ABOUT THE ANTIQUES FORUM
The Spanish South
August 4–7, 2022
410 Chartres Street in the French Quarter
From 1763 to 1803, Louisiana was part of the vast Spanish colonial domain that encircled the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, leaving an indelible mark on the art, architecture, and material culture of the region. Across the Americas, Spanish colonial rule led to cross-cultural exchange, as goods from Europe, Asia, and enslaved and Indigenous craftspeople inspired new artistic expressions in ceramics, silver, textiles, and more.
In anticipation of the upcoming THNOC exhibition Spanish New Orleans and the Caribbean, the 2022 New Orleans Antiques Forum will explore the colorful Spanish era in Louisiana and the surrounding gulf region. Experts and scholars from across the country will explore decorative arts in Mexico, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico, and beyond.
This short video provides a glimpse of the Spanish influence visible in the French Quarter's Creole cottages and wrought-iron balconies. Join architectural historian Ann Masson for a quick tour of the Vieux Carré, then continue the conversation at the New Orleans Antiques Forum!
The Hotel Monteleone’s special rate for New Orleans Antiques Forum guests is $159/night. Reference “New Orleans Antiques Forum 2022” to reserve at this rate. Reservations may be made by calling (504) 523-3341 or the Group Reservations number at (800) 217-2033. The deadline to reserve rooms at this reduced rate is Wednesday, July 6, 2022.
General admission tickets are $275, and a limited number of discounted tickets will be available to museum professionals. The preconference tour and Sunday brunch are optional experiences open to forum participants only. To learn more about this program, contact THNOC’s Events and Ticketing team at (504) 598-7146 or events@hnoc.org.
Events are held in The Historic New Orleans Collection's Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street, unless noted otherwise.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Optional preconference tour to Bellingrath Gardens and Home (additional charge; separate registration required)
On Thursday, August 4, forum registrants have the option to join a bus trip to Bellingrath Gardens and Home near Mobile, Alabama. Wander 65 acres of historic gardens and attend a guided tour of the house, with its collections of antique furniture and fine porcelain. The trip will also include lunch and a presentation by Thomas McGehee, director of the Bellingrath Home, and Charles E. Owens, director of Horticulture. Tour departure and parking (not included) are at 1205 St. Louis Street. The bus will depart promptly at 9 a.m. and is expected to return at 5:30 p.m. Admission for the bus tour is $175 per person and includes lunch.
8:30–9:30 a.m.
Registration
9:30–9:40 a.m.
Welcome
Daniel Hammer, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Historic New Orleans Collection
9:40–10 a.m.
Opening Remarks: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Tom Savage, Director of Educational Travel and Conferences, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
10–11 a.m.
Chamber Pots, Feathers, and Teeth: Everyday Objects and the Untold Story of an Early Creole New Orleans Plantation
Christopher Grant, Archaeologist, PhD candidate, University of Chicago
11–11:30 a.m.
Coffee Break
11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Preview of Spanish New Orleans and the Caribbean, opening October 2022
Alfred E. Lemmon, Director of the Williams Research Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection
Jason Wiese, Chief Curator, The Historic New Orleans Collection
12:30–2 p.m.
Lunch (on your own)
2–3 p.m.
The Mystery of St. Augustine’s Religious Silver Hollowware
Susan Parker, Independent Scholar
3–4 p.m.
José Campeche’s Society Portraiture in Late 18th- and Early 19th-Century San Juan, Puerto Rico
Emily Thames, Art Historian
4:30–6:30 p.m.
Champagne Reception (included with forum registration)
The Historic New Orleans Collection, 533 Royal Street
9:30–9:45 a.m.
New acquisitions at the Historic New Orleans Collection
Lydia Blackmore, Decorative Arts Curator, The Historic New Orleans Collection
9:45–10:45 a.m.
Fashioning the Spanish Empire: Dress, Portraiture, and the 18th-Century Culture of Appearances
Laura Beltrán-Rubio, Assistant Professor, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
10:45–11:45 a.m.
A Bridge between Two Worlds: The Material Culture of Viceregal Mexico
Misty Flores, Assistant Curator, Rienzi, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
11:45 a.m.–1:15 p.m.
Lunch (on your own)
1:15–2:15 p.m.
Loza Poblana: Splendor of a Mexican Ceramic Industry
Margaret Connors McQuade, Deputy Director and Head of Collections at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library
2:15–3:15 p.m.
Asia in Mexico: The Marvelous Chinoiserie Furniture of José Manuel de la Cerda
Dennis Carr, Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
3:15–5 p.m.
Royal Street Stroll (included with forum registration)
Keil’s Antiques, Moss Antiques, Royal Antiques, and The Shop at The Collection will welcome Antiques Forum attendees.
9:30–10 a.m.
Decorative Arts along Bayou Teche: A DAGS Fieldwork Update
Sarah Duggan, Decorative Arts of the Gulf South Project Manager, The Historic New Orleans Collection
Grace Ford-Dirks, DAGS Fellow
Francis Mahon, DAGS Fellow
10–11 a.m.
Shadows of Spanish Architecture: New Orleans in the Late 18th Century
Ann Masson, Preservationist and Architectural Historian, Tulane University
11–11:15 a.m.
Closing Remarks
Tom Savage and Daniel Hammer
11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
Jazz Brunch (optional; additional $75 charge)
Arnaud’s Restaurant, 813 Bienville Street
SPEAKERS
Tom Savage
In 2021, Tom Savage was appointed director of educational travel and conferences for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, following a 16-year career at Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library as director of museum affairs and director of external affairs. From 1998 to 2005 he was senior vice president and director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art, where he directed the Sotheby’s American Arts Course, and from 1981 to 1998 he served as curator and director of museums for the Historic Charleston Foundation. A native of Virginia, Savage received a BA in art history from the College of William and Mary and a master’s degree in history museum studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York. Savage currently serves on the board of governors of the Decorative Arts Trust. He is a former trustee of the Royal Oak Foundation, the Attingham Summer School, and the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation. In addition, he served as a presidential appointee to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House from 1993 to 2002.
Christopher Grant
Christopher Grant is a doctoral candidate in the anthropology department at the University of Chicago. His dissertation research examines the everyday material cultures of late Spanish colonial and early American New Orleans to demonstrate how urban plantations contributed to the development of early Creole aesthetics and culture. Since 2008, he has conducted fieldwork on archaeological sites throughout the greater New Orleans area and has worked across disciplines to promote public awareness of and engagement with archaeology. He also oversees the Faubourg Archaeology Project, a collaborative and multi-disciplinary investigation of the early history of Faubourg Tremé.
Alfred E. Lemmon
Alfred E. Lemmon is director of the Williams Research Center of The Historic New Orleans Collection and curator of Spanish New Orleans and the Caribbean. An authority on Spanish and French colonial history, he has been published in numerous books, encyclopedias, and scholarly journals in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. His expertise extends into the field of archival history. Among other honors, he has received l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques from France and membership in the Orden de Isabel la Católica from Spain. In 2013, he received the Lifetime Contribution to the Humanities award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
Jason Wiese
Jason Wiese is chief curator at The Historic New Orleans Collection. His subject specialties include the cartohistory of Louisiana as well as the maritime and military history of the Gulf South, especially the Battle of New Orleans. Wiese has curated several exhibitions, including Cartographic Legacies: Historical Maps at the Williams Research Center, Tierras Realengas: Land Grants in Spanish Colonial Louisiana, and Andrew Jackson: Hero of New OrleansCharting Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of Maps.
Susan Parker
Susan Parker specializes in the Spanish presence in the South. She holds a PhD and MA in colonial history and a BA in Spanish. She taught at the university level and served as a historian for the State of Florida and as executive director for St. Augustine Historical Society. She was research director for the documentary Secrets of Spanish Florida (Secrets of the Dead, PBS). Currently she is a researcher and consultant for historical projects. Her chapter about the St. Augustine parish as the heart of the colonial community is forthcoming in Spanish and English.
Emily Thames
Dr. Emily K. Thames is an art historian who specializes in the visual and material culture of the colonial Atlantic World, with a focus on the Spanish Americas and the Caribbean (ca. 1500–1900). She received her PhD in art history from Florida State University, her MA from the University of North Texas, and her BA from the University of Arkansas. While completing her dissertation research on José Campeche, she held the 2016–17 Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and during the summer of 2018 she held the Object Research and Teaching Programming Internship at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Lydia Blackmore
Lydia Blackmore is the decorative arts curator at The Historic New Orleans Collection. She earned an MA and certificate in museum studies from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware; she also holds a degree in history from the College of William and Mary. In addition to expanding and researching the decorative arts collections at THNOC, including the Williams Residence historic home, Blackmore has curated or co-curated several exhibitions, including Pieces of History: Ten Years of Decorative Arts Fieldwork (2021) and Making Mardi Gras (2022).
Laura Beltrán-Rubio
Laura Beltrán-Rubio specializes in the history of art and fashion in the early modern Spanish World. Her research explores the construction of identities through fashion and the legacies of colonialism in contemporary fashion systems. Beltrán-Rubio received her MA in fashion studies from Parsons School of Design in New York and is completing her doctorate at William and Mary in Virginia. She is assistant professor at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and has worked with digital humanities projects such as the Fashion and Race Database and Culturas de Moda.
Misty Flores
Misty Flores is the assistant curator for Rienzi, the European decorative arts house museum of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she is responsible for research and exhibitions. She has curated several Rienzi exhibitions including “A la Mode”: Fashioning European Silver 1680–1825 (2015), The Connoisseur’s Eye: New Perspectives on Ceramics in the Rienzi Collection (2018), Hidden Hands: Invisible Workers in Industrial England (2021), and the current exhibition Materials of Empire: Colonial Narratives 1700–1860. She received her BA in art history and history from the University of Houston and her MA in decorative arts and historic interiors from the University of Buckingham in collaboration with the Wallace Collection, London.
Margaret Connors McQuade
Margaret Connors McQuade is the deputy director and head of collections at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, where she has worked since 1993. She has lectured in the United States, Mexico, and Spain on the decorative arts of Spain and Latin America as well as on the Hispanic Society and its founder, Archer Milton Huntington. In 2005, she received her PhD in art history from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. In addition to a series of small-scale exhibitions at the Hispanic Society, Margaret curated the exhibitions Talavera Poblana: Four Centuries of a Mexican Ceramic Tradition (Americas Society, 1999) and Alcora en New York: La colección de cerámica de Alcora (Museo de Bellas Artes de Castellón de la Plana, and Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia, 2005). She also has contributed to a number of exhibition catalogs, including Treasures from the Hispanic Society of America: Visions of the Hispanic World (2018).
Dennis Carr
Dennis Carr is the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Prior to arriving at the Huntington in 2020, Carr was the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he was co-curator of the award-winning, 53-gallery Art of the Americas Wing, which opened in 2010. His recent exhibitions include Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia; Cecilia Vicuña: Disappeared Quipu; Collecting Stories: Native American Art, and at the Huntington, Borderlands, a reinstallation of the galleries of American Art. He holds graduate degrees from Yale University in the history of art and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. He is currently at work on a forthcoming exhibition of the African American modernist sculptor Sargent Claude Johnson.
Sarah Duggan
Sarah Duggan is the project manager of the DAGS project at The Historic New Orleans Collection. She directs graduate fellows in annual summer documentation fieldwork and conducts year-round research and data management for the DAGS database. She co-curated the recent exhibition Pieces of History: Ten Years of Decorative Arts Fieldwork (2021). Duggan holds a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and a bachelor’s in history and religious studies from the College of William and Mary.
Grace Ford-Dirks
Grace Ford-Dirks is a Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and a MA candidate at the University of Delaware. She received a BA in history from William and Mary in May 2021. Her undergraduate thesis, which drew an ideological link between Confederate memorialization and early historic preservation movements in Charleston, was awarded highest departmental honors. At Winterthur, Ford-Dirks continues to study southern objects, architecture, and their connections to public memory. Her ongoing master’s thesis research on a Civil War–era ivory bust from Georgia is supported by research grants from the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum.
Francis Mahon
Francis Mahon is an archaeologist specializing in issues of empire, colonization, and memory, power, and time. He graduated from the University of Delaware in 2018 with dual bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and art history, and then in 2020 from the University of York with a master’s in historical archaeology. He will commence his PhD this autumn at York exploring the city’s material colonial connections via the trade and consumption of chocolate, sugar, and tea, ca. 1650–1850.
Ann Masson
An architectural historian with degrees from Tulane University, Ann Masson is a faculty member at Tulane’s School of Architecture and serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council. Her interest in decorative arts began at Attingham, and she is now a member of the Advisory Board of Decorative Arts of the Gulf South. She has served as director, board president, and interiors consultant for several historic house museums, and has been a board member of historic preservation organizations. She writes and lectures on local architectural history, and her work has garnered awards from the Louisiana Landmarks Society, the Louisiana Museum Association, and the Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents, and Associates organization, among others. A 40-year resident of the Vieux Carré, she is an advocate for the neighborhood and its historic structures.
