Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Location: Governor Calvert House, 58 State Circle
Time: 6:00 pm (EDT)
Historic Annapolis and the Maryland Historical Trust invite you to attend the 2025 Orlando Ridout V Memorial Lecture at the Governor Calvert House. The lecture is free, but reservations are required, and we thank you for considering a donation when you register to support this lecture series.
This year, we are pleased to welcome Philadelphia Museum of Art curator Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley to present Maryland x Philadelphia: Artistic and Cultural Exchange in the Revolutionary Period.
The trade and exchange of raw materials, manufactured goods, skilled artisans, and elite/merchant class families in the late colonial and early national periods inextricably linked Maryland and Philadelphia. In this richly illustrated lecture, the connections and shared history of Maryland and Philadelphia will be presented through surviving architecture, paintings, furniture, ceramics, and more by Philadelphia Museum of Art curator Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, herself a proud Marylander.
Following the lecture, a light reception will be held at the William Paca House & Garden at 186 Prince George Street.
Advance registration required.
Cost: FREE
About Our Presenter: A native of Baltimore, Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley graduated from Hamilton College with honors in the history of art and history and received an M.A. from the University of Delaware (Winterthur Program). She has completed post-graduate courses of study in the history of art in Italy, France, and throughout Great Britain. Alexandra has been a curator of American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) since 2001.
Mrs. Kirtley has orchestrated acquisitions for the PMA through major gifts and purchases and in addition to multiple smaller exhibitions, curated the retrospective “Colonial Philadelphia Porcelain: The Art of Bonnin & Morris” in 2008 and the groundbreaking “Classical Splendor: Painted Furniture for a Grand Philadelphia House” (with conservator Peggy Olley) in 2016. She was co-curator of the re-located, reinstalled, and reinterpreted galleries of early American art that opened to much fanfare and critical acclaim in May 2021. Presently, she is co-curating the PMA’s new installation of its galleries of American art from 1850 to 1960 and the special exhibition that will accompany it, “A Nation of Artists,” which will open on April 12, 2026.
A frequent presenter at scholarly conferences and symposia and a frequent author in multiple publications, Alexandra is “known for her innovative art historical approach” to decorative arts. Her most recent standalone publication, American Furniture 1650-1840: Highlights from the Philadlephia Museum of Art (2020; 2nd printing, 2021) was the first-ever catalogue of the PMA’s preeminent collection of early American furniture; then-director Timothy Rub described the catalogue as “a daunting undertaking.” For 2025, she has major essays in three forthcoming volumes: Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence (T. Gatson, T. Momon, and W. Strollo, eds.); American Classical Furniture, 1810-1840: Regional Identities in the Schrimsher Collection (K. Schrimsher and M. Thurlow, eds.); and The Wonder of Wood: Marquetry and Inlay in Europe and America, 1500-1900 (B. Jobe, S. Latta, and A. Kirtley, eds).
Alexandra has been an appointee of the United States Senate’s Commission on Art since 2003. She serves on the boards of the Decorative Arts Trust (officer), The Andalusia Foundation (which oversees the Biddle family’s Delaware River estate), and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. She is a past board member of the Delaware Historical Society and vestry member at Christ Church, Christiana Hundred.