Curator Tour from Home: Glenview’s Stenciled Ceilings

In 1999, the Hudson River Museum completed a large-scale interior restoration project of Glenview, the Museum’s 1877 Gilded Age home on the National Register of Historic Places, including repainting original stencil designs in the Parlor and above the Grand Staircase. Felix Chavez and his team of artists worked on this project for months, in consultation with museum staff, including the Museum’s current chair of the Curatorial Department, Laura Vookles, and preservation architect Page Ayers Cowley.

In this virtual Curator Tour, Join Vookles and Chavez as they converse about this project, which our curator describes as one of the top five experiences of her career. Hear the compelling story of how Chavez, a Peruvian native, gave Glenview new life, using nineteenth-century materials and techniques and referencing antique black-and-white photographs to bring the colorful original Leissner and Lewis Eastlake-style embellishments back to their original splendor. Presented in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.