The McFaddin-Ward House

Historic House Museum in Beaumont, Texas

Sister, don't give up the land. They are not making land anymore.
W.P.H. McFaddin

Free Lecture: Story of the Buffalo Soldier

The Story of the Buffalo Soldiers

In World War I, more than 370,000 African-Americans served in the US Army. One man who symbolizes the story of African-Americans in the Great War, amidst the backdrop of racism and oppression in the United States, was Walter Potts. His is just one story.

The Buffalo Soldier National Museum in Houston, Texas is dedicated to telling the incredible – and often difficult – story of African-Americans in the US Armed Forces. 

Come hear their stories and more at this month’s lecture.

For more information about the Buffalo Solider National Museum: http://buffalosoldiermuseum.com/

Free Lecture: Blown Away

Netflix Blown Away Star comes to Museum

 

Get ready to be blown away. A contestant from a recent Netflix competitive reality series will be the next guest lecturer at the McFaddin-Ward House. Alexander Rosenberg is not your usual competitor, nor is Netflix’s latest show Blown Away. The show features the country’s best glass blowers, all vying for the top spot. Rosenberg is described as a “minimalist” artist whose talent in blowing glass is both natural and educated. He earned a Master of Science in Visual Study from MIT. Rosenberg was a show favorite, and though he did not place first, the experience amplified his artistic worth. Alexander Rosenberg mostly enjoys being an educator, so this lecture promises to be a special treat. Join us as he takes you into his special world of design and mouth blown glass. Don’t miss it!

Fall Picnic and Lawn Movie

Fall Picnic 2019 Making Up for Lost Time

The McFaddin-Ward House is ironing out details for it’s first community picnic in more than a year. “This year’s Fall Picnic promises to be bigger and better than ever,” says McFaddin-Ward House Director, Allen Lea. “We had to cancel events on the lawn last year because renovations on our front porch were under construction. The rains came in Spring this year, and unfortunately we had to call it off once again.”

The Curse and the Cure is musical entertainment for the evening followed by the 2019 version of the movie “Aladdin.” The 4H Club will host a food fundraiser. We will have a variety of activities for children, including face painting and sidewalk chalk!

Bring your entire family and some friends. Bring picnic supplies, food, ice chests, and cold beverages. It’s the best way to pass a great time. See you there!

Coveted Internship Position Available

2019 Summer Internship Opportunity

The McFaddin-Ward House, an AAM accredited historic house museum in Beaumont, Texas, is offering a paid summer internship in its collections and education department. Built 1905-1906, the Beaux-Arts Colonial mansion was the home of Mamie McFaddin Ward, who left it as a historic house museum in 1982. The museum, which opened in 1986, ranges over three city blocks and includes the main house, carriage house, visitor center, administrative office, and collections office building.

Position Summary:  The intern will gain experience in all areas of a historic house museum and will spend hands-on time in collections, archives, and education.

Duties May Include:

Collections management:  Organizing, cataloging and digitizing archives and photographs, collections and interpretation research, data management, storage upgrades for museum collection, object photography, environmental monitoring, and inventory.

Interpretation/Education:  Working with Summer Camp and junior interpreters, planning onsite and outreach programs, organizing teaching collection.

Qualifications:  Applicant must have a strong interest in any or all aspects of the museum field, including work in archives, museum collections, interpretation, and education. Ability to do precise and detail-oriented work, knowledge of proper museum artifact handling and computer literacy, and good writing skills are required. A bachelor’s degree, or coursework, training, or equivalent experience in museum studies, museum education, history, art history or art education is preferred. Interns must provide their own housing and their own transportation.

Employment Period:  Ten (10) weeks at 40 hours per week, with a $2,900 stipend (taxes will be withheld). Flexible work dates between May and September. Office staff is willing to assist with necessary paperwork for interns to obtain course credit.

Deadline for Submission:  Friday, April 26, 2019

 

How to apply:  Submit a cover letter and current resume, including the contact information of three references, by mail, email, or FAX to:

McFaddin-Ward House

725 Third Street

Beaumont, Texas 77701

Phone: (409) 832-1906

FAX: (409) 832-3483

Email: mcate@mcfaddin-ward.org

[Read more…]

All the China

The McFaddin-Ward China Collection

The McFaddin women adored china. Mamie McFaddin Ward and her mother Ida owned some thirty-six sets! Not all were dinnerware, however. They included breakfast, tea, and dessert sets too, and they happily used them all.

New exhibits featuring ceramics from the McFaddin-Ward House Collection are now on display at the Visitor Center.

The exhibits are of select Dresden and fine china and dinnerware.  The pieces originate from factories in Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and the USA. This is a rare chance to see a large sample of plates all at once.  The exhibit will be on display through Summer 2018.

Collecting Texas

 Man Behind the Bryan Museum

One man’s hobby is another man’s museum. Well, at least for energy industry mogul J.P. Bryan of Houston. For more than 40 years, Bryan and his wife Mary Jon collected a vast array of 70,000 objects from the Old West. Fine china, saddles, art, books, documents, artifacts from the Battle of San Jacinto. The collection traces the development of the American West across 2,500 years of civilization. After years accumulating more, the Bryans finally decided to move their collection from three of their homes into their new museum in Galveston. A historic building at 1315 21st Street houses the Bryan Museum. Known as the Galveston Orphans Home, builders erected the home in 1895. Just five years later, the great storm of 1900 heavily damaged the building where many children died. Operators rebuilt the orphanage and operated it until 1984. The remains stood for a very long time waiting to be resurrected by someone like J.P.Bryan.

Mr. Bryan will speak at the McFaddin-Ward House Visitor Center On May 11, 2017. As always, our lecture series is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Doors open at 6:00. No saving seats, please.

MWH Brings”Best Book” Writer Back Home

The McFaddin-Ward House is proud to bring New York writer Jamie Brickhouse back home to Beaumont to speak for its 2017 Lecture Series. Mr. Brickhouse is the son of Earl and Jean Brickhouse, a prominent couple in Beaumont’s past philanthropic circles and social society. His memoir, entitled Dangerous When Wet, details his life growing up with a flamboyant mother, coming out as a gay man, plunging into addiction, and finding redemption getting sober. He will present his lecture, “From Page to Stage” at the museum’s Visitor Center on March 9, 2017 at 6:30 p.m.

About the Book

“A blisteringly funny, wrenching account of wrestling way too close to – and later loose from – booze, sex and drugs and his adorable, infuriating mother. Bravo!” —Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author of The Liars’ Club

“Whoever said you can’t get sober for someone else never met my mother, Mama Jean. When I came to in a Manhattan emergency room after an overdose to the news that she was on her way from Texas, I panicked. She was the last person I wanted to see on that dark September morning, but the person I needed the most.”

So begins this astonishing memoir – by turns both darkly comic and deeply poignant – about this native Texan’s long struggle with alcohol, his complicated relationship with Mama Jean, and his sexuality.

The Author and Critical Acclaim

Jamie Brickhouse is a writer, performer, and public speaker. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir of Booze Sex and My Mother. It’s “Required Reading” in Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir; Amazon named it a “Best Book of May 2015,” and Book Chase named it a “2015 Nonfiction Top 10.” It received stellar reviews from publications such as Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, Interview, and The Washington Post. Brickhouse has been published in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Salon, Out, Amtrak’s Arrive, Lambda Literary Review, Publishers Weekly, Shelf Awareness, Australia’s The Daily Life, The Fix.com, the Latin American travel magazine Travesía, Addiction/Recovery eBulletin, and is a guest blogger for the Huffington Post and POZ. He has appeared on the national radio shows “The Michelangelo Signorile Show,” “The Marilu Henner Show,” “The Mother Love Show,” KPFA San Francisco’s “Book Waves with Richard Wolinsky,” and Northeast Public Radio’s “The Book Show.”

Jamie’s Solo Show

Brickhouse, a comedic storyteller, debuted his solo show based on Dangerous When Wet in New York City at The Tank’s 2016 Pride Fest and will be performing it at the FRIGID NYC Festival in February and March 2017. He is a two-time StorySLAM champion of The Moth, the acclaimed, not-for-profit worldwide organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling, a Literary Death Match champion, and has performed at live storytelling shows throughout New York, including Risk! He has also performed stand-up comedy and recorded voice-overs for the legendary cartoon TV show Beavis and Butthead.

 

More about Jamie…

Brickhouse spent over two decades in the publishing industry, most recently at two major houses as head of their publicity and lecture divisions. He is founder and CEO of redBrick Agency, a lecture bureau for authors. A native of Beaumont, Texas, he is a graduate of Trinity University (San Antonio) and the Radcliffe Publishing Course (now the Columbia Publishing Course). Brickhouse lives in New York City with his common- law husband Michael. He is at work on his next book, I Favor My Daddy, a memoir about his father Earl. You can friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @jamiebrickhouse, or visit www.jamiebrickhouse.com.

 

 

Free Lecture: The Essence of Tom Lea

Who is Tom Lea?Tom Lea Portrait

Painter. Life Magazine War Artist. War correspondent. Author. Romantic. Friend. Texan Tom Lea lived a long, illustrious life to the age of 93.  Despite his accomplishments, Tom Lea was largely unknown outside Texas when he died on January 29, 2001. His work had taken him to every continent, but he always returned home to El Paso far from current fashions and art world trends. Tom Lea never sought the approval of a critic or the favor of a museum director. He placed the majority of his paintings after World War II in the private collections of his personal friends.

Adair Margo to Speak at McFaddin-Ward House

Adair Margo will speak to a probable packed house at the Visitor Center on October 13th, 2016. She has devoted her life to the telling the world about Tom Lea. Founder of the Tom Lea Institute, Margo is a champion of the arts herself. She is former Chairman of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities under George W. Bush. She shared a life-long friendship with Tom Lea, but it was after recording his oral history that her appreciation grew deeper. Margo serves on numerous prestigious arts boards, and she has devoted her life to the legacy of Tom Lea.

We are honored to have Ms. Margo speak at our museum. We invite the public to hear her remarkable lecture and to attend the reception that follows.

For more information about the artist and the speaker, please go to http://tomlea.com/

 

 

 

Free Lecture: Tiffany Art Glass Expert to Speak at Museum

Tiffany Art Glass

The McFaddin-Ward House is proud to bring a Tiffany Art Glass expert to its 2016 Lecture Series. Paul Doros authored a book called The Art Glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany describing some of the artist’s most celebrated pieces. He will speak about Tiffany at an upcoming lecture on September 22 at the McFaddin-Ward House Visitor Center.

Who was Louis Comfort Tiffany?

Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts. Artists and collectors know him best for his work in stained glass, and historians associate Tiffany most often with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. He considered his Favrile glass his signature artistic achievement which he produced between the 1890s and 1920s. Now highly collectible, the glass underscores one-of-a-kind quality. Tiffany’s glass workers blew and decorated each piece by hand.

Paul Doros’ book explores the full range of Tiffany Studios’ diverse and innovative styles. In his talk, Doros will showcase photographs of Tiffany’s world-class pieces. He will highlight a variety of unique masterpieces like the delicate Flowerform vases and the dramatic Lava vases. Doros will also give a history of the Tiffany glasshouse where gifted glass workers and scientists worked. He will show never-before-published documents and archival photographs of Tiffany and his family. The Art Glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany showcases the mastery and vision behind remarkable works.

 

About the Speaker

Paul Doros is a renowned scholar on the life and work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. He was the first curator of glass at the Chrysler Museum of Art, located in Norfolk, Virginia, and authored the 1978 publication, The Tiffany Collection of the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk. Experts widely consider this collection the finest of Tiffany blown vessels that any public institution holds. He went on to work in the Twentieth Century Decorative Arts Department of Christie’s from 1978 to 1988. Paul hosts The Tiffany Studios Resource Center web site (tiffanystudios.org) and has even appeared in a segment of the PBS program “History Detectives.”

You may meet Mr. Doros after the his lecture at a reception which the museum will hold in his honor.

For more information about the book and the author, please go to http://www.tiffanystudios.org/

 

Manners Matter for Kids – CLASS IS NOW FULL

THIS CLASS IS NOW FULL

WHICH FORK DO I USE? / DON’T TALK WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL! / EXACTLY HOW DO I FOLD THIS NAPKIN???

The McFaddins were all about social graces and minding their manners. Come to the McFaddin-Ward House this summer for lessons! Get tips on conducting yourself at the table, proper conversation, introductions, even how to dress to impress!

For Ages 10 – 14

Cost: $25 which includes lunch, of course!

Registration deadline is Wednesday, July 6, 2016

For more information, call Sandy at 832-1906