Manufacturing Art and Industry:
The Second Empire Exhibitions of 1855 and 1867
Friday, June 5, 2026
5:00 p.m. ET
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy, Philadelphia, PA 19130
Eli Kirk Price Room
Please join AFA as we welcome AMY F. OGATA, of the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, as the esteemed speaker for the TRACEY L. ALBAINY MEMORIAL LECTURE, sponsored by the American Friends of Attingham and The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Department of European Art.
The American Friends of Attingham is delighted to welcome the public to this complimentary program.
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The French Second Empire (1852-1870) is remembered for its historicist design, devotion to spectacle, and its enthusiasm for industry. An examination of the first two world’s fairs held in France, which bookend the Second Empire, shows how the forces of industrialization intersected with a venerable tradition of artisanal manufacture, especially in metalwork.
Professor Ogata argues that the metallic especially thematized the art and industry discourse displayed in these two fairs. Metal—whether the iron of the exhibition palace, the magnificent silvered and gilded centerpieces for emperor Napoléon III, or objects in the new metal of aluminum—shows how the Second Empire created a visual experience that reconciled the conditions of modernity with the imagery of the past to create its signature style.
Across the ocean and a few years later, Philadelphia was also the site of a major US world’s fair, the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, and eventually, the Philadelphia Museum of Art co-organized the landmark 1978-79 exhibition on the Second Empire.
RESERVE TICKETS
Tickets & Arrival
Tickets should be reserved in advance via Eventbrite using the button above. A limited number of tickets will be available at the door on June 5.
Guests are encouraged to enter the museum at via the ground floor using the north entrance, closest to Kelly Drive, and proceed to check-in just outside the Eli Kirk Price Room. Guests who enter the museum via the east entrance facing the Parkway should proceed to down two levels, via the stairs or elevator, to the ground floor, and pass the Art Kids Studio on their right, before arriving at the Eli Kirk Price Room. Guests coming from the west entrance facing Fairmount Park should proceed down one level. Click here to access a map of the museum.
About Amy F. Ogata
Amy Ogata is Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California, specializing in the history of modern European and American architecture, design, and material culture. Prior to joining USC in 2014, she taught at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City for sixteen years. A graduate of Smith College, she earned her MA and Ph.D. in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. Ogata was co-curator of the international traveling exhibition Swedish Wooden Toys at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and the Bard Graduate Center Gallery. She co-edited the accompanying catalogue (Yale, 2014), which was recognized by the Association of Art Museum Curators. Her 2013 book Designing the Creative Child won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. Her first book was on architecture and design in turn-of-the-century Belgium (Cambridge, 2001). Her lecture for the American Friends of Attingham and the Philadelphia Museum of Art draws from new research for her next book.
About Tracey L. Albainy
Tracey L. Albainy (1962-2007) was the Russell B. and Andrée Beauchamp Stearns Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of Europe, MFA Boston, and an enthusiastic support of Attingham. She attended the Summer School in 1990, the Study Programme in 2000, and Royal Collections Studies in August 2007, months before her untimely death that December. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Albainy graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College, and received her master of arts in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and another master of arts degree from Parsons School of Design/Cooper-Hewitt Museum Graduate Program in the History of European Decorative Arts. From 1993 to 2000, she held curatorial positions in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts department at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Prior to that, she served as Associate Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Birmingham Museum of Art. She joined the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2000.
About the Tracey L. Albainy Memorial Lecture
Attingham alumna Brigette Fletcher ’02, RCS ’03 of Boston, MA, spearheaded the development of the Memorial Lecture, following a resolution from the American Friends of Attingham Board of Directors in 2008 in recognition of her contributions to the field of decorative arts. In 2007, Tracey hired a future Attingham alumna, Rebecca Tilles ’09, LHC ’10, SP ’16, RCS ’22, to join her department at the MFA, Boston. The American Friends of Attingham is grateful to Brigette and Rebecca for their endeavors to organize and fundraise for our past lecturers listed below, and Rebecca for reviving the series in 2025.
- 2011, “A Napoleonic Achievement: The Restoration of the Hôtel Beauharnais” by Visiting Assistant Professor Ulrich Leban of the Bard Graduate Center, co-sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- 2012, “‘Of Cauliflower and Crayfish’: The High Art of Dining in 18th-Century France” by Charissa Bremer-David, Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts for The Getty Center.
- 2016, “Della Robbia Sculpture: Renaissance Invention and Modern Rediscovery” by Marietta Cambareri, Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture and the Jetskalina H. Phillips Curator of Judaica, Art of Europe, for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- 2025, “Louis XIV’s Savonnerie Carpets: The World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle” by Wolf Burchard, Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
With much gratitude to our host
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
ABOVE: Detail of oil on canvas by Prosper Lafaye, Sèvres and Christofle at the Exposition Universelle Paris 1855, Conservatoire Bouilhet Christofle. BELOW: Émile Froment-Meurice, gold and silversmith, Émile François Carlier, sculptor, Centerpiece of Napoleon III with fritillaries: bowl and pair of candelabra, Paris, 1867. Glass, gilt bronze, silver-plated metal. Inv. 14338.A-C © Les Arts Décoratifs / photo: Jean Tholance. François Roux, Porte d’Iéna, Album du Parc, c.1867, watercolor. © Archives Nationales, F12 11872/1, p. 4.