Event
History Talk: Julia and Ulysses at home: the Grants in the White House, 1869-1877
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Free. The program is freeDates & Times
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Description
Julia and Ulysses Grant would live in the White House for longer than they ever lived in any other house. For Julia, it was home in a way the White House had never been for any previous first family. Ulysses Grant Dietz, whose book Dream House: The White House as an American Home was published in 2009, will explore Julia's role as first lady, and her substantial impact on the White House itself. He will also look at both Julia and Ulysses and their backgrounds, at the places and houses where their family lived over the years between 1848 and 1877, when they set out on their legendary world tour.
Ulysses Grant Dietz served as curator of Decorative Arts at The Newark Museum from 1980 until 2017, and was appointed Chief Curator in 2012. He received his BA in French from Yale University in 1977, and his MA in Ameri can Material Culture from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in 1980.
As the curator of 114 exhibitions covering all aspects of the decorative arts from colonial to contemporary, he studied and collected furniture, silver, base metals, glass, ceramics, textiles, and jewelry. He is particularly proud of his work on the Museum’s National Historic Landmark Ballantine House, built in1885. The Ballantine House was reinterpreted between 1992 and 1994 with a groundbreaking installation called House & Home.
Mr. Dietz has published numerous articles on decorative arts, drawn from the Newark Museum’s nationally known collections. His most recent publications are Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880-1930, from the Newark Museum in 2009, and Dream House: The White House as an American Home, released in September 2009 by Acanthus Press in New York. His last book as curator was Jewelry from Pearls to Platinum to Plastic, published in 2017.
Ulysses Grant Dietz is youngest of the 41 great-great-grandchildren of Julia and Ulysses S. Grant. He is descended from the Grants' eldest child, Frederick Dent Grant, and his mother's name was Julia.
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Image Gallery
Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library