The Women: Friends’ Friday Film Screening with Special Guest Peggy Parsons

June 14, 2024

Event Details

Date: June 14, 2024
Time: 6:30 pm
–9:30 pm

Join the Greenwich Historical Society in partnership with the Friends’ Friday Film Series at the Greenwich Library for a screening of the classic 1939 film The Women (dir. George Cukor, 133 mins), adapted from the 1936 play of the same name penned by Clare Boothe Luce.

The play’s biting social criticism and presentation of sniping and competition among upper-class New York socialites established Boothe Luce as a thought-leader on women’s roles in the public sphere, a role she carried into her work as a journalist for LIFE, founded by her husband Henry R. Luce.

Peggy Parsons, Curator Emerita of Film at the National Gallery of Art, will deliver remarks preceding the screening, providing context on Boothe Luce’s original stage play, its social commentary and its adaptation for film.

Speaker Biography

Margaret Parsons

Curator Emerita of Film, National Gallery of Art

MARGARET (PEGGY) PARSONS is founder and Curator Emerita of  Film at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where she headed film programming, film events and retrospectives and was responsible for overseeing a collection of art films and videos. She has held past positions at the Smithsonian Institution, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Children’s Museum, Boston. She has served as board member for major film organizations including the Robert Flaherty Seminar and Washington Environmental Film Festival and has been on the editorial boards for The Moving Image and the Getty Trust’s Program for Art on Film. She has been a judge for international film festivals including Syracuse, Nashville, Turin, and Poznań, and her work in film preservation has earned her awards from the governments of France, Czech Republic, Italy, Romania, and Georgia. In 2004 she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the DC Independent Film Festival. Other interests include folk and self-taught art, and her articles have appeared in Raw Vision, Folk Art, Folk Art Messenger, New York Folklore, Curator, and The Moving Image