Events & Exhibitions

A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life:
The Photographs of Clover Adams, 1883-1885

February 9, 2012 to June 2, 2012
Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 4 PM

The striking photographs of Clover Adams, wife of historian and writer Henry Adams, capture iconic moments of Gilded Age Boston and Washington, D.C., while also opening pathways to her long-concealed inner life. Her photographs tell a story—her story. This exhibition features many of Clover’s images, some of which have not been shown publicly, along with her letters, the notebook she used to record the technical aspects of her photographs, Henry’s letters, and other family materials.

At the heart of Clover’s story is a mystery: just when she found a powerful way through photography to document her life, it started to unravel. On a gloomy Sunday morning in December 1885, Clover committed suicide by drinking from a vial of potassium cyanide, a chemical used to develop photographs. Henry Adams commissioned a bronze statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens to mark his wife’s grave in Washington’s Rock Creek Cemetery.  But he rarely spoke of her and never mentioned her in his Pulitzer prize-winning The Education of Henry Adams. What got lost—until now—was the remarkable story of how Clover, in the last years of her life, discovered with her camera an eloquent means with which to express herself.

Performing Civil Rights: Black Women Entertainers, the “Long” Civil Rights Movement, and Second Wave Feminism

Ruth Feldstein, Rutgers University at Newark
Comment: Daphne Brooks, Princeton University

Thursday, February 9, 2012, 5:30 PM

This program will be held at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe

More information: Mass. Historical Society

Middays at the Meeting House

Building Beantown: Exploring the Neighborhoods
that Make Up the “Hub”

Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02108
(617) 482-6439

Drop by the Old South Meeting House every Thursday in February and March 2012 at 12:15 for a noontime helping of local history.

On March 8, International Women’s Day, BWHT board member Mary Smoyer and historian Michael Reiskind talk about the women and men of Jamaica Plain.

February 9 – Dorchester
February 16 – Roslindale
February 23 – South End
March 1 – South Boston
March 8 – Jamaica Plain
March 15 – Chinatown
March 22 – Roxbury
March 29 – Charlestown

BWHT 20th Anniversary Events

In 2009, the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail celebrated its first two decades by sponsoring and co-sponsoring an outstanding series of programs and events. Throughout March 2009, International Women’s Month, the calendar was packed with lectures, presentations, and special guided Trail walks. Those events are archived on this site.

As part of the 20th anniversary celebration, BWHT sponsored a Summer Institute for Boston grade 5 teachers. You can learn about the women’s history projects they did with their classes here.