LENOX, MA. – Victoria Jennings Ross, an independent scholar who writes and lectures on art, architecture, and social history, will talk about several early Lenox feminists at Ventfort Hall’s Tea & Talk on Tuesday, June 18 at 4 pm. A tea will be served after her presentation.

Three Lenox ladies, the Misses Kate Cary, Heloise Meyer and Mary de Peyster Carey, were all expert horsewomen, but they were also early feminists. Their financial independence and network of close female friendships allowed them to choose an unconventional life as bachelor maids, without men, marriage, or children. 

Victoria Jennings Ross has a master’s degree in art history and a certificate in museum studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After a forty-year career as a writer/editor and curatorial researcher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Museum of American Art, Washington D. C.; and the Detroit Institute of Arts, she is an independent scholar who writes and lectures on art, architecture, and social history. In August 2020, the American Scholar published an article she wrote on sporting women in the Gilded Age (“Ahead of the Game,” American Scholar, August 17, 2020), which is part of a larger manuscript on country resorts like Lenox at the turn of the century. 

Tickets are $40 for members and with advance reservation; $45 day of; $22 for students 22 and under. Ticket pricing includes access to the mansion throughout the day of this event from 10 am to 4 pm. Reservations are strongly encouraged as seats are limited. Walk-ins accommodated as space allows. For reservations visit https://gildedage.org/pages/calendar or call us at (413) 637-3206. Please note that all tickets are nonrefundable and non-exchangeable. The historical mansion is located at 104 Walker Street in Lenox.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated by the Massachusetts Cultural Council as an important partner of the Lenox Cultural District, one of the five such Berkshire County districts, Ventfort Hall Gilded Age Mansion & Museum was built in 1893 for George and Sarah Morgan, the sister of legendary financier J. Pierpont Morgan.

Self-guided tours of the historic mansion are offered daily, as well as Tea & Talks, such exhibitions as the Bellefontaine Collection, concerts, theater, ghost tours and hunts as well as other programs. This elegant Jacobean-Revival Berkshire “cottage” is open to the public year-round and is available for private rental. Ventfort Hall, also an Official Project of Save America’s Treasures program sponsored by The White House, has undergone substantial restoration, which continues.