Special Interest Days
There are usually two Special Interest Days (SIDs) each year, one in the spring and another in the autumn, which all members are most welcome to attend. They are held in one of the smaller rooms in The Guildhall, with about 40 people attending. The day typically covers a subject in more depth than a one hour lecture would allow, with more interaction between the lecturer and the audience. The day starts at 10.00am with coffee followed by lectures both before and after a light lunch and finishes around 3.00pm.
Tickets go on sale at the lecture meeting two or three months beforehand. Full details of the SID, including the cost, will be on the notice board at the front of the hall where the SID Organiser will also be selling the tickets. If you are not able to pay that day, a ticket can be reserved. If you miss a lecture meeting and would like to purchase a ticket, please telephone the SID Organiser to reserve one. Initially tickets are only available to ADFAS members, but if there are places remaining they are opened up to non-members. Once sold, tickets cannot normally be returned for a refund, unless there is a waiting list and the ticket can be resold.
The next Special Interest Day is:
Wednesday 6 November 2013
THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF THE AMERICAN WEST
Roger Mitchell
Roger Mitchell has been informing and entertaining NADFAS groups for 13 years and writes of the study day:
For America, the West has always been as much an idea as a place. It is where the frontier lies and where settlement and civilisation end. In this study day, we explore the West, its architecture, its extraordinary landscapes and the way that artists responded to them.
The first trans-continental expedition of Lewis and Clarke at the beginning of the 19th century was not through empty territory and we look at the buildings produced by earlier civilisations - the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi at Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon and the Spanish churches at San Antonio and Tucson. We then focus on the great 19th century expansion with gold and railroads to the fore. This produced a varied architecture, not just log cabins but the exuberant decoration of the Victorian West. The session ends with Frank Lloyd Wright and the excess of Las Vegas!
If the morning session views the West as real estate, the afternoon is about wilderness and the way that artists and photographers responded to it. A wide selection of artists will be included, but I will give pride of place to Thomas Moran, ‘The Turner of the American West’.
Tickets on sale: July 2013
Please click here for details of past SIDs.
The NADFAS South Mercia Area also runs a series of study days in Oxford in the spring. Please click here for further details.