The New Haven Bar: From the Colonies to Today

April, 2007 – April, 2008

The New Haven County Bar Association will celebrate the centennial of its charter by mounting an exhibition that explores the legal profession in New Haven.  The New Haven Bar: From the Colonies to Today will be on view April 24 until October 27, 2007 and will explore the role of lawyers in setting the standards and integrity of the legal profession in the city for over 300 years.  The New Haven Bar will also highlight New Haven lawyers through the years and cases of national importance.

School Girl Art, 1770-1832

October, 2007 – January, 2008

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many young women learned needlework as a part of their education.  This exhibition showcases examples of their work both simple and highly refined.

A Place to Take Root:

The History of Flowerpots and Garden Containers in North America

December, 2005 -  February, 2006

The New Haven Museum and Historical Society presented the traveling exhibition, A Place to Take Root: The History of Flowerpots and Garden Containers in North America, the first exhibition to document the evolution of the common flowerpot. The exhibition was presented in collaboration with the New Haven Land Trust.

Since opening in July, 2004, A Place to Take Root has toured the United States and Canada. The curator, Susan Tamulevich, author of Dumbarton Oaks: Garden Into Art, Monacelli Press, 2002, is a garden historian and member of the New Haven Land Trust board of directors.

The works in the exhibition contained finely-detailed Italian terracotta, a wood and cast-iron French tree tub, an English horticulture ware rhubarb forcer, traditional regional American pots, and the latest in plastic orchid pots and ornamental urns. These examples help trace the history of the pot, explore its materials and shapes, and illustrate how it has developed in response to changes in horticulture and garden styles from ancient Egypt up to the present day, with special emphasis on the flowering of American designs in the 18th &19th centuries.

Several pots in the show are facsimiles of 17th- to 19th-century American designs created by Guy Wolff, a respected potter who has spent thirty years researching the subject. Mr. Wolff’s replicas, based on shards recovered at such significant sites as Monticello in Charlottesville, Va., Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, and the Hervey Brooks Pottery of Goshen, Conn., are largely responsible for the current revival in traditional flower pot design in the United States.  To benefit the New Haven Land Trust, Mr. Wolff has translated a 19th-century Connecticut design by Hervey Brooks of Goshen, Conn., and now in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society Museum in Hartford, into a special-edition planter.

The Faithful Friend: New Haveners and Their Pets, 1880-1920

June 2005 - January, 2006

This museum exhibition examined and celebrated the relationship between people and pets using family photographs from the period as well as paintings, engravings, literary works, needlework, and three-dimensional objects to explore the cultural changes throughout the nineteenth century that led to a new definition of the American family - one that included domestic pets.

A large portion of the exhibition placed pet keeping in a historical context. Illustrations and images, together with other historical material and artifacts, traced the development of cultural and emotional attachments to pets that took place in the nineteenth century. School books used illustrations of pets in stories and lessons in morality, responsibility, and loyalty. Intellectual and reform movements of the era also used animals, including pets, in their writings and campaigns. A genre of magazines developed around home and family, including images and stories about pets. Pet products, such as bird cages, were readily available for sale in stores. New Haven was the home to the Andrew B. Hendryx Company (1869-1960s), one of the nation’s leading manufacturers of bird and pet cages. By the end of the century, pets were fully integrated into American popular culture and widely accepted as members of the family.

Photographs of New Haveners and their pets completed the exhibition.  Informal, relaxed, and joyful interactions characterized the images and told the loving relationships that families developed with their pets. Included were photographs by New Haven photographer, Thomas S. Bronson, who created charming pet portraits as well as captured whimsical family gatherings on film.

Max Dellfant and the Expression of Spirit

January -  December, 2005

Max Dellfant had a unique vision of New Haven, particularly the waterfront area. His subjects were the schooners, oyster dredges and watch houses, factories and power plants that lined the pre-urban renewal waterfront.  He painted in a vigorous, almost frenetic style. Thickly applied paint left his canvases with a surface of textured impasto. Although prolific, he never achieved commercial success.

In 2003, the Historical Society received seven paintings by German-born artist Max Dellfant (1865-1944) from the estate of Grace Ross. Mrs. Ross was the wife of Albert E. Ross, a long-time friend and correspondent with Dellfant.  Ross admired Dellfant’s work and even wrote an unpublished biography of the artist. In addition to the seven paintings, the correspondence of Ross and Dellfant was donated to the Historical Society.

In 1975, the Historical Society produced an exhibition of fifty Dellfant works, all loaned from private collections.  Thirty years later, with the addition of the Ross bequest, the Historical Society owns a total of nine Dellfant paintings.