Reckoning With Reform
Rochester, Buffalo & East Aurora

The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, opened to the public in 1949, is the world’s first museum dedicated to photography and houses one of the world’s oldest film archives. The museum is located on the estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak Company. Kodak was most notably acclaimed for marking a shift in photography from large glass plates to small, 32 mm rolls of film, allowing for a cheaper, more widely accessible method of photography.

The Museum is anchored by a Colonial Revival house (1902 – 1905), commissioned by Eastman, designed by J. Foster Warner, with interiors designed by McKim, Mead & White. The house features a grape arbor, as well as gardens designed by Alling Stephen DeForest and Claude Bragdon.

Built in 1885, the church was designed by noted Rochester architect Harvey Ellis in the Latin cross form with Richardsonian Romanesque elements including rounded apsidal and transept ends topped by conical roofs. The native fieldstone lower level is capped by an upper section of frame construction with a non-structural wall of stained glass. The attached school wing was constructed in 1956 and the square, shingled bell tower was added in 1976.

The Genesee Country Village and Museum (GCV&M) is a living museum of artisanal crafts and early Genesee architecture, conceived and founded in 1966 by art collector and businessman John (Jack) L. Wehle. Wehle established the “village that might have been” to showcase selected examples of 19th-century Genesee Country architecture while aiming to preserve declining crafts such as cabinetry, weaving, pottery, and other arts. The grounds also house the John L. Wehle Art Gallery, which exhibits Wehle’s robust collection of sporting art, as well as an abundant nature center and garden.

Under the new leadership of Becky Wehle, John Wehle’s granddaughter, GCV&M has launched the Seeking Freedom Initiative to reveal and reckon with the regional history and impacts of enslavement by exploring the lives and legacy of the enslaved individuals that built, lived in, and sustained the region. This approach challenges audiences to consider whose stories are remembered, which traditions are deemed worth preserving, and who decides what is celebrated as cultural heritage.

The Wendell Castle Workshop (18 Maple St, Scottsville, NY) is a living institution that celebrates innovation, education, and appreciation for art, craft, and design. For over 50 years, this studio was the creative home of Wendell Castle (1932 – 2018), one of America’s most influential artists and widely recognized as the father of the American Studio Furniture movement. Here, Castle conceived and created virtually all of his masterworks, pioneering an approach to furniture that merged sculpture, craftsmanship, and design.

The studio is also the home of the Wendell Castle Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and advancing Castle’s legacy through residencies and educational programs, and the Wendell Castle Archives, which house materials chronicling Castle’s creative process and includes a gallery featuring select iconic works alongside ceramic sculptures by his widow, acclaimed artist Nancy Jurs, illuminating the creative dialogue between two distinguished artists.

Tour the Susan Greene Costume Collection led by Cassidy Percoco (Curator, GCV&M).

Guided walking tour of the historic village (begins at Tollhouse)

Tour Wendell Castle Studio (tour begins at bus in front of admissions tunnel), led by Ken Page (Director, Wendell Castle Workshop) and Kathrine Page (Secretary, Wendell Castle Project Board).

5:00 – 5:45 p.m.
5:45 – 7:30 p.m.

Appetizers at the Hosmer and Livingston Houses
Dinner at the Town Hall

The Graycliff Estate (1931) was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Darwin D. Martin, the company secretary of the Buffalo based Larkin Soap Company, and his wife, Isabelle R. Martin, as their summer home on the coast of Lake Erie. The home boasts grand views of the lake and utilizes limestone cut from the very cliffs it sits upon.

Frank Lloyd Wright in Buffalo
Patrick Mahoney (Architect, author of publications on Frank Lloyd Wright, among them Frank Lloyd Wright’s Walter V. Davidson House: An Examination of a Buffalo Home and Its Cousins from Coast to Coast (2011) and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Scholarly Clients: William and Mary Heath (2015); board member, Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy, and Founding Member Graycliff Conservancy).

Tour the Guaranty Building.

Unveiled in 1896 and designed by Adler & Sullivan, this early skyscraper boasts intricate terracotta facades and strong vertical lines. Louis Sullivan famously pioneered the phrase “form follows function,” arguing that the structure of a building should express its intended purpose. He was inspired by this motto to design steel-framed skyscrapers that emphasized verticality and might be seen as expressions of the modern.

With its horizontal lines, rows of windows, open floor plan, and structural connection to the natural landscape, the Darwin D. Martin House (1905) was often considered by Wright to be his “opus.” He viewed it, with the furniture and art glass windows that were also of his design, as an expression of “domestic harmony.” In 2009, a new visitor center was added, designed by renowned contemporary architect Toshiko Mori, whose work emphasizes visual cohesiveness with the surrounding environment.

Welcome and Introduction
Alan Nowicki (Director of Programming, The Roycroft Campus)

The Roycroft Campus was founded in 1895 in East Aurora, NY by Elbert Hubbard, an early champion of the Arts & Crafts ethos in the United States (and a former salesman for the Larkin Soap Company). Inspired by the philosophies of John Ruskin and William Morris, Hubbard aimed to create an artisan community which, as articulated by Ruskin himself, aimed to promote “a belief in working with the head, hand and heart and mixing enough play with the work so that every task is pleasurable and makes for health and happiness.” The Roycroft Campus includes 14 original buildings, many of which still serve as cultural institutions, educational centers and art galleries.

The Elbert Hubbard Museum is housed in one of the original Roycrofter homes and contains some of the rarest Roycroft artifacts.

Baker Memorial Church (Baker Memorial United Methodist Church), 345 Main Street in East Aurora, New York. Built between 1927 and 1928 and designed in the Collegiate Gothic style, the church is constructed of limestone with cat stone trim and features a three-story entrance tower. Notably, the sanctuary houses 17 opalescent glass windows produced by Louis Comfort Tiffany, six of which are signed. The church complex also includes a one-story chapel, an attached parish hall, a rectory, a garage, and a frame caretaker’s house.

Availing Toward Life: The Evolution and Reception of John Ruskin’s Revolutionary Social Thought
James Spates (Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Hobart and William Smith).

RIT owes its 1847 founding to the merger of two smaller institutions – the Rochester Athenaeum, an association aimed at “cultivating and promoting literature, science, and the arts,” and the Mechanics Literary Association. In 1903 Gustav Stickley and Harvey Ellis worked together to install Stickley’s exhibition of his signature furniture at RIT. Knowingly or not, they had initiated among the first traveling art exhibitions in the U.S. In 1950 the institution became home to what is now the School for American Crafts. The university has gone on to build a renowned art and design program, home to many distinguished practitioners, among them esteemed woodworker and furniture designer Wendell Castle who taught and served as an artist-in-residence throughout the latter half of the 20th century. An attestation to the school’s stature and a result of faculty relationships, acclaimed designers Massimo and Lella Vignelli donated their archive to the University in 2010.

Elizabeth Kronfield (Director, School for American Crafts and School of Art) and Josh Owen (Vignelli Distinguished Professor of Design and Director of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies, Rochester Institute of Technology)

Visit the jewelry, furniture design, ceramics, print and sculpture studios (while in use!) at the RIT School for American Crafts.

Tour the Harris, Bevier, and University galleries at the RIT School for American Crafts hosting the Faculty Exhibition and “Tarrant Clements – The Shape of Space.”

Tour the Vignelli Archives led by Josh Owen.

Optional visit to the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED).