The Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library is celebrating its 75th birthday with a sweeping exhibit that draws on its collection to paint a picture of life at Winterthur over the generations.
“What is really beautiful about this show is that it takes you from the past through the present and even into the future of Winterthur all in one gallery,” said Alexandra Deutsch, John L. and Marjorie P. McGraw Director of Collections.
The site’s history began with Indigenous people, drawn to the area for its abundant land and natural resources. In 1839, the first house was built by Delaware’s storied Du Pont family. Over the decades, the site grew to include a 175-room house, a 60 acre garden, and more than 1,000 acres of protected land. The biggest expansion came under the ownership of Henry Francis Du Pont in the 20th century, and in addition to the land and home, Winterthur’s collection includes more than 90,000 objects of American provenance, including art, decorative objects, and furniture.
Part of that collection, from the Du Pont estate, formed the backbone of “At Home at Winterthur,” a vast, five-year exhibition that tells the stories of the people who made Winterthur their home over the generations.
“I think what is particularly special about the 75th anniversary exhibition at home is that we were able to bring out objects that are associated with that earlier period,” Deutsch said.
While the massive house is perhaps Winterthur’s most notable feature, the exhibition also focuses on the land and, most importantly, the people who called it home. To do that, Deutsch said curators looked deep into Winterthur’s collections.
“You're greeted when you first come in with a very lengthy timeline that articulates the history of both the land and the house, but particularly the people who've been on the land,” she says. “And that has allowed us to bring out objects many people have probably never seen.”
In 1951, H. F. du Pont turned Winterthur from a private residence into a museum and center for scholarship focused on the emerging study of American material culture.
“By 1951, the field of serious academic study about these objects begins to really be born and take shape, and Winterthur is the driver in that,” Deutsch explained.
As the museum and its scholarship evolved, so too did the curatorial approach towards the materials in its collection. Curators took a wider view of art, instead of focusing just on its rarity or price. Instead, part of the art’s value lay in the stories and history it contained.
"We take a very holistic view of it,” Deutsch said. “Not only the aesthetics, the rarity, but also the stories, and these objects and this art, they're material documents of the past, but they also hold deep relevance to the present.”
Another facet of “At Home at Winterthur” is the inclusion of oral histories throughout the exhibit. Those add a new layer to the experience, Deutsch said, and tell the stories of families who made the site their home for years.
"It's in the oral histories that you understand life at Winterthur,” she explained, “Life at Winterthur for some families was a multi-generational experience, not just for the DuPonts, but for these families.”
While the objects that illustrate “At Home at Winterthur” are impressive, Deutsch encouraged viewers to look past the tangible to the stories that made the site a natural wonder, a home, and ultimately a museum and research center.
“This is an exhibition about the people of Winterthur,” she said. “It's not just about the stuff of Winterthur.”
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
