The Lewis Walpole Library > News

October 2009:

Fellowship and Travel Grant Applications Invited for 2010-2011 (July through June). The Library offers short-term residential fellowships and travel grants to support research in the Library's collections. Scholars undertaking post-doctoral or equivalent research, and doctoral candidates at work on a dissertation, are encouraged to apply. The Lewis Walpole Library fellowships, usually for one month, include the cost of travel to and from Farmington, accommodation in an eighteenth-century house on the Library's campus, and a living allowance stipend (now $2,000). The deadline is January 18, 2010. For more details click here.

Current Exhibitions

Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill
A major exhibition presenting highlights of the exceptional collection once owned by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill will be on view at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven from October 15, 2009, through January 3, 2010. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a publication, has been organized by the Lewis Walpole Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. For more information click here.

Works of Genius: Amateur Artists in Walpole’s Circle. The Library's latest exhibition in Farmington will be on view through March 19, 2010. For more details click here.

September 2009:

Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill to open in New Haven October 15

Upcoming Exhibition
Works of Genius: Amateur Artists in Walpole’s Circle.

May 2009:

Fellowship and Travel Grant Awards Announced. The Library was delighted to announce next year's Lewis Walpole Library Fellows. They will take up their fellowships or grants between July 2009 and June 2010. For more details click here.

Application Deadline Extended for Summer Fellowships in British 18th-Century Studies for Yale Graduate Students Offered. The application deadline for Summer Fellowships at the Library was extended to May 31. The Lewis Walpole Library offers summer fellowships to students enrolled in doctoral programs at Yale University who wish to pursue dissertation research in the Lewis Walpole collections. For more details click here.

Sixteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture. On Friday, May 8, Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of History, UCLA, presented the Sixteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture, "Visualizing Religious Difference: Picart's Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World (1723-1737)" at 5:30 p.m., in the Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall, New Haven. A reception followed in the Library Court. For more details click here.

Master Class for Yale Graduate Students, May 11 - 15, 2009. The Lewis Walpole Library offered a week-long master class focused on nineteenth-century prints and graphic images.

The residential seminar is intended to give doctoral students in a number of disciplines – most obviously art history, English and history – the opportunity to work with the Lewis Walpole Library’s collections and to think over issues to do with the value, status, and methodological challenges offered by the study of graphic material. No previous experience of working with prints or other graphic images is required. The number of participants is limited.For more details click here.  

March 2009:

New Exhibition opened April 17. "French Liberty. British Slavery." British Responses to the French Revolution from the Collection of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University (April 17 - August 28, 2009). On Friday, April 17, from 3-5 p.m. there was an opening of the Library's new exhibition.  This event included a gallery talk by the graduate student curator, Julia Elsky (Yale French Department), followed by a reception.

This exhibition explored British responses to the French Revolution and focused on the period of 1789-1794, from the beginning of the Revolution until the end of the Reign of Terror in France. Whether depicting the brutality and depravity of the events in France, the political divisions in Britain, or considering the nature of liberty and patriotism, the exhibition will look at the British response sparked by the French Revolution, as reflected in satirical prints by James Gillray, Isaac Cruikshank, and others, as well as political pamphlets by Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Richard Price, and others, and manuscript letters from Horace Walpole. All of the works in the exhibition were from the collection of the Lewis Walpole Library. For more details click here.

Transportation to the opening in Farmington on April 17, and again on the two subsequent Fridays, April 24, and May 1, was available from New Haven for Yale students on a limited basis.

Summer Fellowships in British 18th-Century Studies for Yale Graduate Students Offered.

Sixteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture.

Master Class for Yale Graduate Students, May 11 - 15, 2009.

January 2009:

Fellowship Applications Invited for 2009-2010.

December 2008:

Netcast Features Exhibition. The Library's first netcast, featuring images of works in the exhibition "Portraits of Painters: Drawings by George Vertue and Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England" and a discussion by Curator Cythina Roman is now available. For more information, click here.

The netcast is available free from Yale University on iTunes U and can be found in the Yale Library series. To view the images on your personal or desktop PC, first download the netcast from iTunes and then ensure you activate the "Show or hide item artwork and video viewer" button on the bottom-left side of the iTunes screen while the netcast is playing. You may also click on any image to see a larger version. -- Geoffrey Little, Communications Coordinator, YUL

September 2008:

New Exhibition Opens at Library. "Portraits of Painters: Drawings by George Vertue and Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England" was on view in the Library’s exhibition space in Farmington through February 25, 2009. The exhibition included drawings by Vertue as well as the related prints published in volumes of Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting. The gallery is open Wednesdays, 2-4 p.m. while exhibitions are on view. For more details click here.

August 2008:

Yale Indian Papers Project and Executive Editor Paul Grant-Costa join the Lewis Walpole Library. Paul Grant-Costa has joined the staff of the Lewis Walpole Library as Executive Editor of the Yale Indian Papers Project. While this represents a new and exciting focus for the LWL, the addition of the project (and its editor) to the Library may also be seen as a fitting continuation of founder W.S. Lewis’s interest in the region’s Native American history. The Yale Indian Papers Project (YIPP) is a documentary editing initiative whose mission is to collect, transcribe, annotate, and electronically publish primary source materials on New England Native Americans.  The collection explores nearly four centuries of Native history, law, religion, and culture, as well as issues of community, land, gender, race, identity, migration, and sovereignty. In keeping with the LWL’s main strengths, the papers are especially rich for the eighteenth century and are editorially framed within the context of the Atlantic world, reflecting the growing academic interest both in imperial historiography from a global perspective and in Native American studies.

Along with work on the editorial project, Paul’s responsibilities include planning for the care and interpretation of the LWL’s Day Museum of Indian Artifacts; engagement with scholars here and abroad to encourage and support use of the collections in Farmington, including YIPP documents; and outreach to the local community as well as to other interested groups at Yale, in the region, and in the tribal communities. For more information, contact Paul Grant-Costa by email at paul.grant-costa@yale.edu or by phone at 860-677-2140.

July 2008:

Awards announced for Summer Fellowships in British 18th-Century Studies for Yale Graduate Students. Two Yale Graduate Students were awarded Summer Fellowships for 2008. Nicole Wright, a graduate student in English Language and Literature, pursued research on topics that include the eighteenth-century novel, the Anglo-Irish novel, adjuticational courtroom/trials as depicted in literature of the period, and character studies. Justin du Rivage, a graduate student in History, conducted research on the foreign and imperial policies of Great Britain and France in the eighteenth century. For more details click here.

April 2008:

Summer Fellowships in British 18th-Century Studies for Yale Graduate Students Offered.

Master Class for Yale Graduate Students, May 12 - 16, 2008. The Lewis Walpole Library once again offered a week-long master class in Farmington, taught by Brian Maidment and open to Yale graduate students. This year Curator Cynthia Roman joined Professor Maidment in teaching the class "Caricature and the Comic Image 1800-1850." The number of participants was limited. For more details click here.  

Fifteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture. On Friday, April 18, Leo Damrosch, the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard, presented the Fifteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture, "Feeling Free in the Enlightenment: Diderot versus Rousseau, or, Philosophy versus Lived Experience," in the Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall, New Haven. For more details click here.

January 2008:

Print Metadata Seminar: On January 25, 2008, The Library hosted a seminar for art prints in association with a Mellon Foundation Collections Collaborative re-grant project at Yale. The aim of the project is to reach agreement upon common or compatible practices for descriptive and imaging metadata and to develop a metadata registry and a metadata application profile for Yale University. An article on the seminar appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Nota Bene: News from the Yale Library, page 4 (to view issue, click here) To view powerpoint presentations for the Print Metadata Seminar, click here.

December 2007:

Fellowship and Travel Grant Awards Invited.

Recent Acquisitions Exhibition. Recent Acquisitions 2003-2007: Selected Books, Manuscripts, & Works on Paper is now on view in the Library's new exhibition space. For more details click here.

Tours of the Library and its collections resumed. For an appointment, please contact Susan Walker, Head of Public Services.

The Library underwent a major renovation and addition that together included a spacious reading room, state-of-the-art collection storage, and new staff and conservation workspace. Construction began in spring 2006, and the first phase, which included the construction of the addition, was completed by early summer 2007. The renovation of remaining Library spaces was completed by the reopening. These now include a new exhibition space and classroom, enabling the Library to expand its programmatic offerings.

For details about the renovation project, click here.

For further information, contact the Librarian.

The Librarian, The Lewis Walpole Library, P.O. Box 1408, Farmington, CT 06034 USA

1 860 677-2140

walpole@yale.edu

April 2007:

Fellowship and Travel Grant Awards Announced. The Library was delighted to announce next year's Lewis Walpole Library Fellows. They will take up their fellowships or grants between July 2007 and June 2008. For more details click here.

Fourteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture. On Friday, April 27, in the Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall, New Haven, Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and the University of Chicago, presented the Fourteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture entitled "Observation in the Enlightenment." For more details click here.

Summer Fellowships in British 18th-Century Studies for Yale Graduate Students Offered.

The Library once again participated in the annual exhibition of items drawn from Special Collections throughout Yale. This year's installation, entitled "The History of Globalization: Artifacts and Documentation from Yale's Collections," was held as part of the season of events developed around the theme of "The Global Faces of the Yale Library."

November 2006:

Library Closed for Building Renovations. Because of the ongoing renovations, the Lewis Walpole Library closed until early summer 2007. During this time the Library was able to offer only very limited public services. For more details click here.

Fellowship Program Resumes.

April 2006:

Photoduplication services resumed.

The Library and Jonathan Edwards College sponsored the Opera Theatre of Yale College's production of Elisir d'Amore, by Gaetano Donizetti, conducted by Nick Chong and directed by Ethan Heard.

Robert Darnton, Shelby Cullom Davis '30 Professor of European History, Princeton University, presented the Thirteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture , "Slander: The Art and Politics of Slinging Mud, Paris and London, 1770-1795" on Friday, April 7, at 5:30 p.m. in the Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall, 1080 Chapel Street‚ New Haven.

December 2005:

Library Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Grant. The Library was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a Preservation Assessment of the Prints and Drawings Collections. The grant will enable the Library to carry out a conservation assessment of the eighteenth-century British prints and drawings in the collection and to develop a comprehensive plan for their conservation treatment.

Photoduplication services suspended temporarily. As the Library prepared to move its collections to storage, photoduplication services were suspended from December 1, 2005, through March 31, 2006. They resumed in April 2006.

October 2005:

The Library participated in the Special Collections Fair held October 6 at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven. Head of Public Services Susan Walker and Curator Cynthia Roman presented items related to the Duchess of Kingston's 1776 Bigamy Trial.

The items on display represented some of the many types of materials in the collection that support inquiry into a particular topic. These included prints, published texts, extra-illustrated books, and a manuscript journal. The trial was the subject of the Library's latest volume of Miscellaneous Antiquities, "The Production of a Female Pen": Anna Larpent's Account of the Duchess of Kingston's Bigamy Trial of 1776, published last year.

Prior to its closing, the Library offered tours to members of the Yale University Library staff through LiSA, the Library Staff Association, in celebration of Yale University Library's 75th anniversary.

September 2005:

For the English Department's first 18th-/19th-C. Colloquium of the academic year, the Library co-sponsored a talk by Helen Deutsch, Associate Professor at UCLA, entitled "'Hodge Shall Not Be Shot': Boswell, Johnson Pale Fire, and the Romance of Authorship." The talk was presented September 16 in New Haven.

May 2005:

For the Commencement Concert,sponsored by the Lewis Walpole Library and Saybrook College, the Saybrook College Orchestra, Perry So, Music Director, performed Selections from Candide by Leonard Bernstein, featuring Charlotte Dobbs, Soprano, and Amanda Ingram, Soprano, and Symphony No. 6 in B minor, "Pathétique" by Tchaikovsky. May 21, Battell Chapel.

April 2005:

Grants awarded for The Lewis Walpole Library/Strawberry Hill projects
The Library received two grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation totaling $37,500. One grant supports curatorial fellow Hope Saska who is developing an electronic database focused on the objects collected by Walpole for Strawberry Hill. The second grant, awarded to the Lewis Walpole Library and the Yale Center for British Art, funded an organizational meeting to plan a major exhibition dedicated to Strawberry Hill. The exhibition will be organized by those two Yale entities in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. For further details see the article in the Yale Bulletin & Calendar, April 1, 2005|Volume 33, Number 24, or contact the Library at walpole@yale.edu.

Joyce Appleby, Professor Emerita of History, UCLA, presented the Twelfth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture, "Thomas Paine and the Intellectual Underpinnings of American Democracy" on Friday, April 22, at 5:30 p.m. in the Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall, 1080 Chapel Street‚ New Haven.

The Library sponsored the Opera Theatre of Yale College's performance of W.A. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

Parliaments, Peoples and Power 1603-1800, an International Conference at Yale, was held April 7-9 in New Haven and Farmington.

December 2004:

Renovation Planned for Academic Year 2005-2006. Fellowships Postponed. In light of the scheduled Library renovation project in the 2005-2006 academic year, the Lewis Walpole Library regretfully announces that no visiting research fellowships will be awarded for that year. Click here for further details.

October 2004:

"Antiquaries and Connoisseurs" An antiquarian's fascination with pieces of the past and a connoisseur's avid appreciation for works of art were widely recognized preoccupations of the period, and both made wonderfully tempting targets for caricaturists. Organized by Margaret Powell, this exhibition was on display in the Library's Side Hall through May 11, 2005.

June 2004:

On June 21, the Library hosted thirty members of the Rare Book and Manuscript Section of ACRL for tours and luncheon as part of the RBMS pre-conference held at Yale.

May 2004:

"Painted and Printed Color in Eighteenth-Century Satire," organized by curator Cynthia Roman, offered nearly thirty examples of color in printmaking in England and included works illustrating many techniques, from hand-colored mezzotints to prints on tinted paper. The exhibition was on view through October 6, 2004.

The third Master Class, “Reading Prints and Graphic Images 1740-1840,” taught by Brian Maidment, was held at the Library in Farmington from May 17-21.

The Library continued its support of undergraduate music at Yale by sponsoring a concert featuring the first act of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, performed by the Opera Theatre of Yale College and the Saybrook College Orchestra at Battell Chapel, May 22.

April 2004:

The Lewis Walpole Library and Jonathan Edwards College jointly sponsored:

W.A. Mozart's The Magic Flute, presented by the Opera Theatre of Yale College on April 2-3, 2004, at University Theater, 222 York Street

The Lewis Walpole Library Lecture was presented:

"'The Faithless Column and the Crumbling Bust': Alexander Pope and Sculptural Portraiture" by Malcolm Baker, Professorial Research Fellow, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and Professor, Art History and The History of Collecting, University of Southern California
April 23, 2004, Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall

Recipients of Fellowships and Travel Grants were announced.

March 2004:

"Matrimony and Metaphor," a visual exploration of marriage as a pervasive theme in eighteenth-century graphic satire, was on view through March 8, 2004, in the Library's Side Hall.