News
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Featured Articles
Mansion Visitation Continues to Grow
As we close the books and crunch the numbers for another successful holiday season, we are delighted to report that visitation has been steadily on the rise. Though we saw a slight decrease in visitation in 2016 and 2017, the Mansion welcomed over 33,000 people by the end of December and we expect to see 750 more students in the coming months--besting last year's numbers by nearly 3,000 people. We are so pleased to be able to share this one-of-a-kind landmark with increasing numbers of visitors from all over the world each year.
Annual Holiday Gala Recap
This year's Gala was a great success, raising nearly $20,000 for the Mansion's preservation and educational initiatives. Guests enjoyed fabulous food provided by the Cumberland Club, the musical stylings of Viva, signature cocktails, and and great company within the Mansion's decked out interiors. Thank you to our generous patrons, event partners, and to all who attended and helped us kick off our holiday season. For a full album of festive photos from the evening by Emily Leonard Photography, click HERE. 2019 Gala Patrons Diamond Patrons Nancy Armitage Elizabeth K. Astor Sheila Clark-Edmands & Peter L. Edmands Mary C. Doughty Thomas [...]
‘Christmas at Victoria Mansion: Ghosts of Christmas Past’ in the Press
Follow the links and watch the videos below to learn more about the Mansion's 2019 holiday season. Now in its fourth decade, 'Christmas at Victoria Mansion' has become a beloved tradition for many in the Greater Portland area and beyond! Portland Press Herald Society Notebook: Click HERE for images and a rundown of Victoria Mansion's Annual Holiday Gala held on December 4, 2019. Longtime supporters of Victoria Mansion Mary Doughty, David Fernald, Allie Staley, Muffie Fernald, Will and Nancy Armitage, David Savage, Benita Fuller-Fugelso and Jane Briggs. Photo by Amy Paradysz, courtesy of the Portland Press Herald. [...]
A Very Special Visitor Returns to the Mansion
On August 20, the Mansion welcomed Marjorie Willits Albright, a college roomate of the late Libby descendant Ellen Libby Lawrence, who passed away at the age of 101 last October. Marjorie remembered eating in the Mansion's Dining Room and sleeping in one of the bedrooms upstairs when she was visiting Portland with Ellen on a break from Wellesley College in 1936. By that time, the Libby family still owned the house but had removed some furnishings. Her memories of the house were remarkable and we so enjoyed this wonderful visit with Marjorie and her son Randall.
A Windfall of New Collections Items on Long-Term Loan
On July 24, the Mansion welcomed Libby descendant Mary Marcell--and with her came some precious cargo indeed. Mary arrived with four wine glasses, four cordial glasses, two pot de crème, and a soup bowl, all original to the Morse table service. She also brought a needlepoint sampler, silver nut dish, silver hand mirror and powder jar, all belonging to Mary Louise Libby (later Chamberlain). Mary Louise (1874-1971) was the middle daughter of the house's second owners, J.R. and Louisa Libby, and resided in the Mansion from 1894 until her marriage (in the Mansion's Parlor, no less!) to Arthur Chamberlain in [...]
Pudgy, Pouty Putti
By VM Guide Charisse Gendron In early 1998, Victoria Mansion started preparations for an exciting project: the reconstruction of its large stained-glass skylight, which had been shattered in a storm sixty years before. Surviving pieces were salvaged at the time, but only one clue remained to the overall composition: a roundel bearing a winged putto personifying the season of Spring. This roundel was known to be one of a set of four, but the others were destroyed during the storm incident, and no documentation of their imagery existed. Overseeing the project from concept through completion, former Curator Arlene Palmer Schwind [...]
The Bourne Identity: What Was the Ottoman For, and Where Does It Belong?
by Victoria Mansion Guide Lisa Schinhofen Victoria Mansion’s blue circular ottoman is hard to miss — due, in part, to its size and its prominent placement in the middle of a given room — and visitors often remark upon it. Many recognize the ottoman as a type of public seating, having seen something similar in a hotel lobby, train station, art gallery, or shopping mall. To others, it is familiar as a precursor to today’s sectional sofas. Some visitors have suggested that the ottoman may have played a role in Victorian courting rituals, as it allowed couples [...]
Victoria Mansion voted Maine’s Best Historic Landmark for 2019!
Thank you Down East readers for voting Victoria Mansion as Maine's Best Historic House Museum/ Landmark for 2019! The Mansion is in fantastic company with the Pejepscot Historical Society, the Francis, and the Portland Museum of Art. For a full list of all the fantastic winners, click HERE!
Conservation Update: Layers of Mystery in the Parlor’s Decoration
Conservators have nearly completed a "first pass" of cleaning the Parlor's walls and ceiling after re-stabilizing the original paint and gilding. This process presents an impasse for the rest of the project as potential problems may reveal themselves once layers - and over a century's worth - of soot and grime are removed from surfaces. A layer of opaque white paint (very similar to that in the Green Bedroom) has always been visible on the ceiling's north-facing side. The white paint most likely was applied in the 1940s as an attempt to make the "trouble spots" (such as water damage [...]
From the Tub Room to the Smoking Room and Back Again by Charisse Gendron
Western culture began defining itself in contrast to the East as early as the Trojan War of Greek versus Persian. In the centuries to follow, as European civilization advanced, its soldiers, traders, adventurers, and artists increasingly perceived the East as a nostalgic counterpart to progress. Across much of the second millennium, Europe conceived of the regions from Egypt to Turkey to India and, eventually, to China and Japan as places to be studied, traveled, occupied, commodified, and poeticized. After World War Two, as empires fragmented and the new field of postcolonial studies arose, scholars in both hemispheres gave a [...]
Partnering with Students to Expand the Mansion’s Educational Offerings
In 2013, Victoria Mansion launched a school program for elementary school learners entitled A Century of Change. This program, allowing teachers to choose from 8 topics to tailor a lesson and visit for their students, has proven to be a successful model. We look to expand this programming, yet find the needs of middle and high school students are very different from the 3rd and 4th graders we currently serve. To reach the challenging middle school audience, Victoria Mansion and Casco Bay High School in Portland partnered on an "intensive," where students from the high school devoted 5 class days from [...]
Conservation Update: Pulling the Rug Out from Under Us!
With only a few short weeks left before the Mansion opens for the season May 1, conservators are busy prepping for the major conservation project in the Parlor. The room's gasolier and furniture have been removed and relocated elsewhere throughout the house, and the original carpet will soon be rolled and rehoused to make way for scaffolding. There are also plans to relocate the two major paintings in the room, Jacob's Dream by Luther Terry and The Iconocolasts by Emanuel Leutze, upstairs to the Green Bedroom. Meanwhile, conservators are also hand-stitching a 17 by 20 foot pad to reinforce and repair the original carpet [...]