50th Annual Colonial Dames Lecture and Tea: Other People’s Stuff: How Collections Can Bring Us Together and Teach Us Empathy

Wednesday, May 7, 2025 from 2–4 p.m.

Tickets required. Ticket sales open April 7, 2025. 
Members and NSCDA Ohio Members: Free
General public: $10 
Students: $5   

Lecture begins in the Fath Auditorium at 2 p.m. with tea and light bites to follow in the Great Hall and Terrace Café. 

House museums and period rooms hold the power to open our minds. If we treat them as laboratories for learning, they can teach us to look closely at the remnants of the past and the complexity of the human relationships intertwined within it. Join Brenton Grom, Executive Director of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum (Wethersfield, Connecticut), for an exploration of the ways in which historic spaces can help us observe, listen, and relate to one another with the same curiosity and respect we accord to people of the past.  

About the Speaker
Brenton Grom is Executive Director of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum, a property of the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of Connecticut. He previously served as Director of the George Read II House & Gardens in Delaware and Curator of Special Collections at the Delaware Historical Society. He is board secretary of the Delaware Center for Horticulture and is treasurer and co-founder of the Fine Objects Society, a new international venture built around envisioning a future for the decorative arts. Grom studied piano and musicology at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Case Western Reserve University, and American history and material culture at the University of Delaware.  

Presented by: 
The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Ohio. 
Colonial Dames Lecture and Tea graciously underwritten by the L. W. Scott Alter Trust. 

If you need accessibility accommodations, please contact us in advance at [email protected] or fill out the accessibility request form.