Academy Art Museum’s new Kittredge-Wilson Speakers Series begins on Thursday, September 26, 2013 at 6 p.m. with the lecture, “The Archeology of Time Telling at Wye House for Black and White Production: Floral Clocks, Time and the Greenhouse,” by Professor Mark P. Leone and Elizabeth F. Pruitt, University of Maryland, College Park. Pollen grains found in the rooms of the greenhouse at Wye show an array of over 100 plants used for food, medicine, and household chores. This lecture sees the greenhouse not as a decoration, not as an isolated building, but as the pivot around which the woods, bogs, fields, and gardens at Wye were made to predict time, like a clock. In addition to food and medicine, the array of flowers and leafy plants in the greenhouse and in the surrounding formal garden could have been used to tell the time of day by being made to compose a floral clock. The whole purpose of a floral clock at Wye House would be to have an independent measure of time beyond the factory bell that sent slaves to the field and the overseers commands that kept people there on the owner’s clock.
The Museum’s Kittredge-Wilson lectures are held on Thursdays throughout the year. Upcoming lecturers include Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher, Editorial Cartoonist for the Economist and Baltimore Sun on November 14 and Kristen Hileman, Curator of Contemporary Art, Baltimore Museum of Art onDecember 12. The series ticket for six lectures is $75 members and $100 non-members. Individual tickets for each lecture are $15 for members and $20 for non-Museum members.
For further information or to register, call 410-822-ARTS (2787) or visit www.academyartmuseum.org.
..
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.