Enjoy a Virtual Visit to New DAR Museum Exhibit

While our DAR Museum is currently closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we are pleased to share that our new exhibit, Illuminating Design: The Decoration and Technology of E. F. Caldwell and Company, 1859-1959, opened earlier this month. 

The new exhibit explores how design and technology allowed E. F. Caldwell and Company to offer a variety of lighting and decorative items in order to attract business and remain competitive. E.F. Caldwell was a New York firm that created and manufactured high-end lighting and interior furnishings in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Examples of the company’s work may be found in many of the mansions belonging to the Vanderbilts and famed architect Stanford White in New York City; the Patterson House, Anderson House, Hillwood and the White House in Washington, D.C.; and others in the Carolinas and Florida. We are justifiably proud that all the DAR buildings that make up the headquarters complex have examples of E.F. Caldwell fixtures, most notably in the President General’s Assembly Room, President General’s Reception Room, the Genealogy Department offices and stairwells in the Administration Building. (Incidentally, there is no connection between E.F. Caldwell and the National Society’s former jeweler, J.E. Caldwell.)

We’re grateful for an opportunity to explain the years of behind-the-scenes work necessary to create an exhibit of this scope. Research began more than five years ago and formal planning for the exhibition two years ago. Initial meetings with designers and fabricators took place shortly after the previous year's exhibit was installed. Two months ago, the previous exhibit was removed, and the museum gallery made ready for the installation of cases, platforms, objects, graphics, labels and interactives. After years and months of planning and organizing, the exhibition was installed and opened. We are anxious for the nation’s Capital to return to normal so that more patrons can enjoy the exhibition in person.

Meanwhile, the museum's curators continue working on rotating objects in other museum spaces around the building. Every month, from April through July, objects in cases and drawers in the Study Gallery and Yochim Gallery are changed in order to showcase more of our collection. The spring and summer will see portraits rotated in and out of the Yochim Gallery. The amount of time certain objects remain on exhibition depends upon their material's sensitivity to light.