By Peggy Conway, Bronxville Adult School

Oct. 4, 2017:  Two Bronxville residents are among the faculty of the Bronxville Adult School this semester. Noted oil analyst Charles Maxwell will present a lecture about Mexico on Thursday, October 12, at 7:00 pm at The Bronxville School, and David Brashear will present a lecture about the invention of the museum as a public institution on Tuesday, October 10, at 7:00 pm at the Bronxville Public Library.

In "Mexico: Past, Present and Future," Charles Maxwell will discuss the conquest of the country by the Spanish under Hernán Cortés and will lead students through the impact this had on the history of the indigenous culture of Mexico right up to the present day. He will speak of the rise of the drug cartels and their influence on the current political state of the country. Mexico is a mineral-rich country, and Maxwell will explore how this could impact its future and the future of relations between Mexico and the United States.   

Maxwell has taught at the Bronxville Adult School before, having offered two successful lecture series, The Geopolitics of Oil and Understanding Islam. Given his educational and career backgrounds, he is uniquely qualified to speak on these topics. In his previous courses, he gave in-depth lessons about the importance of oil to the political makeup of the Middle East and about the foundation of Islam as a religion and culture. He drew on his many experiences as both a student of the region and as an oil analyst, sharing many interesting vignettes with his students.

Charles Maxwell was educated at Princeton and Oxford, where he earned degrees in political science and literature and history. He is considered an expert in the energy sector. His experience includes several years working at major oil companies and investment banking firms, and he has served as a consultant to the US government on oil policy. Some of his notable speaking engagements have been before the National Defense University, the Council on Foreign Relations and, fortunately for our students, at the Bronxville Adult School. 

In "The Invention of the Museum as Public Institution in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Percier and Fontaine's Louvre and Schinkel's Altes Museum," David Brashear will discuss the foundation of the modern museum in Europe from an architectural viewpoint. The two museums he will discuss, the Louvre and the Altes Museum, are the models upon which many other national museum designs were based. 

Brashear has also taught at the Bronxville Adult School before. Students who attended his lecture last year heard about architect Eero Saarinen's groundbreaking design for the TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport. 

David Brashear studied economics at The Wharton School and earned his MBA from Harvard. He has been studying architectural history on the graduate level at Columbia University since 2009. He is working on a book about five eminent American architects of the 20th century. 

You may register for these lectures and all classes online at www.bronxvilleadultschool.org or by telephone at 914-793-4435.

Pictured here:  Charles Maxwell (top) and David Brashear.

Photos courtesy the Bronxville Adult School