Forbes House Museum is pleased to host a talk and book signing with Boston Globe photographer, Bill Brett, on Sunday, 22 March at 2pm at the FHM, 215 Adams Street, Milton, MA. Mr. Brett will promote his new book, Boston Irish: Photography by Bill Brett.
The book signing will include informal tours of the Forbes House Museum with special focus on the mansion’s connection to Boston Irish history. The museum will exhibit its Silver Salver and Testimonial Harp, gifts given to Captain Robert Bennet Forbes from the citizens of Cork, Ireland, in gratitude for his 1847 humanitarian voyage during the height of the Great Famine. This event is co-sponsored by the Eire Society of Boston.
To RSVP for this special event, call the museum office at 617.696.1815 or e-mail us at info@forbeshousemuseum.org. The event will include Irish music and refreshments.
About Boston Irish: Photography by Bill Brett:
Acclaimed Boston photographer Bill Brett returns with Boston Irish, a collection of more than 260 black-and-white photographs of the people and the city he loves. It is his most personal book yet. Building on his four previous books, Boston Irish turns the lens on Bill’s own community, the city’s Irish Americans. Dedicated to his mother, Mary Ann Brett, Boston, Irish chronicles and crystallizes a unique period in the city’s history. A time that won’t be seen again, inhabited by newly-arrived immigrants and second- and third-generation Irish-Americans. Boston Irish covers every aspect of the region s Irish-American community with portraits and stories ranging from a 99-year-old nun to a colorful funeral home director to an Irish tenor to a New York Times best-selling novelist. It also explores the full breadth of the Irish immigrant experience, representing those from the Republic and Northern Ireland and both Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. To all those who knew her, Mary Ann Brett was the embodiment of grit, heart, and faith. For her and those of her immigrant generation, Boston’s sense of Irish community didn’t stop with one family or a single neighborhood. It was felt grandly, holding in its embrace the Irish Americans from Beacon Hill and City Hall to the very last street in the city. When the world thinks of Boston, they think of the Irish as the city’s bulwark community. What Bill Brett thinks of Boston runs much deeper and can be found on each and every page of Boston Irish.
For more information on Forbes House Museum programs, events, exhibits and individual and group tours, call the museum office at 617.696.1815 or visit the website www.forbeshousemuseum.org.