Newport Authors Lecture Series at IYRS
Newport, Rhode Island has no shortage of talent when it comes to innovators, artists, historians, and writers. For the Spring lectures, IYRS presents “Newport Authors”, a series of four talks by compelling and noteworthy local writers who will discuss their fascinating work. Join us for some informative and fun evenings to learn about the last of the coasting schooners on the east coast, to gain a new perspective of how Rhode Island came to be, to find out what Newport Harbor used to be like, and why it looks the way it does today, and to sit down and talk with an accomplished local personality whose ambitious mission in life has been to make sense of the vast information we’re faced with in the modern world and design the techniques to make it understandable.
- Stop by Cafe Zelda for dinner with a special IYRS menu (528 Thames Street), 6:00 - 7:15 pm. Call Zelda’s for reservations: (401) 849-4002 .
- Walk to Restoration Hall at IYRS for the 7:30 pm lecture (449 Thames Street).
- Members - free; Nonmembers - $7
April 2, 2013
Tom & Caroline Goddard: Fly Rails and Flying Jibs: Coasting Schooner Photographs
Between 1926 and 1947, Robert H.I. Goddard photographed many of the last coasting schooners on the East Coast., Bob Goddard’s son, Thomas P.I. Goddard, and granddaughter, Caroline Hazard Goddard have saved the surviving negatives, lantern slides, or prints to produce the highest-quality reproductions and capture the finest details of these images all of which have gone into their book.
Thomas P.I. Goddard, like his father before him, is a life-long sailor and is the Manager of Brown & Ives Land Co., LLC in Providence, Rhode Island. He divides his time between professional and volunteer community work and managing a commercial real estate portfolio. Caroline Goddard is Tom’s daughter and the youngest of Bob Goddard’s 11 grandchildren. She graduated from Brown University in 2010 with a B.A. in Visual Art. In the fall of 2007, Caroline took time off from college to help catalog her grandfather’s photographs and organize research materials, what began as a semester’s worth of work soon grew into a three-year endeavor and resulted in this wonderful book.
April 16, 2013
Rockwell Stensrud: Inventing Rhode Island, 1636-1663: or, How Six Rebellious People Caused Enough Bedlam in Massachusetts to Be Banished and Founded Rhode Island to Get Even.
Stensrud’s tongue-in-cheek title sums up his fascinating topic. How Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, William Coddington, Samuel Gorton, John Clarke, and Mary Dyer made themselves so unpopular with the upstanding orthodox Puritan oligarchs of the Bay Colony that they were forced to flee for their sanity. Rhode Island was the result, and the colony was not pre-planned. It was invented.
Rockwell Stensrud is the author of Newport: A Lively Experiment 1639-1969, published by the Redwood Library in 2007. A paperback version is coming soon.
April 30, 2013
Richard Saul Wurman: Conversations with Richard Saul Wurman
We’ll spend an evening in conversation with the Newporter described by Fortune magazine as an "intellectual hedonist" with a "hummingbird mind." Richard Saul Wurman seeks ways to make the complex clear. Recognizing at an early age that his ignorance is his greatest asset, he has made it his mission to sort through the abundance of information that is available today on every topic, and design the techniques to make it understandable.
Richard Saul Wurman has had many lives: as an author (83 books); FAIA Architect; cartographer; teacher; urban designer; graphic designer; information theorist; in medicine, and as a conference convener. Wurman created the TED conference in 1984, which he chaired through the 2002 meeting. TED brings together many of America's clearest thinkers in the fields of technology, entertainment and design. The path of this journey has been paved by one surface: his curiosity.
May 7, 2013
Paul F. Miller: From Cliffs to Harbor: “Lost” Newport
Paul will expand on the theme began in his 2010 book Lost Newport – Vanished Cottages of the Resort Era where he traced and chronicled the demise of a number of “lost” magnificent mansions in Newport designed by renowned architects. Paul will focus not only on the housesb but on how the waterfront in Newport has transformed over the years, from a bustling working waterfront to the harbor we know today, lined with condominiums.
Paul F. Miller has been Curator of The Preservation Society of Newport County since 1995. His specialty is in the field of Gilded Age architectural interiors. In addition to multiple restoration projects and exhibits in Newport, his recent publications include: “American Gothic” (2012), “Lost Newport” (2010), and “Handelar’s Black Choir” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal (2009).
For more information, please contact Jay Picotte jpicotte@moy.org or (401) 848-5777 , ext.222