Spring Garden Tours
Estate, Museum and Gardens. Thirteen acres of lush lawns and formal gardens feature lilac, irises, Japanese pieris, daffodils, forsythia, and dozens of spring-flowering shrubs and trees. Beginning in April, thousands of azaleas bloom across the estate. Later in the month and in early, dogwood, crabapple, and cherry trees create a snow-like bower of petals, while tulips and rhododendrons fill the gardens with color. Docent-led tours explore the history of the gardens and identify the scores of plants.

Included in estate donation

Gallery Talk and Workshop: Spring Floral Design
Learn about Hillwood’s seasonal floral decorations on a walk through the Mansion and then create your own floral arrangement for Mother’s Day. All supplies included. Reservations required. Limited to 20 participants.

Gallery talk: 10:00–10:30 am
Workshop: 10:30 am–12:30 pm

$40 Public, $35 Friends

Container Garden Workshop
Just in time for Mother’s Day, create a living work of art filled with gorgeous flowering and trailing plants. Choose to make a hanging basket lined with sphagnum moss or a mixed container. Greenhouse grower and display manager Flavia Azera instructs. All supplies included. Reservations required. Limited to 20 participants.

$40 Public, $35 Friends

Splendor and Magnificence: The Crown of Louis XV
Martin Chapman, curator at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, discusses the history of the crown of Louis XV. It is the only major piece of the 18th-century French crown jewels to survive the French Revolution. Widely hailed in its day, it became the model for crowns made in Europe during the remainder of the century.

$15 Public, $10 Friends and Alliance Française members, $7 Students

Mother's Day at Hillwood
Surprise that special woman in your life with a relaxing Mother’s Day visit to Hillwood. Stroll through the gardens in their springtime glory, explore the Mansion, enjoy lunch or royal tea at the Café, and find a treasure in the Museum Shop.

Included with estate donation

Reservations Required

Wedding Belles
Marjorie Merriweather Post and financier E. F. Hutton made a glamorous couple when they married in 1920. Join Howard Kurtz, assistant curator of costumes and textiles, for a look at the elegant dresses that the bride and her daughters Adelaide and Eleanor wore to the wedding. All three were designed by Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon, a top dressmaker of the time.

Included with estate donation

Women of Style
Fulco di Verdura, a Sicilian duke, designed jewelry for such stylish women as Coco Chanel, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Mrs. Post. Join Ward Landrigan, CEO of Verdura, as he discusses the duke’s colorful life, timeless designs, and iconic clients.

$15 Public, $10 Friends and Alliance Française members, $7 Students

Family Fun Sunday: Summer Celebration
Start the summer on Memorial Day weekend with a stroll through Hillwood’s spectacular gardens. Relax while putting on the green, as Mrs. Post’s guests once did. Create a decorative planter, inspired by the ornamental floral containers in Hillwood’s Mansion and gardens. Continue your relaxing afternoon with a leisurely lunch or family tea in the Café. Tours of the Mansion and shopping are also part of the special Sunday opening.

Included with estate donation

Outdoor Film Series: "Prefer Blondes" (1953)
Building on the success of last year’s outdoor movie screening, Hillwood and One in Ten, an organization dedicated to the education and cultural activism of gay and lesbian people, proudly present three films on the Lunar Lawn. The first film in the series features Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Movie begins at sunset.

$15 Public and Friends, $10 Children 6–18

Reservations required. Limited space available.

Outdoor Film Series: "Funny Face" (1957)
Hillwood and One in Ten proudly present Funny Face, starring Audrey Hepburn, on the Lunar Lawn.
Movie begins at sunset.

$15 Public and Friends, $10 Children 6–18.

Reservations required. Limited space available.

Family Fun Sunday: Just Your Cup of Tea!
Mrs. Post enjoyed hosting large-scale tea parties in her home and gardens. Create your very own decorative teacup with a variety of art materials, inspired by the floral designs on Hillwood’s beautiful porcelain. Get a glimpse of a tea service designed by Eva Zeisel, on display in the Mansion’s Breakfast Room. Then treat yourself to a family tea in the Café. Tours of the Mansion and shopping are also part of this special Sunday opening.

Included in estate donation

A Dazzling Affair: Mrs. Post’s Extraordinary Jewelry Collection
Mrs. Post was not merely a collector of jewelry but a true connoisseur. Throughout her life, she purchased rare historical jewels and commissioned lavish sets from the most notable jewelers of her time including Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Harry Winston, and Verdura to name a few. In a richly illustrated lecture, Hillwood senior curator Liana Paredes explores how Mrs. Post put together her now legendary collection of jewels.

$15 Public, $10 Friends and Alliance Française members, $7 Students

Register for two or more lectures in this four-part series and receive $3 off each

A Dazzling Affair: Mrs. Post’s Extraordinary Jewelry Collection
Mrs. Post was not merely a collector of jewelry, but a true connoisseur. Throughout her life, she purchased rare historical jewels and commissioned lavish sets from the most notable jewelers of her time, including Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Harry Winston, and Verdura, to name a few. In a richly illustrated lecture, Hillwood senior curator Liana Paredes explores how Mrs. Post put together her legendary collection of jewels.

$15 Public, $10 Friends and Alliance Française members, $7 Students

Outdoor Film Series: "Strait Jacket" (1964)
Hillwood and One in Ten proudly present Strait Jacket, starring Joan Crawford, on the Lunar Lawn.
Movie begins at sunset.

$15 Public and Friends, $10 Children 6–18.

Reservations required. Limited space available.

Lesbian and Gay Chorus of Washington Outdoor Concert
Hillwood welcomes back the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of Washington for a lively family-friendly performance against the lush backdrop of Hillwood’s gardens.

Included in estate donation

Rolling Out the Green Carpet
What’s new in the gardens? Brian Barr, director of horticulture, discusses some of Hillwood’s latest garden projects, including a welcoming green space in front of the Greenhouse and current seasonal displays. This special Sunday opening includes docent-led garden and Mansion tours, shopping, and Café dining.

Talks with Brian Barr at 1:30, 2:15, and 3:45 pm

Included in estate donation

Gay Day
Details to come.

On View: Women and the Decorative Arts
Just as Hillwood’s magnificent gardens are transformed throughout the year with the distinct and splendid colors of each season, noteworthy pieces from the collection are rotated and highlighted throughout the mansion in order to offer new and engaging glimpses into the dynamic nature of the collection.

This summer, highlights include the dresses from the House of Lucile that were worn by Marjorie Merriweather Post and her daughters at the July 1920 marriage ceremony of Post to E.F. Hutton; gorgeous Russian liturgical vestments decorated with ancient symbols; table settings with Cottage Service glassware and an 1840s porcelain service made for future tsarita Maria Alexandrovna; and Eva Zeisel’s Talisman tea service, with pieces modeled on the feminine midriff, one of Zeisel’s signature forms.

A Quest For Fabulous: Thirty Years of Collecting, 1977-2007 Held Over through Spring 2008
A Quest for Fabulous: Thirty Years of Collecting, 1977–2007, an exhibition celebrating Hillwood’s thirtieth anniversary as a museum, has been extended to May 31, 2008. Organized by curator emeritus Anne Odom, the exhibition features gifts and purchases building on Mrs. Post’s legacy of collecting.

One of the first purchases in 1987 included a box by Fedor Rückert, Fabergé’s chief enameller in the Russian style. The miniature on the box depicts a figure nearly identical to one in Konstantin Makovskii’s Boyar Wedding Feast, a centerpiece of Mrs. Post’s fine art collection.

Curators over the years have selected Russian and French objects that add to the strengths of the permanent collection or that fill in gaps, such as the Sèvres plate from the Service à Marli d’Or featuring a profile portrait of Flora, the Roman goddess of spring and flowers.

On View in JULY: 1924-29 Marie Antoinette Costume
In celebration of Bastille Day and in honor of Marjorie Merriweather Post’s love of 18th-century French decorative arts, Hillwood is celebrating July with a French focus. A special display in the French Drawing room will include Mrs. Post’s exquisite and rarely seen Marie Antoinette costume as well as a portrait of Mrs. Post as the queen herself.

Fragile Persuasion
Fragile Persuasion opens on September 16, 2008, featuring nearly eighty objects collected during a thirty-year period by businessman Yuri A. Traisman. The exhibition chronicles the complicated and turbulent period of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian and Soviet history. The objects on display might initially appear to be no more than small-scale decorative sculptures and vessels, but in Russian society, porcelain acted as a vehicle for social commentary as well as being a highly prestigious gift or indicator of political positioning. Fragile Persuasion explores the way porcelain was used in prerevolutionary and Soviet society and its importance to this day. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue and was organized by Karen L. Kettering, Hillwood’s former curator of Russian and Eastern European art who recently joined Sotheby’s, New York, as a vice president in the department of Russian works of art.

Hillwood Receives Prestigious Federal Grant for Sèvres Exhibition
Hillwood has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support Sèvres Then and Now: Tradition and Innovation in Porcelain, 1750–2000. Opening in September 2009, the exhibition will be the first retrospective on Sèvres in the United States and Hillwood’s first major exhibition to include international loans. Showcasing the longstanding achievements of this famous French porcelain factory, Sèvres Then and Now includes more than fifty ceramics spanning three centuries, many of which are normally inaccessible to the public or have never been exhibited.

Additional funding for the exhibition is being provided by the Richard von Hess Foundation, the Florence Gould Foundation, and the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation.