All attendees of the Haskins Society Conference are cordially invited to a drinks reception at 6:15 pm, held after the last session on Friday afternoon and generously provided by the Boston College Office of the Vice Provost. It will take place at the The McMullen Museum of Art, a short walk from Gasson Hall.On display will be a special exhibition of Making History: Antiquaries in Britain. Through objects collected by the Society of Antiquaries of London, the oldest independent learned society concerned with the study of the past, the exhibition traces milestones in the discovery, recording, preservation, interpretation, and communication of Britain's history. It explores beliefs current before the Society was founded in 1707 and reveals how new finds and technologies have transformed the ways scholars have written history over the past three hundred years. Assembled together are artifacts of international importance (including the Winton Domesday and a Magna Carta from 1225), detailed records of lost buildings and objects, an outstanding collection of English royal portraits from Henry VI to Mary I, and works associated with William Morris, Fellow and founder of the English Arts and Crafts movement whose country house, Kelmscott Manor, is owned by the Society. Alongside these are loans from the celebrated collection of the Yale Center for British Art including rare books, maps, and drawings by Samuel Palmer, Edward Burne-Jones, and Augustus Welby Pugin.
