Join us Tuesday, October 4, at 7pm for the first program in the JP Tuesday Night Club series—a talk by Curt DiCamillo on All My Worldly Goods: English Royal Weddings.
Queen Victoria WeddingEnglish royal weddings seem to fascinate even the most jaded Americans. These spectacles provide a chance to see a bit of a fairy tale come to life, with pomp and ceremony, historical jewels, magnificent wedding gifts, and cathedrals and great palaces. Royal weddings have evolved from medieval ceremonies to cement the partnership of foreign countries, to private ceremonies witnessed by close family members and courtiers, to spectacles watched by millions on television. Curt will look at English royal weddings during the last two centuries and will explore the history of some of the most famous royal residences in the world, including Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, as well as the stories of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, the preferred venues to celebrate royal marriages. He will illustrate how these iconic places are part of the fabric of centuries of royal tradition and pageantry and how they continue to influence us in the 21st century.
Curt DiCamillo is Executive Director of The National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA. Previously, he worked for 13 years at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has written and lectured extensively in the U.S. and abroad on the subject of English country houses. For the past 12 years he has continued to develop an award-winning database on the web (www.dicamillocompanion.com) that documents every British and Irish country house ever built, standing or demolished. In recognition of his extraordinary work, he has been presented to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and the Prince of Wales. He is a member of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, an alumnus of The Attingham Summer School and The Royal Collection study program, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.