Lecture on Victorian Era Material Life at Norwalk's Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum Next Month

NORWALK, CT — Adele Chatfield-Taylor, the 2010 winner of the prestigious Vincent Scully Prize, is scheduled to give a talk titled, "Reminiscences of a Preservationist: What was Happening in the Early Days," at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum on Sept. 14 at 11 a.m.

This will be the second in a series of lectures by curators and experts in the field of Victorian era material life and the Museum’s 50 years of history. The lectures are $25 for members, $30 for non-members per session. To purchase tickets, contact info@lockwoodmathewsmansion.com, call 203-838- 9799, ext. 4 or visit the museum's website at www.lockwoodmathewsmansion.com.

Attendees are asked to RSVP by Sept. 9. The price includes lecture, lunch and a first floor Mansion tour. Lunch is courtesy of Best in Gourmet. The chair of the Lecture Committee is Mimi Findlay of New Canaan.

Chatfield-Taylor accepted the Vincent Scully Prize at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. for her work in historic preservation and urban planning. At the time, she was President and CEO of the American Academy in Rome, a position she held from 1988 to 2013.

She accepted the award with a revelatory speech summarizing the Historic Preservation Movement over the past 50 years.

Her curriculum speaks of her innumerable accomplishments including working for the Historic Architectural Buildings Survey under the prominent preservationist Charles E. Peterson. He introduced her to the new historic preservation graduate program starting at Columbia University, where she studied under James Marston Fitch and where she later became an adjunct assistant professor. She worked for the NY City Landmark Preservation Commission and in 1980, she established the New York Landmark Preservation Foundation becoming its first Executive Director. She was appointed Director of the Design Program for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington D.C. from 1984 until 1988, during which time she established the Mayors Institutes for City Design.

The Museum’s 2016 cultural and educational programs are made possible in part by generous funding from LMMM’s Founding Patrons: The Estate of Mrs. Cynthia Clark Brown, the Museum’s Distinguished Benefactors: Klaff’s, The Xerox Foundation, and The Maurice Goodman Foundation.

The exhibitions currently on view, Demolish or Preserve: The 1960s at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion and The Stairs Below: The Mansion’s Domestic Servants, 1868-1938, Part II curated by Kathleen Bennewitz have been generously funded in part by the CT Humanities.

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum is a National Historic Landmark. For more information on schedules and programs please visit: www.lockwoodmathewsmansion.com, e-mail info@lockwoodmathewsmansion.com, or call 203-838- 9799.

Photo: Adele Chatfield-Taylor. Photo credit: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders