Louisine Havemeyer and Electra H. Webb, Pioneering American Collectors

As part of the LMMM’s Lecture Series “Defying Expectations: Independent American Women of the Early 1900s,” Curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen will present Louisine Havemeyer and Electra H. Webb, Pioneering American Collectors, a lecture on November 14, 2012, 11 a.m. at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue in Norwalk, CT.

Born in New York in 1855, Louisine Elder went to boarding school in Paris where she eventually met the American Impressionist artist Mary Cassatt and they became lifelong friends. When Louisine Elder came back to America in 1883, she married Henry O. Havemeyer, founder of the American Sugar Refining Company. Together they acquired one of the world’s preeminent art collections. They bequeathed nearly 2,000 items to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, now in numerous galleries, but most notably works in the Impressionist collection.

Electra Havemeyer Webb, the third child of Henry O. and Louisine W.E. Havemeyer, became a pioneer collector of American art and founder of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. Her "Brick House" in Shelburne survives today as a rare and intact example of the Colonial Revival.

Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen is the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She graduated from Princeton University and received a M.A. from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture.

LMMM’s 2012 programs are made possible in part by generous contributions from LMMM’s Distinguished Benefactors: Xerox Foundation, Klaff’s, Maurice Goodman Foundation and Mrs. Cynthia C. Brown.

For lecture information and reservations, contact: info@lockwoodmathewsmansion.com or 203-838-9799, ext. 4. Reservations are requested by Nov. 9. Admission: $30 for non-members, $25 for members. The admission includes the lecture, a light lunch, and a tour of the first floor of the Mansion. Lunch courtesy of Michael Gilmartin of Outdoor Cookers.