Ulysses Grant Dietz to Appear at the Taber to Discuss the ‘Gilded Age’

Williamsport- Ulysses Grant Dietz, Chief Curator (Emeritus) of the Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey, will lecture on the ‘Gilded Age’ at the Thomas T. Taber Museum of the Lycoming County Historical Society, Saturday, December 13, 2025, at 2:00pm. The lecture is free and open to the public and is co-sponsored by the Taber and Preservation Williamsport.

A direct descendant of President Ulysses S. Grant, Dietz was Curator of Decorative Arts and Chief Curator at The Newark Museum for 37 years. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Yale in 1977, and his master of arts in American Material Culture from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in 1980.

The curator of 114 exhibitions during his tenure, Mr. Dietz is particularly proud of his work on The Newark Museum’s 1885 Ballantine House, which was re-interpreted and restored as the centerpiece of the decorative arts department in 1994. In 1997, Mr. Dietz was the project director for The Glitter & The Gold: Fashioning America’s Jewelry, the first-ever exhibition and book on Newark’s once-vast jewelry industry. In 2003, Mr. Dietz organized and co-authored Gems from the East and West, an exhibition and catalogue of Doris Duke’s remarkable jewelry collection. Additionally, Mr. Dietz has published numerous articles on decorative arts, as well as books on the Museum’s American art pottery and 19^th century furniture, and jewelry collections. His last book for the Museum was Jewelry from Pearls to Platinum to Plastic and was published in 2017.

The lecture is being held to accompany the art exhibition, East of Eden: which is on display in the Taber’s Community Room and features thirty-seven still life paintings from the Neal Milligan Collection.