FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, LANCASTER, MA
BACK TO RESULTS
The Icon Museum & Study Center inspires the appreciation and study of Russian culture by collecting and exhibiting icons and related objects; igniting the interest of national and international audiences; and offering interactive and educational programs. The Museum serves as a leading center for research and scholarship through the Center for Icon Studies and other institutional collaborations.
Housed in a 150-year-old former mill building, the museum was founded by plastics engineer Gordon B. Lankton following a business trip to Russsia in 1989. While there, he purchased his first icon at an open-air market. His collection quickly grew, germinating the idea of starting a museum. He chose Clinton, Massachusetts for its location to give back to the community that had supported him.
In 2008, a contemporary, aluminum clad addition accommodating a gallery, library and offices was completed. Two years later, the adjacent courthouse and police station were acquired, adding gallery space, a terrace, tearoom and performance facilities. Three floors of galleries display the permanent collection. It is the only museum in the United States dedicated to Russian icons, and contains the largest collection of icons outside of Russia.
Following In Thoreau’s Footsteps
On January 1, 1851 Henry Thoreau gave his lecture on “An Excursion to Cape Cod” in Clinton, Massachusetts. According to an announcement in the November 8, 1850 edition of the Clinton Saturday Courant, the Bigelow Mechanic Institute’s winter lecture series would include twelve Wednesday evening lectures “on Miscellaneous Subjects, and of a general interest.” Admission to the entire series would cost $1.00 for gentlemen (seventy-five cents for ladies) with single lecture tickets priced at 12.5 cents. Among the nine lecturers already lined up were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, and Henry Ward Beecher. There was no mention of Henry Thoreau.
However, the day after Emerson spoke in Clinton, Franklin Forbes of the Bigelow Mechanic Institute’s Committee on Lectures mailed an invitation to Thoreau asking if he would deliver his “Cape Cod” lecture on some Wednesday evening in January 1851. It’s safe to assume that Emerson had recommended both Thoreau and his lecture to Forbes. Thoreau accepted the invitation and it was decided that he would speak on January 1, 1851.
The Clinton Saturday Courant advertised Thoreau’s upcoming lecture at the end of December, announcing that the “next Lecture will take place one week from next Wednesday, and be given by Mr. Thoreaux.”
Thoreau read his lecture “An Excursion to Cape Cod ” at Clinton Hall for the Bigelow Mechanics Institute. Afterward he was given a tour of the town’s massive gingham mill by the mill’s agent, Franklin Forbes, the same man who’d invited him to speak. Thoreau loved to see how machinery worked, and he was suitably impressed with the factory; the next day he filled his Journal with the details of the mill’s machinery and how it made cotton into gingham:
“I am struck that no work has been shirked when a piece of cloth is produced. Every thread has been counted in the finest web…The operator has succeeded only by patience, perseverance, and fidelity.”
The Clinton Saturday Courant would report on Thoreau’s lecture:
“The lecture on Wednesday evening last by Mr. Thoreau, was one of those intellectual efforts which serve to wile away an hour very pleasantly, but which leave little or nothing impressed upon the memory of real value. The subject was ‘Cape Cod.’ A description of a walk upon the sea shore, with reflections upon shipwrecks and their effects upon the inhabitants in a certain case, with anecdotes, and a few historical reminiscences, made up the burthen of his story.”
Thoreau was not overly fond of lecturing and rarely spoke in front of an audience. This appearance in Clinton would be one of 75 lectures that Thoreau delivered in his lifetime.
Website