Cloth and Canvas Exhibit

Thursday, May 30, 2024 to Sunday, Sep 29, 2024

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first display of Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise which was completed in 1872 but not exhibited until 1874.  A conservative art critic, Louis Leroy, coined the word “impressionism” as an insult to Monet’s unconventional work in a satiric review and the name for an entire art movement was born.

Hearthstone will emphasize not only this milestone but also its own art and clothing collections with an exhibit entitled Cloth and Canvas. Located throughout the museum, the exhibit will highlight Hearthstone’s remarkable historic clothing collection alongside museum-quality reproductions of avant-garde French 19th century art that depict articles of clothing similar to pieces in the museum’s collection.

As an example… Imagine Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, executed in 1877 and which hangs in the Art Institute in Chicago, informally placed on a settee next to a top hat, an umbrella, and a women’s veiled hat that are identical to those depicted, generating an interplay between the items and the artist’s work.

The Rogers family, as regular upper-crust visitors and then residents of Chicago, were mixing with the cream of the city’s society. The family would have been exposed to the Impressionist works that were being brought to the city by the Gold Coast elite.  In fact, these pieces today constitute the foundation of the Art Institute’s Impressionism collection.

Cloth and Canvas explores a multitude of connections:

·  The interplay of clothing and its representation in painting.

·  The Gilded Age’s nouveau riche and their impact on taste and style.

·  The early connection between Chicago and European centers of art, particularly Paris.

·  The Rogers’ time in Chicago and their possible exposure to such new art.

·  Hearthstone’s historic clothing collection.

·  Hearthstone’s unparalleled art collection.

Cloth and Canvas will be included on the museum’s regular daytime tours. The museum will also host separately tickets specialty tours on art and clothing.

Lewis Latimer: Self-Made Renaissance Man

Permanent Exhibit

An inventive genius who worked along side some of the most famous names in American history - Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram Maxim, Thomas Edison - before gaining his own fame as an inventor and educator, Lewis Latimer is the subject of a new permanent exhibit at Hearthstone.

The exhibit, initially a part of Hearthstone’s celebration of Black History Month and now on permanent display, covers Latimer’s life and his most important inventions. The exhibit features artifacts and video presentations covering Lewis Latimer but also his parents’ fight for freedom from slavery. Their struggle was a cause celebre, championed by giants of abolitionism including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, that outraged New England society ten years before the Dred Scott decision.

Lewis Latimer: Self-Made Renaissance Man is included in every tour of Hearthstone.