Benefactors Day
The Armstrong Browning Library & Museum proudly welcomes Dr. Heidi Hornik, Department Chair and Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art History, along with Art History students Haydin Davis and Ellery Copple, as our 2025 Benefactors Day presenters.
During the fall 2024 semester, Dr. Heidi J. Hornik’s advanced art history seminar on Connoisseurship studied 10 paintings in the Armstrong Browning Library. These works served as primary documentation for the source of their research. They utilized a data visualization dashboard to “publish” their research for future scholars. Two students from the seminar—Haydin Davis and Ellery Copple—will present their methodology and results of their scholarly study.
The Armstrong Browning Library & Museum's Benefactors Day began in 1999 under the directorship of Dr. Mairi Rennie. The annual celebration was created to honor the Brownings' wedding anniversary and provides an opportunity for the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum to thank its gracious donors.
For more information about our Benefactors Day celebrations, contact Christi Klempnauer by email or phone at (254) 710-4968. This program is made possible through donations to the Guardian Angel Fund. To support future programs and other initiatives of the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum, consider a gift today.
Past Benefactors Day Celebrations
"It's Okay to Talk to Strangers: Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë on Enchanting Encounters"
Dr. Kristen Pond, Associate Professor, Interim First-Year Writing Director, Affiliate Faculty to Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Margarett Root Brown Chair in Robert Browning and Victorian Studies, Baylor University
Friday, October 20, 2023
"Harriet Martineau: Spirit of the Victorian Age"
Dr. Deborah Logan, Professor Emerita, Western Kentucky University
Thursday, November 17, 2022
Virtual Poetry Reading & Lecture: "Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning"
Fiona Sampson, Professor Emerita, University of Roehampton
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Video: Poetry Reading Video: Lecture
“‘Wilder Ever Still & Wilder!’: The Brownings’ Courtship, Victorian Wedding Journeys, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Unpublished Honeymoon Poem.”
Dr. Marjorie Stone, McCulloch Professor Emeritus of English, Dalhousie University
Dr. Beverly Taylor, Emeritus Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Thursday, November 5, 2020
“Healthy Bodies, Healthy Souls: 19th-Century Medicine, Religion, and Literature”
Dr. Lesa Scholl, Master of Kathleen Lumley College, University of Adelaide, South Australia and Three-Month Research Fellow, Armstrong Browning Library
Friday, November 15, 2019
“Orphans of earthly love”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Protest for Working Children—An exhibition honoring the 175th anniversary of “The Cry of the Children”
Dr. Joshua King, Professor of English and Margarett Root Brown Chair in Robert Browning and Victorian Studies along with Sakina Haji, Connor Watkin, and Ben Pennington.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Note: This exhibit was part of a larger conference, "Rhyme and Reform: Victorian Working Class Poets and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's, 'Cry of the Children'" held from October 4-5, 2018.
“How Elizabeth Barrett Browning (and the ABL) Can Save the Humanities: New Digital Tools for Research and Teaching”
Dr. Dino Felluga, Professor of English, Purdue University, and inaugural Three-Month Research Fellow, Armstrong Browning Library
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
The Choir of St. Martins in the Field (London, UK)
Directed by Andrew Earis
featuring a special performance by Baylor School of Music's Bella Voce
Monday, September 19, 2016
"Adventures Among the Gently Mad"
Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (H. Holt and Co., 1995)
Friday, October 16, 2015
The Texas Baroque Ensemble
performing Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610) with selections from Carlos Colon's Requiem
Conducted by Anthony Blake Clark
with a booking signing by Scott Lewis of his Boundless Life: A Biography of Andrew Joseph Armstrong
Saturday, September 13, 2014
An Exhibition of Browning Letters from the Special Collections at Wellesley College
Mariana S. Oller, Associate Curator, Wellesley College
with music by Justin Kroll
Thursday, October 17, 2013
The Texas Voices: A Vocal Chamber Ensemble
Directed by Alan Dyer
in honor of the centennial of Professor A. J. Armstrong and the bi-centennial of the birth of Victorian Poet Robert Browning
Saturday, October 6, 2012
“Robert Browning’s Dissenting Forms”
Dr. Kirstie Blair, Senior Lecturer, University of Glasgow and 2012 Margarett Root Brown Chair of Robert Browning and Victorian Studies
with music by Carlos Colon, ABL Artist in Residence
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
“Selective Affinities: The Browning and Carlyle Marriages”
Dr. David R. Sorensen, Professor of English, Saint Joseph's University
with music by KT Sullivan and Elizabeth Sullivan
Thursday, September 30, 2010
"Intellectual Adventure: My Students and the Armstrong Browning Library"
Dr. Joshua King, Assistant Professor of English
with music by Carlos Colon
Thursday, September 17, 2009
“The Brownings at Wellesley”
Mariana S. Oller, Associate Curator, Wellesley College
with a music recital by Debra Scroggins
Wednesday, September 17, 2008