NJAM Annual Meeting

    Improve listing Presented by

Please join the New Jersey Association of Museums for our 2013 Annual Meeting.

Reconnect with your colleagues from across the state at NJAM's Annual Meeting. It includes a keynote address by Ulysses Dietz, Chief Curator at the Newark Museum, on "Money, Beauty, Power: The Transformation of Taste in America's Gilded Age," the presentation of the John Cotton Dana Award, breakout sessions on social media, lunch, and more.

Schedule of the Day

10:30 - 11:00 AM Registration and Coffee
Princeton University Art Museum - Auditorium

11:00 AM - Noon Welcome and Keynote Address
Ulysses Dietz, Chief Curator and Curator of Decorative Arts, Newark Museum

Money, Beauty, Power: The Transformation of Taste in America's Gilded Age

The Civil War unleashed a tide of wealth-building in America the likes of which had never been seen before. By the end of the 1860s, when Ulysses S. Grant was elected to the White House, America's new industrial millionaires were making money faster than they could spend it.  The result was an age of conspicuous consumption and elaborate house-building that celebrated money and its ability to purchase beauty in the name of social power.  At first the American rich embraced modernity - the new, the novel, the now - in its quest for opulence. But, by the 1890s, the tide was turning, and America's elite began to look for other ways to separate themselves from their fellow citizens. The concept of "taste" became a tool for social advancement; a weapon in the battle for social supremacy.  Few of us today fully are aware of how this invention of "good taste" has shaped our modern cultural world.

Noon - 12:45 PM Lunch & Annual Meeting Prospect House at Princeton University

Includes the presentation of the John Cotton Dana Award. Final nominations must be in by Friday, May 10. For more information, click here.

1:00 - 2:00 PM Breakout Sessions

Join the conversation! 

Social media has become an essential museum tool for generating awareness, sharing information, gathering audience feedback, and recruiting donors. Share best practices and discuss tips and tricks for using social media based on your area of expertise: Administration, Education, Marketing and PR or Curators and Registrars.

2:00 - 3:00 PM Docent Led Tours

Take a tour of the Princeton University Art Museum.