News Archive

4/19: Join us for Earth Celebration Day!

Friday, 22 March 2019 11:49

Exhition: Bird Art: Audubon’s Royal Octavo May 2-4

Friday, 22 March 2019 11:33

In conjunction with Artweek Milton's May 1 lecture "Bird Art: Audubon’s Royal Octavo and the Democratization of Natural History," theWakefield Estate will host an exhibition of its Royal Octavo collection, a set of hand-colored litho-graphs from the 1840s, recently discovered among the book collection at the estate. The exhibition will be held in the Davenport Mansion at the Wakefield Estate, 1465 Brush Hill Road in Milton, Thursday, May 2 - Saturday, May 4; 11am-3pm daily - $5 suggested donation.

By understanding Audubon’s life and artistic process alongside the personal underpinnings and political implications of the octavo edition, a new conception of the artist and his world emerges – one in which the man comes of age alongside his nation, and sets in motion a host of historical events and movements to come.

Public Lecture: Bird Art: Audubon’s Royal Octavo and the Democratization of Natural History

Wednesday, May 1, 7:00-8:30pm

Cunningham Park Hall, 75 Edgehill Road, Milton, MA, 02186

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Exhibition: Bird Art: Audubon’s Royal Octavo

The Wakefield Estate, 1465 Brush Hill Rd, Milton

Thursday, May 2 - Saturday, May 4; 11am-3pm daily - $5 suggested donation

Lecture and Exhibition - Audubon's Royal Octavo

Friday, 22 March 2019 11:29

Please note: This event will be held at Cunningham Park Hall, 75  Edgehill Road, Milton, MA.

Drawing from the Wakefield Estate’s own octavo edition of Audubon’s work, Audubon researcher Jess Clay will discuss the creation and distribution of John James Audubon’s Birds of America, and its subsequent impact on the United States and 19th-century natural history. The lecture complements and builds upon the exhibition of the collection, a set of hand-colored lithographs from the 1840s, which will be held at the Wakefield Estate, 1465 Brush Hill Road in Milton, May 2-4, 11am-3pm daily. By understanding Audubon’s life and artistic process alongside the personal underpinnings and political implications of the octavo edition, a new conception of the artist and his world emerges – one in which the man comes of age alongside his nation, and sets in motion a host of historical events and movements to come.

A graduate of Harvard College, Mr. Clay’s interest in John James Audubon and ornithology has taken him from rare book libraries to the Costa Rican rain forest. During a fellowship at Harvard’s Houghton Library, he conducted extensive research into the life and works of Audubon. His work at Houghton centered around Audubon’s literary and artistic engagements with Romanticism, and included the curation of a public exhibition, “Sublime and Manifest: The American Romanticism of John James Audubon.” In his senior thesis, Words of America: John James Audubon and the American Exceptionalism of Ornithological Biography, Mr. Clay explored Audubon’s oeuvre as a nationalist performance and as an early work of American artistic exceptionalism. Born and raised in Texas, Mr. Clay currently resides in Boston."

To buy your tickets, click here or call 617-333-0924. $10/members; $20/non-members.

Public Exhibition:
Bird Art: Audubon’s Royal Octavo
The Wakefield Estate
1465 Brush Hill Rd, Milton
Thursday, May 2 - Saturday, May 4; 11am-3pm daily
$5 suggested donation

Estate co-sponsors 3/9 event about NE Women in Landscape Design

Monday, 25 February 2019 16:03

The Mary M. B. Wakefield Charitable Trust is proud to be a collaborator for a special event sharing the personal legacies of extraordinary women influencing New England landscape design at the turn of the century.

This seminar will illuminate the lives of Mary (Polly) Wakefield, Eleanor Cabot Bradley, Martha Brooks Hutcheson, Marian Roby Case, and Marjorie Russell Sedgwick, who designed and developed exceptional professional and personal landscapes and garden spaces and maintained significant roles in the conservation and preservation of appreciable New England open space. Learn about the Arnold Arboretum’s role in their endeavors, how the women’s legacies are carried on through charitable organizations, and how we can continue to raise the visibility of these special places.

The other co-sponsors are The Trustees of Reservations and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

The program includes an associated exhibition in the Arnold Arboretum’s historic Library Reading Room and light refreshments.

Saturday, March 9, 9:30am–1:00pm, Arnold Arboretum Hunnewell Building. Fee $50. 

For more information and to register, click here.

MARY (POLLY) WAKEFIELD’S lifelong dedication to the environment and horticulture can be found in her legacy of beautiful land, trees, and gardens at her estate in Milton, as well as the Public Garden in Boston, as a founding member of the Friends of the Public Garden.

MARJORIE RUSSELL SEDGWICK was a propagator of rare plants, and in collaboration with the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University introduced new plants to her home, Long Hill and Sedgwick Gardens, in Beverly.

MARTHA BROOKES HUTCHESON studied gardens throughout Europe, then in 1900 enrolled in the original Landscape Architecture program at MIT. In 1935, she was named a fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects, the third woman to receive this honor.

When ELEANOR CABOT BRADLEY inherited her family’s 90-acre Canton estate in 1945, she preserved the turn-of-the-century natural surroundings, maintaining a commitment to the elegant gardens, fields and woodlands.

MARION ROBY CASE operated an experimental fruit and vegetable farm in Weston from 1909 until 1942 to study the science of agriculture. The Case Estate, now owned by the Town of Weston, was once managed by the Arnold Arboretum as a 65-acre botanical garden containing rare plant specimens.