“Dream House: The White House as an American Home”

"Dream House: The White House as an American Home," a lecture and book signing by Ulysses Grant Dietz at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, Wednesday, July 14, 11 a.m.

According to Ulysses Grant Dietz, renowned art curator and great-great grandson of 18th U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, the White House is not the house everybody thinks they know.  The fact is, between 1800 and 1962, the White House evolved much the way the idea of "home" itself evolved in America. From the 1840s to the 1950s, America's first ladies did what every other homemaker in America did: they tried their best to make the president's house conform to the prevailing ideas of what a tasteful, comfortable, modern home should be. The White House was lived in--all of it. It was only in the 1960s, as the White House gradually evolved into a museum that it ceased to evolve as a home.  It is a story that has never before been told.

Dietz has been the curator of Decorative Arts at The Newark Museum since 1980, and was appointed Senior Curator in 2007. He received his BA in French from Yale University in 1977 and his MA in Early American Culture from the University of Delaware's Winterthur Program in 1980.

One of his most notable achievements was his work on the Museum's 1885 Ballantine House, named a National Historic Landmark in 1985. The Ballantine House was transformed and reinterpreted between 1992 and 1994, with a groundbreaking installation called House & Home.

Mr. Dietz was the chief curator for The Glitter & The Gold: Fashioning America's Jewelry, the first-ever exhibition and book on the history of Newark's jewelry industry, which dominated American jewelry making for nearly a century. In 2003, accompanying an exhibition of the same name, he wrote Great Pots: Contemporary Ceramics from Function to Fantasy; for the Museum's 100th anniversary in 2009 he produced 100 Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880-1930 and its companion catalogue.

Mr. Dietz has also published numerous articles on decorative arts, drawn from the Newark Museum's nationally-known collections of art pottery, studio ceramics, silver, jewelry and nineteenth-century furniture. His most recent publication is Dream House: The White House as an American Home, released in September 2009 by Acanthus Press in New York.

Mr. Dietz also loves to talk. He has to date given hundreds of lectures all across the country on a wide range of topics drawn from Newark's collections.

For lecture information and reservations contact: info@lockwoodmathewsmansion.com

203-838-9799 ext. 17

Admission: $25 non-members $20 members. The admission includes the lecture, a light lunch and a tour of the first floor of the mansion.

Lunch:  Courtesy of Bull's Head Market