Monday, September 28, 2026 · 6:30 PM – 7:45 PM
Smith Commons (5th floor), Sargent Hall, Suffolk University — 120 Tremont St., Boston, MA
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Saturday Evening Girls’ club was established in 1899 to provide cultural activities for Italian and Jewish immigrant girls who lived in the tenements of Boston’s North End. In 1908, the reform-minded club leaders founded a pottery to provide the girls with a clean and educational venue in which to earn money. They named the enterprise the Paul Revere Pottery in honor of the patriot’s home which stood near their clubhouse, and to emphasize their own desire to be seen as Americans, not foreign immigrants. The pottery exemplified the ideals of the early twentieth-century Arts and Crafts movement, a design reform movement which sought to alleviate the negative social effects of industrialized society by promoting hand craftsmanship, the integration of art into everyday life, and healthy working conditions for artisans. Nonie Gadsden is the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), where she is responsible for a wide range of artwork including decorative arts and sculpture from North, Central and South America, from ancient times through the 20 th century. Her…