By Anne W. Semmes
Imagine entering the Bruce Museum closed to the public on Mondays but open to the gathering and educative programming of your organization, the Greenwich Decorative Arts Society (GDAS). As of last Monday, the Museum auditorium was filled to capacity witih attendees to be introduced to the “Past, Present and Future” of another museum, The Frick Collection in New York City, by its Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, Aimee Ng.
Welcoming the members and guests attending was GDAS president Ellen Brennan-Galvin, who has been presiding over her organization’s 40th anniversary – 1985-2025, now entering its 41st year. Brennan-Galvin spoke of being thrilled to have the newly named Chief Curator Ng…. A lot of us got to know Amiee as the John Updike Curator at the Frick through her series, “Cocktails with a Curator,” which was so wonderful. But congratulations to Aimee. We’re absolutely thrilled… we have record attendance, so as you can see, we had to move our tea outside in order to put in extra seating.”
Ng began by sharing how the Frick, reopening 10 months ago after a five-year renovation has been visited by an “unprecedented number of visitors – over half a million.” She also noted the Frick’s beginning in 1935, “somewhat later than the Bruce being deeded in 1908.” She then shared the complex renovation, ending up with her upcoming exhibit on “Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture” she described as the “very first exhibition about Gainsborough’s portraits ever to take place in New York City.”
Surely, what makes this organization with its nearly 200 members so vibrant is what it is offering in its lectures, its field trips, and its comradery, as reported by its members.
“Finding friends who enjoy the decorative arts and diving into the past of interior design, fashion, architecture and fine art has been a joyful journey,” tells Karen Handal, a 20-year member. “Sharing discussions about the fine and decorative arts creates intimate bonds of emotional and intellectual connections.”
“One of the most amazing gifts of the decorative arts,” shares Cyndy Anderson, recruited by friend Handal years ago, “is to cherish these somewhat forgotten people who have worked so beautifully, so meticulously on these objects, whether it be a clock or some jewelry – whatever it is, they’re magnificent… I just find it transforming. It gives you a great appreciation for things around you.”
Brennan-Galvin addresses those GDAS lectures. “We always have someone on a museum, like the new curator at the Frick. We have one on jewelry at a very high end…such as a very prominent new jeweler from London and Jaipur, Krishna Choudhury, a 10th generation jeweler from a wealthy Indian family. He uses old gems in modern settings. That’ll be on a Zoom in March.” And there’s “always fashion,” such as the June lecture on “Liberty, Equality and Fashion: Women Who Styled the French Revolution,” given by Barnard College Art History Professor Anne Higonnet, whose 2024 book has the lecture title.
“A lot of us were art history majors in college and have a great love of art and the decorative arts” notes Brennan-Galvin who adds with a quip, “So many of us now have children that will throw it all in the dumpster,” including that “dreaded brown furniture.” Such was the topic that came with the last GDAS lecture of “75 Years of Collecting” at the Winterthur Museum by its Director of Collections Allexandra Deutsch. “We always have to have one on brown furniture,” says Brennan-Galvin. Hence at a dinner she gave for Deutsch a toast was made, “Here’s to brown furniture! And everyone laughed.”
Renaming of Antique Society to Decorative Arts Society
“We’ll talk about Chippendale,” confirms member Adele Raspé. “But we do architecture. We do ceramics, we do fine art.” Raspé had brought the renaming of GDAS from its original title, the Greenwich Antique Society, after she’d joined in 2009, then served on the Programs Committee. A former lawyer who chose to follow her passion at the Parsons School of Design to become a designer, she’d encountered “young people in their late 20’s and early 30… and nobody wanted brown furniture.” As a designer she “had to be current with what young families were looking for… So, decorative arts is really what we talk about.”
That new Decorative Arts Society name brought new younger members. “You see it in the demographics,” she tells. “Primarily we get the people whose kids have started in high school or just going to college… People have more time…We went to a lecture on a very famous architect – it was standing room only, and we had architects from all over the community attending. And so, it opened up a whole new breadth of people.”
Raspé marvels at what she learns from the lectures. “Always, I say to my husband, I don’t ever go home without one new little pearl of something that I didn’t know about some subject that I had studied.”
It was Karen Handal, a former president now moved west with her husband to Menlo Park, CA, who introduced newsletters to GDAS. “I was inspired to write regular newsletters of my own musings to help connect us during the time of the Bruce Museum’s building and restoration when we lost our meeting home. (We love the Bruce Museum – our own regional museum.) And then again with Covid. The positive response (to the newsletters) was overwhelming because our members wanted that connection and I still send an annual Valentine newsletter to them.”
Keeping Members Connected During Covid
Then came the initiative of Cyndy Anderson having served as president during the tough time of Covid. Knowing of other organizations adopting Zoom, and working with the GDAS administrator, “We had practice sessions,” she tells. “We learned how to fluidly switch between me doing my introduction, having somebody introducing the speaker… then having just the speaker.” Add that educative, entertaining program – “We did our version of an Antiques Roadshow.
“We asked people to submit things that they had in their homes that they would like to have appraised.” With a number of professional appraisers as members, “They picked the top five items, and we put them on our screen.” A Zoom followed on the items’ attributes and what they would sell for. “So, we were trying to keep people engaged.”
Anderson cites a favorite lecture on the Charles and Jayne Wrightsman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum. “Jayne’s husband was very wealthy – he met her at a department store counter. She went on to embrace French furniture. And then to go to the Met afterwards and see the actual things and how they were organized – very special.”
Memorable Speakers and Teas
“Our organization has had a long life in Greenwich because our knowledgeable program committee has always sought out the very best speakers,” confirms Barbara Freeman, a 20-year member. In her years she had coordinated some 22 bus day trips, where “Members got to know one another.”
Freeman tells of the only five-years returning speaker as the late Connecticut historian and museum director William (Bill) Hosley as especially notable. “He was an enthusiastic preservationist and his love for all things old, particularly Connecticut homes, was contagious.” Hosley would be hosted by Karen and husband Donald Handal for a boat tour. “He had never seen the great waterfront houses of Greenwich. We were honored to share this trip of a lifetime with him.”
Lastly, Handal points to those “iconic and signature teas after the lecture” that to her were/are “the icing on the cake, literally and figuratively. You don’t get up and just leave a lecture, musing on your own private thoughts – as one often does. We can be so civilized over excellent tea sandwiches and hot tea and talk about our personal responses and learn unexpected details about each other. We became closer as we shared our interests – oh the company of like-minded friends!”
For more information on the Greenwich Decorative Arts Society visit www.greenwichdecorativearts.org
