Mon, Sep 22
|Washington
Profs & Pints DC: Whistler and the Peacock Room
“Whistler and the Peacock Room,” on the strange history and artistic significance of one of the city’s most beautiful spaces, with Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, associate professor of art history at Trinity Washington University and scholar of Victorian Art.
Time & Location
Sep 22, 2025, 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Washington, 801 E St NW, Washington, DC 20004, USA
About the event
Profs and Pints DC presents: “Whistler and the Peacock Room,” on the strange history and artistic significance of one of the city’s most beautiful spaces, with Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, associate professor of art history at Trinity Washington University and scholar of Victorian Art.
The Peacock Room of the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery is a hidden gem, an amazing work of interior decorative art, and a space originally meant to look otherwise and exist elsewhere. Initially built in the 19th century as the dining room of a luxurious London townhouse, it became the site of one of the most public and celebrated battles ever pitting an artist against a patron.
The story of how the Peacock Room came to be and to exist within the Smithsonian offers a fascinating lens for examining the workings of the art world and the mind and career of an important and irrepressible American artist, James McNeill…