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Boston Athenaeum

The Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries in the United States, was founded in 1807 by members of the Anthology Society, a group of fourteen Boston gentlemen who had joined together in 1805 to edit The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review. Their purpose was to form "an establishment similar to that of the Athenaeum and Lyceum of Liverpool in Great Britain; combining the advantages of a public library [and] containing the great works of learning and science in all languages." The library and Art Gallery, established in 1827, were soon flourishing, and grew rapidly, both by purchase of books and art and by frequent gifts. For nearly half a century the Athenaeum was the unchallenged center of intellectual life in Boston, and by 1851 had become one of the five largest libraries in the United States. Today its collections comprise over half a million volumes, with particular strengths in Boston history, New England state and local history, biography, English and American literature, and the fine and decorative arts. The Athenaeum supports a dynamic art gallery, and sponsors a lively variety of events such as lectures and concerts. It also serves as a stimulating center for discussions among scholars, bibliophiles, and a variety of community interest groups.break

http://www.bostonathenaeum.org

  • Role of the Academy and in American Art

    Tue, Mar 29, 2005
    The traditional art academies, first founded in Europe beginning in the late 17th century and in the United States just after the year 1800, played a vital role in the lives and careers of artists over three hundred years. Because they typically made drawing the basis for all art training and taught it under fairly strict control, academies fell from favor with the advent of modern art in the twentieth century. In the late twentieth century, however, and now into the twenty-first, more artists are paying attention to craft, and the practice of careful drawing is enjoying a huge resurgence. More and more artists are producing representational work, drawn and painted in a new, classically realistic style. In conjunction with the exhibition *Powerline: The Art of Leo Dee*, David Dearinger delivers an illustrated lecture about the role the formal art academy played in the development of American art. He will pay special attention to the history of one of the most important and enduring of these academies in this country: the National Academy of Design in New York, at Brooklyn College, Hunter College and for many years, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The Academy was founded in 1826, has hosted a lively art school, and has held annual exhibitions of contemporary American Art, almost without interruption, since its foundation. Dr. Dearinger reviews the history of the National Academy, discusses its important collection of American paintings and sculptures, and describes the role it played in the formation of both American artists and American art critics. David Dearinger is Susan Morse Hilles curator of paintings and cculpture at the Boston Athenaeum. An art historian and curator, he received his PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, with a specialty in nineteenth-century American art. He taught art history in New York at Brooklyn College, Hunter College and, for many years, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Before coming to Boston, he was chief curator at the National Academy of Design in New York. He has published and lectured widely on the history of American painting and sculpture.
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  • Unnoticed: Secret Life of Type Faces

    Thu, Apr 28, 2005
    Richard Wendorf explores the nature and history of the type faces by which we live, ranging from Roman capitals to the experimentation of William Morris at the Kelmscott Press. Typography is something that we encounter every day of our lives; it is one of the most pervasive elements in an entire spectrum of human activities. And yet typography is usually invisible or barely noticed; it is supposed to be transparent; it is not supposed to draw attention to itself. *The Secret Life of Type* is one of 10 essays collected together in Richard Wendorf's new book *The Scholar-Librarian: Books, Libraries, and the Visual Arts*, published by Oak Knoll Press and the Boston Athenaeum.
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  • Boston's Love for Neoclassical Sculptors

    Thu, May 6, 2004
    David Dearinger discusses Boston's obsession with neoclassical sculpture in the 1800s. From early in its history, the city of Boston exhibited a certain awareness of culture, and a number of its citizens labored within the new republic to establish an environment in which the fine arts could flourish. Early evidence of these efforts is seen in their fascination with neoclassical sculpture. From the 1820s through the 1860s, Bostonians commissioned and purchased the finest examples of the marble (or marmorean) products of American artists who worked in this refined, classically based style. They gave much needed monetary and psychological support to many American artists, but many natives, including Thomas H. Perkins, Charles Sumner, Edward Everett, Charlotte Cushman, Harriet Lee, and several members of the Cabot, Cushing, and Appleton families, had a particular affinity for the American sculptors. These men and women formed a distinctive pool of patrons on which American sculptors, including Horatio Greenough, Thomas Crawford, Hiram Powers, and Harriet Hosmer could depend for purposeful, sincere, and even altruistic support that represents one of American art history's great aesthetic love affairs. **David Dearinger** is the Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Boston Athenaeum. An art historian and curator, he received his PhD, with a specialty in nineteenth-century American art, from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He taught art history in New York at Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and, for many years, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Before coming to Boston, he was Chief Curator at the National Academy of Design in New York. He has published and lectured widely on the history of American painting and sculpture.
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  • Boston Sites and Insights: A Guide to Historical Landmarks

    Tue, May 18, 2004
    Susan Wilson's monthly column on Boston history, "Sites and Insights," first appeared in the *Boston Globe* in 1987. "The intent of the columns," Wilson writes, "was to observe Boston's rich past in a way that was both accessible to the general public and enlightening to serious students of history, and to encourage both Bostonians and Boston visitors to discover, or rediscover, the history around them." Her columns, and her passion for local history and lore, resulted in the book *Boston Sites & Insights: An Essential Guide to Historic Landmarks In and Around Boston*. Now, ten years after its initial publication, Wilson offers a completely updated and revised edition of her insider's guide to fifty historic Boston treasures. *Boston Sites & Insights* includes all "the essentials," but, unlike other guidebooks, Wilson's work digs deep into the history of the individual landmarks, from the Park Street Station, to the African Meeting House and the famously misunderstood Bunker Hill, to reveal the lesser-known stories and facts that make them unique and important pieces of Boston's past. Susan Wilson is a photographer, writer, and educator who resides in Cambridge and has long held a special affection for Boston history. The recipient of a BA and MA in history from Tufts University, Susan taught history at both the secondary school and college levels before moving into a career in journalism. Her work has regularly appeared in the *Boston Globe*, and she has most recently been busy writing books on Boston history.
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  • Writer's Room Presents: LeHane, Mazur and Perrotta

    Sat, Nov 6, 2004
    Writers Gail Mazur, Tom Perrotta, and Dennis Lehane read from their current projects and discuss the New England authors who have been important to their work. This lively, entertaining, and thoroughly Bostonian discussion connects the city's literary past to the thriving writing community of today.
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  • Wodehouse: A Life

    Tue, Dec 14, 2004
    Author and editor Robert McCrumb discusses the life and works of P.G. Wodehouse, which he chronicled in detail in his biography Wodehouse: A Life. **Robert McCrum**, now literary editor of London's Observer, was the editor-in-chief of the publishing firm Faber & Faber in London for nearly 20 years. He has written six highly acclaimed novels and is the co-author of the bestselling The Story of the English. McCrum lives in London.
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  • George Stubbs: Reapers and Haymakers

    Thu, Jan 22, 2004
    Richard Wendorf attempts to show how scholars who have addressed the paintings of George Stubbs have missed the central point of his work as an artist. The painter George Stubbs is perhaps best known for his dramatic and painstakingly accurate portraits of English horse flesh. In this illustrated lecture, Wendorf draws attention to Stubbs' equally remarkable attempts to paint agricultural workers in the English countryside, particularly in his pair of images entitled Reapers and Haymakers. These iconic pictures have been the focus of intense debate by literary critics, art historians, and social historians during the past thirty years. Do they accurately depict the cleanliness, health, and vitality of common laborers in the 1780's and 1790's, or do they camouflage the desperate, post-enclosure conditions in which these workers toiled?
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  • Harriet Tubman: Bound for the Promised Land

    Tue, Feb 10, 2004
    Historian Kate Clifford Larson discusses her new book, *Bound for the Promised Land*, which draws on a trove of new documents and sources as well as extensive genealogical research and reveals Harriet Tubman as a complex woman who was brilliant, shrewd, deeply religious, and passionate in her pursuit of freedom. Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history, a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. And yet in the nine decades since her death, next to nothing has been written about this extraordinary woman aside from juvenile biographies. The truth about Harriet Tubman has become lost inside a legend woven of racial and gender stereotypes. From Tubman's brutal treatment while enslaved on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to her exploits on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, to her lifelong pursuit of civil and humanitarian rights for African Americans, Tubman's accomplishments represent true American heroism.
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  • Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London

    Tue, Mar 9, 2004
    Lisa Jardine draws a portrait of the gifted but cranky English scientist Robert Hooke, known to history as much for losing quarrels with more prominent scientists as for his achievements. He was one of the founding fathers of the Royal Society and teamed with Christopher Wren in rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666. Hooke is perhaps best, and certainly unjustly, remembered for losing to Newton in a challenge for credit as discoverer of the inverse-square law of gravitational attraction.
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  • Chasing the Masterpiece of Copernicus

    Thu, Mar 25, 2004
    Owen Gingerich one of the world's leading authorities on Galileo and Copernicus, shares his 30-year obsession with the fact that shortly before his death in 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published *De revolutionibu*. A groundbreaking scientific work, it revealed that we live in a sun - rather than earth - centered universe. Curious about the contention that the book went largely unread at the time, Gingerich undertook a trek around the world to hunt down the 600-odd extant first and second printings. The result is *The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Copernicus* - part travelogue, part science detective story, party biography of a book and its illustrious author.
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