April 20, 2012 Pre-Event Evening Reception: The Hermitage
April 21, 2012 Symposium: Frist Lecture Hall, Belmont Mansion
Speaker Schedule and Bios
Keynote Speaker: Sumpter Priddy III
The Rarest Tennessee Books and Documents – George Webb, Jr.
Event Luncheon: Historic Belmont Mansion
Collector in Chief: Andrew Jackson’s Silver – Dr. Benjamin Caldwell, Marsha Mullins, and Sarah Campbell Drury
Women Artists of Williamson County – Rick Warwick
Self-guided tour of the Leu Art Gallery exhibit Sense of Place featuring paintings, lithographs and drawings by the late Carroll Cloar. A nationally recognized American painter, Cloar’s style has been described as simultaneously primitive and progressively modern. This exhibit is curated by David Lusk.
Sumpter Priddy III – Sumpter Priddy III holds a Bachelors Degree in the History of Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Masters from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. He served six years as curator for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and tutored for the Historic Deerfield Summer Fellowship Program.
Long intrigued by the relationship between architecture, history and the decorative arts, he is one of the most active researchers in the field. His rediscovery of numerous artisans whose work shaped taste in early America has contributed significantly to a larger understanding of the complexity of regional style. Recent research includes the careers and the products of craftsmen who came from around the globe to Washington, D.C. during the Federal period.
Sumpter Priddy III lectures frequently throughout the United States. He has contributed articles to The Magazine Antiques, the Chipstone Foundation’s American Furniture, and has served as consultant to numerous publications.
Dr. Benjamin Caldwell is an advanced collector and scholar of American antiques, particularly silver, and has lectured extensively throughout the United States on the subject of decorative arts. He has acted as a consultant to a number of Tennessee museums and is the author Tennessee Silversmiths (University of North Carolina Press, 1989) and a co-editor of The Art of Tennessee. He has been documenting, photographing and studying President Jackson’s silver for the past twenty years.
Marsha Mullins is Vice President of Museum Services at The Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson and has been with The Hermitage since 1986. She holds master’s degrees from the University of Notre Dame in American Studies and from Texas Tech University in Museum Studies, as well as a BA in History from Indiana University. She co-directed the Hermitage mansion interior restoration project that restored the mansion to the 1837-1845 period.
Sarah Campbell Drury is a collector, student and appraiser of antiques, specializing in silver. She has authored numerous articles on antiques for publications including The Magazine Antiques, Maine Antique Digest and Silver Magazine. She is Vice President of Decorative Arts at Case Antiques Inc., Auctions & Appraisals and an accredited member of the International Society of Appraisers.
Rick Warwick has traveled many miles on Tennessee roads documenting the area’s material culture for over 30 years. After staging a chair exhibit on 19th Century Middle Tennessee chair maker Dick Poynor, collectors encouraged him to continue surveying others’ forms, which includes extensive research on sugar chests, candle stands, local portraits, samplers and coverlets. The result is Warwick’s research is in his book Williamson County: More Than a Great Place to Live. In addition to serving as editor of the Williamson County Historical Society’s publications since 1990, Warwick has written two books on his community of Leiper’s Fork, a travel guide on Williamson County’s historical markers, and a history of western Williamson entitled Out There in the First District. Warwick has also compiled numerous other books including, Triune: Two Centuries at the Crossroads, the publication of the Freedmen Bureau’s Labor Contracts of 1866 in Williamson County, The Civil War as Seen through the Female Experience, and most recently Portraits of Williamson Countians. Rick has served on the boards of the Tennessee Historical Society, Carnton, Carter House, the Heritage Foundation of Franklin and Williamson County and the Williamson County African American Heritage Society.