Hill-Stead Museum Hosts an Elegant Evening

By Matthew Longcore

This past weekend I had the great pleasure of attending a memorable evening of music and conversation at Hill-Stead Museum. For those unfamiliar, Hill-Stead is a National Historic Landmark property, an extraordinary Colonial Revival house set on a large estate in Farmington, Connecticut. The museum is well-known for its exceptional architecture, enchanting gardens, and stately grounds. Hill-Stead is also home to a remarkable collection of French Impressionist masterpieces, including major paintings by Claude Monet, Eugène Carrière, Edgar Degas, and Édouard Manet.

Standing in the Drawing Room of Hill-Stead near one of Monet’s famous haystack paintings, I was reminded of a line from Pierce Brosnan’s character in the movie The Thomas Crown Affair: “Haystacks, Bobby. I just like my haystacks.” Impressionist paintings conservation at Hill-Stead was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal. The article is written by Mary Tompkins Lewis, Ph.D., Visiting Associate Professor in Art History at my undergraduate alma mater, Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Against a backdrop of elegant furnishings and fine art, the musical group Six of Clubs performed a wonderful selection of songs from England and France, including music from Noel Coward and Maurice Chevalier. Founded in 2010, the Six of Clubs is a group of six friends based in Manhattan who are music aficionados. The group performs songs from The Great American Songbook, over 200 of the finest American songs from Hollywood and Broadway musicals from the 1920s to the 1960s. Their repertoire includes the music of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Alan Jay Lerner. Six of Clubs regularly performs at private clubs along the eastern seaboard.

This talented, accomplished, well-educated, and well-dressed group of ladies and gentlemen are about as preppy and ivy as it gets. The group includes:

John Hargraves (Musical Director/Pianist)

John is a writer and translator and former professor of German literature at Yale University and Connecticut College. He is co-founder and performer/ president of Musical Masterworks.

Nicholas Firth (Narrator and Baritone)

Nick is a graduate of McGill University and Harvard Business School. He had a career as a music publisher for over 40 years and is a managing partner at Parthian Strategies, LLC.

Beatrice Broadwater (Soprano)

Bebe is a graduate of Mannes which is now a division of the College of Performing Arts at The New School and has served on their board since 1985. She is a professional singer.

Richard Miller (Tenor)

Rich is a graduate of Williams College, Albany Law School, and NYU School of Law. He is a trusts and estates lawyer at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, LLP.

Angela Cason (Mezzo Soprano)

Angela is a graduate of Yale University and former member of two Yale a cappella groups, New Blue and Whim ‘n Rhythm. She is the founder of a digital advertising agency, TEMPO Strategic.

Winthrop Rutherfurd (Baritone)

Win started his singing career as a boy soprano at The Buckley School. At Princeton University, he headed the Tigertones a cappella group. A graduate of UVA School of Law, he is a retired attorney.

Hill-Stead Museum

Hill-Stead is the former home of architect Theodate Pope Riddle and her husband John Wallace Riddle Jr. The house was built in between 1898 and 1901 for Theodate’s father, Alfred Atmore Pope, an industrialist and art collector. Theodate’s architectural designs for Hill-Stead were translated into a working site plan by Egerton Swartwout of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. Swartwout, a graduate of the Yale College class of 1891, also designed the Yale University Art Gallery (1928).

A graduate of Miss Porter’s School, Theodate Pope Riddle was a brilliant and multifaceted individual, and the first woman to become a licensed architect in New York. She designed campus buildings for two major boarding schools in Connecticut, Westover School (a school for girls founded by Mary Robbins Hillard in 1909) and Avon Old Farms School (a school for boys founded by Theodate Pope Riddle in 1927).

Hill-Stead is a breathtakingly beautiful setting, and it was thrilling to enjoy music and dinner at a place I have loved for years. I first discovered Hill-Stead over a decade ago when my wife and I attended the May Market, Hill-Stead’s springtime fundraising event, for the first time. Subsequently my wife, who is the artist behind Blue Door Vibes, attended the May Market and the Holiday Boutique as an exhibitor.

The event on Saturday evening was made possible through the generous sponsorship of our friend David Dangremond. David is an art history educator and philanthropist who serves on the Hill-Stead Board of Directors. A graduate of Amherst College, David received graduate degrees from the Winterthur Program at the University of Delaware and from Yale University. David taught art history at Trinity College as the St. Anthony Hall Visiting Professor of Fine Arts.

Anna Swinbourne, Ph.D., Hill-Stead’s executive director, thanked David for his invaluable support. She commented that executive directors from New England museums can all agree on one thing: “All roads lead to David Dangremond.”

Truer words have not been spoken. David is the very definition of a gentleman. He is one of those incredibly affable people who immensely enjoys connecting with people and is highly skilled at making introductions. Moments after my wife and I arrived for the wine and cheese reception on the Carriage Porch, David introduced us to the granddaughter of James Gamble Rogers, the architect behind the Yale Club of New York City (1915) and so many of the buildings at the Yale University campus, including the Memorial Quadrangle (1917-1921) and the Sterling Memorial Library (1924-1930). I am writing my doctoral dissertation on the topic of Collegiate Gothic architecture, so meeting a descendant of James Gamble Rogers was certainly a highlight of the evening.

For those who appreciate timeless architecture and fine art, a visit to Hill-Stead is highly recommended.