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The Importance of Being Furnished

Date: Friday, November 8, 2024
Time: 7–8pm
Location: The Wolfsonian–FIU @ 1001 Washington Avenue

Step into the lives of four influential Queer men whose homes defined American style from the Gilded to the Jazz Age, yet whose personal lives have until now remained in shadow. In this talk, art historian R. Tripp Evans delves into the private worlds of Charles L. Pendleton, Ogden Codman, Jr., Charles H. Gibson, Jr., and Henry Davis Sleeper as they crafted interiors that reflected yet concealed their identities. Stories of these domestic bachelors told by Evans in his book, The Importance of Being Furnished: Four Bachelors at Home, reveal the complicated depths beneath their homes' brilliant surfaces.

Presented as part of The Wolfsonian's Mark Mamolen program series on American homes, investigating how the design of living space powerfully expresses individual personality and social values.

Watch the recorded talk online.

Banner image: The Octagon Room, Beauport, Sleeper-McCann House, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1921. Henry Davis Sleeper, interior designer. Halfdan Hanson, architect. David Bohl, photographer. Courtesy of Historic New England. Photo: David Bohl.