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If These Walls Could Talk: Art and Abolition on the Walls of a Georgia Piedmont Home

Presented by Museum Of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) at Creekside Room – Dominican University of California, San Rafael CA

Apr 01 2023

If These Walls Could Talk: Art and Abolition on the Walls of a Georgia Piedmont Home

This hand painted scenic wallpaper was originally hung and painted for the home of Joshua Billington Griffin (1823-1872) and Sara Jane (Jones) Griffin (1836-1917) in Columbia County, Georgia.

Lecture explores the history of the paper & reveals a complicated story of family, art, & abolition

* Saturday, April 1, 1:00 pm

In the late 1920s a cycle of scenic wallpaper with exotic scenes was moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, from outside of Augusta, Georgia.

When it was donated to MESDA in the 1970s it was assumed to be printed French wallpaper from the workshops of Zuber or Dufour; but it turned out to be hand painted wallpaper created by an itinerant artist in Georgia.

This lecture explores the history of the paper and reveals a complicated story of family, art, and abolition, as it played out on the walls of a Piedmont Georgia house.

The speaker is Daniel Ackermann, the chief curator at the Museum Of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), in Winston-Salem, NC

Second Lecture:
To Bigotry No Sanction: Acceptance and Assimilation in the 18th-Century Jewish Communities of Newport, RI and Charleston, SC
Saturday, April 1, 3:00 pm