged 21 and older can purchase handcrafted, botanical-inspired cocktails from three Bloom Bar locations. Spirit-free versions of each signature drink will be available.

The cocktails and mocktails include a hibiscus spiked lemonade with an edible flower garnish, lavender-infused daiquiris garnished with dried lavender sprigs from Winterthur’s organic herb garden, and a gin-based cocktail made with pink grapefruit juice, elderflower liqueur, homemade lavender syrup, a splash of sparkling water, and garnished with a sprig of Winterthur-grown lavender.

Open-air Farmers Market

A nod to Winterthur’s agricultural roots, this year’s Artisan Market introduces a new farmers market experience. A working farm in its heyday, Winterthur welcomes a select group of local growers and culinary artisans to this open-air market, where guests can pick up fresh produce, honey, and other seasonal goods.

General Information

Visit Winterthur’s Artisan Market event website for more information, including food and vendor locations, music schedules and featured artisans. Artisan Market hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 18, 19 and 20. Winterthur is open until 5:00 p.m. Event is rain or shine. Tickets are good only for the date purchased. Advance purchase is required. Tickets and add-ons can be purchased online at winterthur.org or by calling 800.448.3883.

###

About Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library
Winterthur—known worldwide for its preeminent collection of American decorative arts, naturalistic garden, and research library for the study of American art and material culture—offers a variety of tours, exhibitions, programs, and activities throughout the year. Admission includes a self-paced house tour, exhibitions, a narrated tram ride (weather and space permitting), and the Winterthur Garden.

Winterthur is located on Route 52, six miles northwest of Wilmington, Del., and five miles south of U.S. Route 1. Winterthur is committed to accessible programming for all. For information, including special services, call 800.448.3883 or visit winterthur.org. Winterthur is closed seasonally from early January through late February.

Unlocking the Past

By Dr. Jonathan Michael Square

Keys often symbolize access, opening portals to the past, present, and future. This set of seven brass keys, representing Picture XIX in the Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery exhibition, dates to the late 19th century and originates from the now-closed Mount Salem United Methodist Church in New Castle, Delaware. Founded in 1854 by the local African American community, the church served as a vital spiritual and social anchor for generations. In its later years, however, the congregation declined, and the church eventually closed, due to an aging membership and the prohibitive costs of repairing the 19th-century building. The keys were donated to the Delaware Historical Society by Rev. Vernon M. Bryant, current pastor of the Hockessin United Methodist Church.

They had previously belonged to Edward View Henry. A longtime member of Mount Salem United Methodist Church, Henry played an active role in the life of the congregation. “Mr. Henry,” as he was affectionately known, was born in North Carolina in 1913. He moved to Wilmington and attended Howard High School. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and later established an upholstery business. He married an artist, Pearl Day, and they had two children: Peter and Pamela. Passionate about history and craftsmanship, Mr. Henry was also an avid collector of antiques. He passed away on July 16, 2009, at the Veterans Hospital in Elsmere, Delaware.

His deep faith and generous spirit left a lasting impression on his community. Rev. Bryant, who knew him personally, described Henry as kind, mild-mannered, and resourceful. “If you met him, you would like him,” Bryant recalled. Henry was someone who never discarded items he believed still had value or meaning. When Constance J. Cooper, co-author of Forging Faith, Building Freedom: African American Faith Experiences in Delaware, 1800–1980, reached out in search of material culture related to the African American church in Delaware, Bryant offered the keys and later donated them to the Delaware Historical Society. Today, these keys are featured in a section of Almost Unknown that focuses on the Black Church. Their presence affirms how everyday Black lives, and seemingly ordinary objects can serve as powerful conduits of memory, preservation, and historical imagination.

Protected: Summer Color in the Garden DRAFT

Historical Fun and Games at Winterthur

By Lauren Ullman

The Game of Rip Van Winkle, Milton Bradley & Co., 1909. Winterthur Library Col. 220 acc. 93×30

The Collections

Historic games in the house and library collections cultivate a lively and carefully designed environment, and their preservation helps us understand how people of all ages entertained themselves in the past.

Children’s Games and Toys

Throughout history, games have engaged children in learning lessons about right and wrong as well as developing life skills. The historical game collection in the library includes many examples. The Rip Van Winkle game, released by the Milton Bradley Company in 1909, features a storybook printed with several words left blank, an instruction booklet, and 50 cards. Children used the cards to fill in the spaces with the correct words.

In the Strawbridge & Clothier Child’s Shopping Game from 1908, children “shopped” in Philadelphia’s foremost department store—whose interior is featured on the game board—by visiting several departments. The first child to complete the circuit went to Toyland. The game encouraged department store shopping, and in the process of playing, children practiced budgeting skills.

Strawbridge & Clothier Child’s Shopping Game, Strawbridge & Clothier, 1908. Winterthur Library Col. 220 acc. 88×132

Another game in the library’s collection is Avilude or Game of Birds, designed by the West & Lee Game and Printing Co. and patented in 1873. In the game, players used the 64 printed cards to correctly pair species of birds with their vivid descriptions.

Games for Adults

Musical Dominoes was published by Theodore Presser Co. of Pennsylvania in 1893 and is in the library collection. It contains two sets of directions: one with game instructions, and the other with instructions for how to throw a musical domino party. The party instructions include invitation outlines and directions and dialogue cues for game “conductors.” It recommends awarding prizes “of a musical nature, viz.: busts and photographs of the great tone-masters, books of musical history, biography, fiction, or nicknacks [sic] relating in some way to music.”

While Winterthur was still a private home, H. F. du Pont entertained weekend guests with tea on the terrace, elaborate dinner parties, recreation on the estate grounds, and constant bridge games. The display in the Bertrand Room on the third floor includes an 18th-century bridge table with cut-outs for counters, felted covers to prevent cards from sliding, and special indents to hold candles.

Merry-go-round, Europe or North America, 1800–60. Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont 1964.2053

Many other game-related objects are sprinkled throughout the house, including various miniature portable game sets, ranging from dominoes to dice cups. Some games, like the Circular System of Major and Minor Keys game board in the Imlay Room, were intended to teach serious skills like reading sheet music. A carved ivory chess set is also on display here.

Children’s toys, games, and more are displayed on the seventh and eighth floors. On the seventh floor, a glass case holds miniature cards, houses, and tea sets. In the Child’s Room on the eighth floor, cards, dolls, a tabletop croquet game, a spinning top, and more create a fascinating picture of childhood from long ago.

Ella Wesner: “An Excellent Man upon the Stage”

By Allie Alvis, Curator of Special Collections

Imagine that you, a young Victorian lady, are spending a night out with friends at the theater. As the playhouse dims, a spotlight illuminates the figure of Champagne Charlie, the picture of swaggering, stylish masculinity. Charlie captivates the audience with amusing tales of chivalry and his ability to please women, accompanied by a parade of chorus girls in “bright but somewhat abbreviated habiliments.”¹ You swoon; if only you could find a man like that! But that would be difficult—for, you see, Champagne Charlie is a woman by the name of Ella Wesner.

Advertisement images for Ella Wesner, in *Specimens of Theatrical Cuts*, by Ledger Job Printing Office (Philadelphia: Ledger Job Printing Office, 1872).

The drag show is not a modern phenomenon. In fact, the term “drag” likely dates to the stages of Elizabethan England, referring to male actors playing women’s roles in plays including those of Shakespeare.² And almost as soon as women were legally allowed to be professional actors on the English stage in the mid-17th century, there emerged the “breeches role”—a male part written for or cast as a woman, who would don a masculine costume.

At various points, laws and edicts banned the practice of performing roles outside one’s gender, but the intrepid players persisted, and some even used this restriction as a marketing tool. The roving variety entertainers of the 19th century refined their response into the male impersonator act.

Ella Wesner (she/her) was one such performer at the peak of her fame in the 1870s and ‘80s. Born in Philadelphia in 1841 to a family of actors and dancers, Wesner began her career in ballet and performed “Bel Demonio” in 1864 alongside Felicita Vestvali, who acted in a breeches role in the show.³ Wesner watched Vestvali and learned and later earned a place as a dresser for Annie Hindle, the first male impersonator to make it big in America.

Wesner made it big herself in 1870, sauntering across stages as male characters, including the debonaire Champagne Charlie, the cigarette-smoking Sweet Caporal, Jinks the Jovial Showman, and the amusingly drunk Teetotal. Reviews proclaimed her “a Beau Brummell par excellence” ⁴ and “an excellent man upon the stage,”⁵ and she became one of the highest-paid variety performers of the period.⁶An 1870 review of her act celebrated her “almost faultless form, a face quite masculine and jet black curling hair, which she wears cut short.”⁷ Her success was the result of not just hard work, but of advertising. This is where the Winterthur Library comes in.

The library special collections holds a copy of an 1872 trade catalog titled Specimens of Theatrical Cuts, which is a compendium of thousands of illustrations produced by the Philadelphia-based Ledger Job Printing Office. These illustrations were created to be used by newspapers, theaters, and various other agents to advertise the acts and shows coming through town. Many were quite formulaic and could be used for any play or performance that even vaguely touched upon the dramatic or comedic scenes depicted. Among these stock images are illustrations of particularly well-known performers of the day, including four different depictions of Ella Wesner.

Her inclusion in this volume speaks not just to how prolific Wesner was as a performer, but to her dominance of the genre in the 1870s. Her illustrations are all captioned with her name, making it impossible to reuse them to advertise other male impersonators. Although her career had several ups and downs—at one point, she ran off to Paris with the mistress of a robber baron—her act was deeply influential for later generations of male impersonators, including Vesta Tilley and Ella Shields.

Wesner didn’t just dress as a man onstage; she “preferred men’s apparel” throughout her life and was buried in a suit per her request.⁸ This physical evidence of Wesner’s fame is one of many LGBTQIA+ stories found in the library collections.

Sources:

1. “Yesterday’s Concerts.” Clipping. 1885. Digital Transgender Archive, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/6q182k40p

2. David A Gerstner. Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture. London: Routledge, 2006, page 191.

3. Gillian M. Rodger. Just One of the Boys: Female-to-Male Cross-Dressing on the American Variety Stage. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2018, pages 35–36.

4. Tom Gillen. “DO YOU REMEMBER?” Clipping. 1926. Digital Transgender Archive, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/wp988k17c

5. “MISS ELLA WESNER, The Acknowledged Beau-ideal of Society Entertainment, Surnamed ‘THE CAPTAIN.’.” Clipping. 1910. Digital Transgender Archive, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/bg257f356

6. “OUR VARIETY ARTISTS.” Clipping. 1881. Digital Transgender Archive, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/gt54kn32b

7. Catherine Smith and Cynthia Greig. Women in Pants: Manly Maidens, Cowgirls, and Other Renegades. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003, page 90.

8. “Ella Wesner Lies in Man’s Garb.” Clipping. 1917. Digital Transgender Archive, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/xg94hp908

A Historical Collaboration

By Matthew Monk, Linda Eaton Associate Curator of Textiles

As you near the end of the Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery exhibition, you’ll see a large, red, white, and blue striped quilt. The colors may capture your attention at first, but many of its details are only seen up close.

Quilt, Germantown, Penn., 1861. Gift of Philip and Noelle Richmond 2020.0006

Priscilla (Ballenger) Leedom, a Quaker abolitionist and unionist, crafted the quilt in 1861 to protest the outbreak of the American Civil War. She wrote in her memoirs that Lewis Halbert, a free Black employee of her son, Dr. John Leedom, was the talented artist who drew the central motif for the quilt. In 1863, two years after drawing the eagle, he left Dr. Leedom’s employment to enlist in the Union Army.

Halbert’s drawing depicts an eagle clutching a leafy branch in its right talons and a bundle of arrows in its left. The eagle, projected on the wall beside the quilt in the Almost Unknown exhibition, reflects Halbert’s skills in intricate detail.

The quilt measures 81 inches high and 92 inches long. Its top was made from strips of plain weave red, white, and blue striped silk alternating with cream/gold-toned lighter-weight plain weave silk, finished with a gold silk fringe on three sides. It’s filled with thin cotton batting, and its backing is made of blue and white chambray. The center design features Lewis Halbert’s drawing joined with Priscilla Leedom’s sewing in an embroidered eagle worked in silk floss. The eagle’s body is sewn in white, while its eye and nostril are sewn in black and gold/brown. Halbert’s eagle is surrounded by Leedom’s quilted stars and ivy borders worked in white.

Halbert’s pencil design shows through in several areas under the embroidery, and the gray and blue chalk lines reveal Leedom’s quilting pattern. Interestingly, the needlework-quilted eagle acts as the thread that holds the entire textile together.

Priscilla Leedom’s father was an abolitionist who hid self-emancipated Black Americans in the family’s southern New Jersey home. Priscilla’s formal education in Philadelphia included attending various prestigious schools and studying drawing. The Ballenger and Leedom families employed Black domestic workers from the community of Free Black Americans who lived in Philadelphia. Priscilla Leedom spoke fondly of many of these family employees in her memoirs, and she and other women abolitionists created fancy goods, some depicting abolitionist motifs, to sell at anti-slavery fairs. The money they raised went to support the cause of abolition and those fighting to emancipate themselves and their families.

As you wend your way through the exhibition, be on the lookout for this remarkable quilt. Consider its meaning as marking a unique moment in history and how its story adds to the narrative of Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery.