The Art of Remembrance: Family, Art and Memory in New England 

Deerfield-Wellesley Symposium

A one-day symposium sponsored by the Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art and the Office of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield.

This free, day-long symposium will explore artistic productions of familial memory and commemoration in New England from the 1600s to the turn of the 20th century. The art of family was wide-ranging and included family registers, mourning art, gravestones, textiles, furniture, jewelry and other clothing accessories, scrapbooks and albums, as well as portraits, silhouettes, and, by the mid-19th century, photographs. A select group of scholars will present papers during the symposium that will explore these tangible storehouses of memories and relationships, offering unique and compelling entry points to explore ways New Englanders chose to remember, commemorate, memorialize, mourn and/or celebrate family members, rites of passage and other domestic events.