Calendar of Events for 2025-2026
CATESBY LEIGH
“The Federal Architecture Wars”
MONDAY, October 20, 2025
The Lyceum, 201 South Washington Street, 7 P.M. light refreshments, 7:30 lecture
Since the latter days of the first Trump Administration, Uncle Sam's architectural patronage has been vigorously, and sometimes rancorously, debated. The President's controversial proposal for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition to the White House has reignited debate over classicism's appropriateness for the design of new federal buildings, including courthouses and agency headquarters. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture of 1962 opened the door to a prolonged modernist hegemony that Trump first sought to disrupt with an executive order that called for government patronage prioritizing classical and traditional styles.
Catesby Leigh has advocated for the continuity of classical design in our federal architecture, arguing that modernist federal buildings tend to be aesthetically unsatisfying or repellent, while also presenting structural performance problems in many instances. The fact remains that the nation's cultural elites tend to espouse what they consider progressive aesthetics that are at odds with architecture's humanistic heritage. Leigh will survey the history of federal patronage and take a look at current controversies, including the White House addition.
Leigh was born and raised in Washington, DC. He has written about public art and architecture for publications including City Journal and The Wall Street Journal. He was a founding chair of the National Civic Art Society, and more recently served as its research fellow.
PATRICK MULLINS
“Riotous Prints and Seditious Pots: Political Radicalism in the Fine and Decorative Arts on the Eve of the American Revolution”
MONDAY, November 17, 2025
The Lyceum, 201 South Washington Street, 7 P.M. light refreshments, 7:30 lecture
Patrick Mullins
As we reflect on the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War, we tend to think of the Revolution as originating from philosophical arguments about rights and sovereignty made in political pamphlets by enlightened American statesmen. But the American Revolution originated through a variety of cultural forms, including visual and material culture, produced in England as well as America. On both sides of the Atlantic, patrons, activists, and producers—including Thomas Hollis, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, and Josiah Wedgwood—used the fine and decorative arts to engage the emotions of middle-class consumers, including women. Images could amuse, anger, and inspire, moving ordinary people to political action more effectively than abstract arguments. Through fine art works like sculptures and paintings, consumer goods like punchbowls and tea pots, and above all, mass-produced prints, English and American radicals mobilized a large swath of the public in Britain and the colonies against the king’s policy, deploying images in the war of words which contributed to the outbreak of war itself.
J. Patrick Mullins is a cultural historian serving as Associate Professor of History and Public History Director at Marquette University in Milwaukee. At Marquette, he teaches courses on architectural preservation, museum studies, and 18th century British art. Dr. Mullins is the author of Father of Liberty: Jonathan Mayhew and the Principles of the American Revolution, and he is writing a new book about the cultural origins of the American Revolution. He has published articles and given talks on a wide range of cultural figures, from Charles Willson Peale and John Adams to Frederick Law Olmsted and Ray Bradbury. Dr. Mullins is also developing an exhibition of 18th century art for Spring 2026 in honor of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
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