The Artisan Lecture Series pays tribute to the art of craftsmanship by featuring master artisans who lecture about the intricacies of their specialized crafts. The Artisan Lecture Series promotes the work and art of skilled craftsmen to assist in ensuring their unique knowledge is understood and carried forth for future generations.

Please check back for upcoming Fall 2023 Lectures

The History of Linoleum with Christina Day – Tuesday March 28th at 6PM
Christina P. Day, artist, professor and researcher, will present a lecture on the history of linoleum and its arrival to the United States, as well as how it relates to her sculptural studio art practice. Her findings speak about linoleum’s origins, classism and the tastes of the times in which it was produced, its remarkable popularity and durability, images of factory production, advertising methodology, and how her artwork responds to the time captured in found material.

The 2023 General Society Artisan Lectures begins on Thursday,  at 6pm January 19th, with a celebration and examination of the work of a revered American artist and his ties to New York. In Edward Hopper in New York City, art historian Rena Tobey will revisit Hopper’s art,  coinciding with the current Whitney Museum exhibit. This lecture will be online only.

THE DELMONICO WAY: Sublime Entertaining & Legendary Recipes from the Restaurant that Made New York! With Max Tucci, Wednesday, November 30th at 6 P.M.  This will be both an In-Person and Online Lecture. The lecture will be followed by a Book-Signing.

The legendary restaurant, Delmonico’s, located in the heart of Wall Street, from 1827 to the 1980s shaped New York City’s restaurant scene. In this talk, Max Tucci, grandson of  Oscar Tucci, the owner of Delmonico’s from the 1920s to the 1980s will discuss the distinguished history of this New York institution. Mr. Tucci will share how he celebrates its legacy in his glorious new book, The Delmonico Way: Sublime Entertaining & Legendary Recipes from the Restaurant that Made New York!

 

New York Art Deco: Birds, Beasts & Blooms

With Writer, Eric P. Nash and Photographer, Andrew Garn

Tuesday, October 25^th at 6 P.M. 

This will be both an In-Person and Online Lecture 

The lecture will be followed by a Book-Signing.

In person registration link

Online Registration link

Eric Nash and Andrew Garn will discuss their recently published book, New York Art Deco: Birds, Beasts & Blooms, considered to be one of the definitive books on New York Art Deco, exploring Art Deco from the smallest of details to the grandest of buildings.

During their presentation Mr. Nash and the acclaimed photographer Andrew Garn will share some of these outstanding New York City images. The City is arguably the world’s Art Deco capital, and during the lecture they will describe some of its striking and still iconic towers that were early expressions of the Art Deco style —most famously the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.

Art Deco is drawn in steel, in tile, in brass, in bronze, and in stone upon great buildings and small—and in the details, as so engagingly shown here. Such as the extraordinary Fred F. French Building at 551 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a treasure house of the form whose ornate lobby is simply stunning.  Just some of the other exquisite images include: the Grand Concourse in the Bronx; The New York Telephone Building; the Waldorf Astoria; Rockefeller Center, St, Bartholomew’s Church; and the striking facades of apartment buildings across the city. The lecture will feature  the legendary and the little known, through all-new photography by Mr. Garn. The book celebrates Art Deco New York as never seen before.

Andrew Garn is a Fulbright-winning photographer and author of New York by Neighborhood. Eric P. Nash is the author of SoHo New York and was a researcher for the New York Times for twenty-five years, where he wrote more than 100 articles.

The book can purchased in person at the lecture or online

General Admission: $10

Advance registration is required.

 

Past Artisan 2022 lectures include:

Artisan Lectures Spring 2021

Tuesday, June 15^th at 6pm  In and of the Hand: Mechanisms of the Art 

Dr. Sharon Suchma, Art Historian

This will be an Online Lecture on Tuesday, June 15th at 6 p.m.

In this lecture, Dr. Sharon Suchma, Art Historian, will provide an insightful look at the representation of tools and mechanisms in art, and explain why they are often integral to the interpretation of paintings through the ages. To register, please click here. 

Tuesday June 1^st – Walking Manhattan Sideways – Side Street Businesses that have Stood the Test of time with Besty Polivy.

The book showcases the quintessential businesses that have survived over the course of many decades on the side streets of New York. While some are beloved and well-known establishments that continue to garner recognition, the book primarily shines a light on the astounding number of places that perennially fly under the radar.  To register, please click here

Guide to Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios

With Valerie Balint, Senior Program Manager of the Historic Artist’s Homes and Studios

This will be an Online Lecture on Tuesday, May 4^th at 6 p.m.

 Valerie Balint, Senior Program Manager of the Historic Artist’s Homes and Studios (HAHS), will discuss artists throughout the country whose sites have been preserved and are part of this national program. Ms. Balint will place these sites in the context of her recently published, Guide to Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios, the first guidebook to the network, conveying each artist’s visual legacy and setting each site in the context of its architecture and landscape, which often were designed by the artists themselves.  To register, please click here.

Memory & Imagination: Stanford White in Detail With Samuel White, Consulting Partner, PBDW Architects

An Online Lecture on Tuesday, March 23rd at 6 p.m.

Author Samuel G. White, a great grandson of Stanford White, has been studying the work of Stanford White and the architecture of the American Renaissance for more than thirty years. In this talk, based on his acclaimed book, Stanford White in Detail, he will provide an insightful overview of White’s work and surveys the materials and sources that he combined to create a panoply of sumptuous effects. Once proposed as the “Commissioner of Beauty” for New York City, Stanford White was a master of architecture, interior design, and ornament, fearlessly juxtaposing materials and objects from myriad cultures and places. To register, for this online lecture, please click here.

Tuesday March 9th at 6pm – Suzanne Smeaton, Frame Historian and Consultant.

Drawing on over 40-plus years working with major museums and public and private collections, frame historian and consultant Suzanne Smeaton will share a range of stories of specific frames and interesting ‘behind the scenes’ details regarding their design, how they were selected, who made the choices, how they were removed or repatriated. 

 

ARTISAN LECTURES Fall 2020

Subway Maps: The Good, the Bad, and the Better?

 with John Tauranac,  Architectural and Social Historian

 This will be an Online Lecture on Tuesday, December 15th at 6pm

Please click here to register

 John Tauranac, architectural and social historian, will give an illustrated talk on the history of official subway maps, with an occasional unofficial map thrown in for good measure. Mr. Tauranac writes on New York City’s social and architectural history and teaches the subject at NYU’s School of Professional Studies, and he just happens to design maps as well.

John Tauranac fell into mapping as much by accident as design. In the early 1970s, he started writing about the undercover passageways that pedestrians could take in Midtown to stay dry in the wet and warm in the cold. Only to realize, to quote Mr. Tauranac “that what I was writing was an instant cure for insomnia.” With no training in studio art or graphics, he decided to chart the passageways of Midtown and Lower Manhattan. New York Magazine liked his roughs and had them metamorphosed into the “Undercover Maps.”

Mr. Tauranac went on chair the MTA subway map committee for the bulk of its existence in the late 1970s, and he was the creative director of the award-winning and critically praised 1979 MTA subway map. That map won its share of kudos – an editorial in The New York Times (“The Best Subway Map in Years”), a review by the Times architectural critic, Paul Goldberger (“At Last, A Usable Subway Map”), and he’s still at it.

He has designed dozens of maps since, including his street atlas, Manhattan Block By Block, and his newest subway map, which he believes is not just didactic, it is swellegant.

Mr. Tauranac’s books, include  Manhattan’s Little Secrets, The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark, New York From the Air, and Elegant New York. He has also written numerous articles for many publications.

Suggested donation:$15 General Admission; $10 General Society Members and Senior Citizens; $5 Students.

Advance registration is required to receive the link to the zoom webinar platform.  Please click here to register