LECTURES & TALKS
The Hillside Club regularly host fascinating talks and lectures from local authors, professors, civic leaders and more. Keep an eye on the calendar for our upcoming events.
Artistic License presents
"Conserving a Legacy: Exterior timber repairs at the Thorsen House"
An Illustrated lecture by Christopher Yerke
March 24, 2026 7PM at the Hillside Club, Berkeley
The William R Thorsen house is in a race against time and nature. As the Greene Brothers' ultimate expression of building with visible nature made manifest in its materials, and with its exposed structural elements that are as sculptural as they are functional, this house has been in a war of attrition with the elements from the very beginning. Last year it became apparent that four posts, supporting two stories above the covered terrace, had significant rot and insect damage at their bases. It was necessary to act with urgency to address the issue ahead of any future seismic events.
Join Dr. Christopher Buckley for a captivating discussion on life in Papua’s remote Baliem Valley.
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During the 1980s Bud Hampton, a geologist, became interested in the inhabitants of the Baliem Valley on the island of New Guinea, in the remote Pacific. At that time, they had only recently been contacted by the outside world, and were still using stone tools that they quarried and knapped themselves. Bud assembled a remarkable collection of Baliem valley artifacts, including sacred stones and artifacts made from stone, bone and fiber. The collection lay undisturbed for nearly four decades, until it was gifted to the Tracing Patterns Foundation of Berkeley in 2020. This talk is the story of how the collection was assembled, how TPF catalogued, photographed and conserved it, and of the remarkable discoveries that we made along the way. It is also the story of our efforts to repatriate the collection to a new museum in New Guinea.