Calendar of Events for 2025-2026
JEFFREY RICKETTS
“The Antiques and Architecture of Brick Meeting House, Maryland: 1700-1870”
MONDAY, March 16, 2026
The Lyceum, 201 South Washington Street, 7 P.M. light refreshments, 7:30 lecture
Jeffrey Ricketts is the owner of East Nottingham Antiques, located in North East, Maryland. He has been collecting early American antiques since he was 9 years old, and sold at his first antique show at 12 years old. He is the promoter of the From the Farmhouse Antique Show, which is held twice a year in Elkton, Maryland. He is a board member of the Cecil Historical Trust and the Historical Society of Cecil County and also is Assistant Curator of the HSCC.
His lecture, “The Antiques and Architecture of Brick Meeting House, Maryland: 1700-1870” covers a small 3 mile radius of the community surrounding his home. He will discuss some of the best homes from his area. Many families still living there have lived there since the beginning of the 18th century, some in the same homes for centuries. In addition to the homes, he will discuss the furnishings he has tracked down in private and public collections that were part of the original furnishings of the homes! Among the topics discussed will be 4 generations of Quaker clockmakers, long lost 17th century furniture, incredible applique quilts, and more!
Please join us for a fascinating introduction to an area that many pass by on the way North, but few have stopped to visit.
EMILIE JOHNSON
“Mrs. House has the most commodious Rooms:
The Experience of Boarding in Late-Eighteenth Century America”
MONDAY, April 20, 2026
The Lyceum, 201 South Washington Street, 7 P.M. light refreshments, 7:30 lecture
Travelers in early America faced daunting challenges: poor roads, storms at sea, long distances between towns and settlements, and, not least of all, uncertain lodgings. Options for accommodation included taverns, inns, and boarding houses. A traveler often would not know how many people were expected to share a room, if the sheets would be clean, or what they would be served for dinner until arrival. Some experiences were pleasant. Others, not so much.
Unlike purpose-built taverns and inns, boarding houses usually started as homes. As businesses situated in domestic, often feminine, environments, boarding houses were dynamic, complicated, volatile little worlds. Their physical spaces, the objects that filled them, and the ways that people engaged with them were closely tied to gender and enslavement and adapted as business grew or shrank. Using boarding houses Thomas Jefferson patronized in Philadelphia and Newport in the 1780s and 1790s as case studies, this talk explores the physical spaces of boarding, the furniture and material culture that made for successful (or unsuccessful) boarding experiences, and the activities that took place within the confines of a house transformed into a business.
Emilie Johnson is the Curator of Arts and History at Monticello. Current projects include the restoration and reinstallation of the Tea Room at Monticello and exhibitions that explore Jefferson’s political activities and personal life in the heady but uncertain months of 1776. She holds a Ph.D. in Art and Architectural History from the University of Virginia. Her scholarship, lectures, and publications focus on American art, architecture, and material culture of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
BRADLEY BROOKS
“Americana in a Far Country: Ima Hogg and the Bayou Bend Collection”
MONDAY, May 18, 2026
The Lyceum, 201 South Washington Street, 7 P.M. light refreshments, 7:30 lecture
Ima Hogg (1882-1975), daughter of James Stephen Hogg, the first native-born governor of Texas, lived for a time in the Texas governor’s mansion in Austin. The experience helped shape her appreciation for both antique furniture and history. In the early 1920s, she began to collect American antiques, including glass, ceramics, and furniture. Later in the decade, she embarked on the construction of Bayou Bend in Houston, which would be her home until the 1960s. As her collection grew, Miss Hogg resolved that she would establish a museum, seeking to bring early American art and history to Texas. She made gifts of her home and collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Bayou Bend opened to the public in 1966. Miss Hogg’s remarkable foresight, determination, and humility created an institution that has grown and flourished, and that continues to interpret an expanding narrative of American art and history via its collections and programs. This presentation will explore the development of the Bayou Bend Collection under Miss Hogg’s guidance and will also discuss more recent additions.
Bradley Brooks is a specialist in historic house museums with a background in American decorative arts. He came to Bayou Bend in 2015 from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where he served as founding curator for two historic house museums, Oldfields, the J. K. Lilly, Jr. residence, and Eero Saarinen’s Miller House. He also served as assistant curator of American decorative arts. Previously, he was director of the McFaddin-Ward House in Beaumont, Texas; and founding curator, then director, of the Moody Mansion in Galveston. He earned a B.A. in communication arts from Elizabethtown College, and an M.A. in early American culture from the Winterthur Program of the University of Delaware. Please join us in welcoming Bradley to Alexandria.
2025-6 Dates
SUN, Sept 28: Patty Sheetz, Architectural Walking Tour, How to Read a Church
MON, Oct 20: Catesby Leigh, The Federal Architecture Wars
MON, Nov 17: Patrick Mullins, Riotous Prints and Seditious Pots: Political Radicalism in the Fine and Decorative Arts on the Eve of the American Revolution
MON, Jan 19: Andrea Tracey, America’s Diplomatic Treasures Abroad
MON, Feb 16: Carol Cadou, Celebrating America250: Preserving a Future for our Nation's Past
MON, Mar 16: Jeffrey Ricketts, The Antiques and Architecture of Brick Meeting House, Maryland, 1700-1870
MON, Apr 20: Emilie Johnson, The Experience of Boarding in Late Eighteenth America
MON, May 18: Bradley Brooks, Americana in a Far Country: Ima Hogg and the Bayou Bend Collection