Russian Art and American Meaning: Marjorie Merriweather Post at Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens

Asen Kirin, Professor of Art History

Displayed at Hillwood, her home in Chevy Chase, the District of Columbia, M.M. Post’s collection of Russian art acquired layers of distinctly American meanings.

Mrs. Post was widely known as a captain of the food industry as well as an avid and insightful collector of decorative arts. Less familiar is the fact that for her entire life she remained a devoted follower of the Church of Christ, Scientist, the teachings of which philosophers describe as the Pragmatist interpretation of Christian Revelation. Looking at the art collection of Hillwood through the prism of Christian Science and the philosophy of Pragmatism, this lecture will focus on the depth and the conceptual completeness of Mrs. Post’s engagement with the arts and the intricate ways in which, in a Pragmatist mind-set, art objects acquire cultural meanings; the presentation will look also at how the social custom of sharing nourishment becomes a transcending experience. Mrs. Post inserted into the public sphere her distinctly feminine domestic realm by inviting visitors to her house to look at the National Mall, an act, whose symbolism was greatly enriched by her display of art.