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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

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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Letters of a Portuguese Nun: 17th Century Forbidden Love

Tue, Feb 21, 2006

Myriam Cyr makes the case that the nun, Mariana Alcoforado, is indeed the author of one of the great literary masterpieces of the 17th century, *Portuguese Letters*. Mariana's story is one of the most moving in the history of forbidden love. In 1669, a Parisian bookseller published a slim volume called *Portuguese Letters*, which unveiled a love affair between a young Portuguese nun and a French officer that had occurred a few years earlier during a chaotic and war torn period in Portugal. The book contained passionate love letters the nun had written when the officer was forced to return to France. The letters took Paris by storm. They spoke of love in a manner so direct, so precise, and so raw that they sent shivers of recognition through the sophisticated strata of polite society. Through the centuries they have captured the hearts of poets and painters alike and retain all of their beauty and power today. Stendhal said "one has not loved until they have loved like the Portuguese nun." Braque and Matisse tried to imagine her. As remarkable as the letters are, they are rivaled by the mystery that surrounds them. Scholars debate whether a Portuguese nun could have written words of such stunning truth and beauty preferring to believe that a French aristocrat wrote the letters in answer to a dare.

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Burying Sir Joshua Reynolds

Tue, Sep 27, 2005

Richard Wendorf discusses his new book on British art in the 18th and 19th centuries, an experiment in cultural history that combines analysis of specific artistic objects with an exploration of the cultural conditions in which they were created. In a lecture titled "After Sir Joshua" presented at the Athenæum eight years ago, Richard Wendorf investigated Sir Joshua Reynolds' legacy among the biographers, painters, and writers who followed him. In "Burying Sir Joshua," Wendorf provides an illustrated analysis of the various cultural factors that made the preparation for Reynolds' funeral in 1792 so difficult. Drawing on rarely seen archival material in the Hyde Collection at the Houghton Library, Wendorf charts the day-by-day events involving not only the recently deceased first president of the Royal Academy, but the artist Benjamin West, the architect Sir William Chambers, and the politician and writer Edmund Burke as well. "Burying Sir Joshua" is the final Athenæum lecture based on Wendorf's new book, *After Sir Joshua: Essays on British Art and Cultural History*.

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Elizabeth Kolbert: Field Notes from a Catastrophe

Thu, Apr 6, 2006

New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert discusses topics from her new book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Americans have been warned since the late 1970s that the buildup of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere threatens to melt the polar ice sheets and irreversibly change our climate. With little done since then to alter this dangerous path, the world has reached a critical threshold. By the end of the twenty-first century, it will likely be hotter than at any point in the last two million years, and the sweeping consequences of this change will determine the course of life on earth for generations to come. Acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She travels to the Arctic, interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science and the studies, draws frightening parallels to lost ancient civilizations, unpacks the politics, and presents the personal tales of those who are being affected most: the people who make their homes near the poles and, in an eerie foreshadowing, are watching their worlds disappear. Growing out of a groundbreaking three-part series for the New Yorker, Field Notes from a Catastrophe brings the environment into the consciousness of the American people and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet.

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Sweetwater: Secrets of a Yankee Life

Thu, Nov 13, 2003

Roxana Robinson discusses *Sweetwater*, her story of a woman whose second marriage casts into sharp relief the painful echoes of her first. The book draws together the disparate strands of family complexities, social tensions, and the fragility of the natural world in this moving novel.

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Picture Books: A Reading for Children

Sat, Oct 4, 2003

Children's book creators Barbara McClintock, Phyllis Root, and Helen Oxenbury read their stories aloud to a group of children at the Boston Athenaeum. Barbara McClintock reads from her book Dahlia. One morning Charlotte gets a package from her Aunt Edme. Inside is a delicate doll. Charlotte never wanted a doll, and she certainly doesn't want this one. She names the doll Dahlia and tells her that she and Bruno, her bear, "like digging in dirt and climbing trees. No tea parties, no being pushed around in frilly prams. You'll just have to get used to the way we do things." Dahlia doesn't seem to mind. What's more, she seems to like getting dirty while making mud cakes and racing wagons. But at the end of the day, Charlotte's aunt arrives for a visit and wants to see how Dahlia is doing and Charlotte gets another surprise. Phyllis Root and Helen Oxenbury read from their book Big Momma Makes the World. When Big Momma makes the world, she doesn't mess around. Earth, she says, get over here. And it does. With a little baby on her hip and laundry piling up, Big Momma asks for light and dark, sea and sky, creepers and crawlers, and lots of folks to trade stories with on the front porch. And when the work is done, Big Momma is pleased all right. "That's good," she says, "That's real good."

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Paths of Desire: Passions of a Suburban Gardener

Thu, Apr 15, 2004

Dominique Browning discusses her latest book, Paths of Desire: Passions of a Suburban Gardner.

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William Clark and the Shaping of the West

Fri, Apr 23, 2004

Landon Jones discusses the life of William Clark, and describes the dark and bloody ground of America's early West, describing how the West was won and what we gained and lost by winning it. Between 1803 and 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark co-captained a fabled expedition across the vast, largely unexplored reaches of the North American continent. Lewis ended his life three years after returning to civilization, but Clark, as the highest-ranking federal official in the West, spent three decades overseeing the consequences of the historic journey, namely, Indian removal and the destruction of Native America.

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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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