BOSTON ATHENÆUMNOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2016 THE ART of RIVALRY Book Talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee P R © Pat Greenhouse Monday, November 28, 6-7 pm with a contemporary of equal ambition, but sharply contrasting Registration begins November 14 at 9 am strengths and weaknesses, spurred creative output. P R Members $15 Non-members $30 Sebastian Smee has been the Boston Globe’s art critic since 2008. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2011. Smee Art critic Sebastian Smee’s new book tells joined the Globe’s staff from the Australian, where he worked the captivating story of four pairs of artists as a national art critic. Prior to that, Smee spent four years in — Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, the UK, where he wrote for the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, Pollock and de Kooning, and Freud and the Art Newspaper, the Independent, Prospect, and the Bacon — whose fraught, antagonistic friendships impelled Spectator. Smee is the author of six books: five on Lucian them to achieve new creative triumphs. Smee argues that Freud and one on Matisse and Picasso. He teaches nonfiction rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful writing at Wellesley College. artistic relationships in history. For these artists, competition DIRECTOR’S NOTE November, as Emily Dickenson noted, is a liminal month, whose “few prosaic Jaemin Ha, Gensler days” are poised “A little this side of the snow / And that side of the haze.” The Athenæum’s nuanced offerings suit this subtle mood. The ongoing exhibition Daniel Chester French: The Female Form Revealed explores a new aspect of the sculptor’s work, while a three-part series chronicles lesser-told stories of life, culture, and commerce in the burgeoning US nation. GLIMPSED Book talks and lectures shed fresh light on age-old topics: fruitful artist AT 10½ rivalries, contemporary religious pluralism, the politics of memory in modern-day Vienna, Bostonian public art, the quarter-century-long Architects from Gensler’s Boston Nabokov-Wilson correspondence, and domestic material culture in the office visited the Athenæum on Athenæum archives. We hope you’ll join us for an event, a discussion, August 25 to make sketches for or a good read one of these days between the snow and the haze. Architectural Record’s annual Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest. Elizabeth E. Barker, PhD We’re crossing our fingers that 10½ Stanford Calderwood Director Beacon inspired a winning design! NEWS YOU CAN USE WATCH & LISTEN Catch up or listen again during your daily commute: podcasts and videos of most Athenæum events are available for streaming online. Visit “Watch & Listen” under “Events” to learn more. @BOSTONATHENAEUM Did you know that silent, non-flash photography is permitted in most Athenæum spaces? Post your favorite snapshots and tag us on Instagram! GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN Two previous exhibitions are now published online. Find Chromo-Mania! and Collecting for the Boston Athenæum in the 21st Century: Prints and Photographs in “Past Exhibitions” under “Exhibitions.” DIGITAL COLLECTIONS REDESIGN The Digital Collections webpage has been streamlined to simplify Detail: “Washington’s sepulchre, Mount Vernon.” Boston Athenæum Digital Collections. 1819-1821. its use. New features include Browse Collections A to Z and Browse Collections by Category. Find it in “Digital Collections” under “Collections.” COLLECTIONS CORNER NEW FACES The Athenæum is pleased to welcome Recently Acquired Charlotte Emans Moore, PhD, Polly Thayer Starr Post-Doctoral Fellow in American Art; Casey K. The Athenæum’s special collections, like those of all great Riley, PhD, Assistant Curator of Paintings and institutions, are built on the generosity and focused collecting of our Sculpture; and Jonathan Romain, Von Clemm Fellow benefactors. This month, we’re pleased to spotlight a spectacular gift in Book Conservation. from Jody S. Gill: Picturesque Views of American Scenery, engraved by John Hill from drawings by Joshua Shaw, 1820. This rare book contains seven hand-colored, engraved plates depicting magnificent American landscapes. For Shaw, “in no other quarter of the globe are the majesty and loveliness of nature more strikingly conspicuous than in America.” Make an appointment to view Picturesque Views in the Vershbow Special Collections Reading Room. ATHENÆUM AUTHOR First Lady of the Library Did you know that Caroline Hewins, a key player in the establishment of free public libraries and the first woman to address the American Library Association, began her career at the Boston Athenæum? OPEN MONDAY–THURSDAY, 9 am–8 pm Inspired by a visit to the Athenæum as a high school FRIDAY, 9 am–5:30 pm student, Hewins (1846-1926) worked as an assistant SATURDAY, 9 am–4 pm to renowned librarian William Frederick Poole SUNDAY, 12 pm–4 pm following graduation. In 1875, she moved to Hartford, where she pioneered the transformation of the Young EARLY CLOSURE Men’s Institute from a subscription library to a free WEDNESDAY, November 23 public library. The Hartford Public Library was The Athenæum will close at 1pm established in 1892, with Caroline Hewins hired as its first librarian. CLOSED Hewins was a keen advocate of dedicated children’s library THURSDAY, November 24 services and opened one of the country’s first children’s Hartford History Center, SATURDAY, December 24 libraries in Hartford in 1904. Her bibliography of books for children—the Hartford Public Library SUNDAY, December 25 first of its kind—offered story recommendations which “broaden the MONDAY, December 26 horizon[s] of children [and] cultivate their imagination and love of nature.” SATURDAY, December 31 SUNDAY, January 1, 2017 The Athenæum is indebted to Hewins for her devotion to cultivating a MONDAY, January 2, 2017 love of books from an early age and her lifelong service to librarianship. George Washington’s Library at the Boston Athenæum © Boston Athenæum ROOKIE REPUBLIC Early America and Its Place on the Global Stage Since its earliest years, the Boston Athenæum has sought to document EXHIBITION the history and culture of Boston, New England, and the United States, DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH: THE FEMALE FORM REVEALED amassing a collection that includes the libraries of George Washington For nearly half a century, from the late 1870s to the late 1920s, Daniel Chester French (1850-1931) was and Henry Knox, ship logs, and maps documenting European exploration America’s foremost sculptor of public monuments. His outdoor masterpieces adorn cosmopolitan centers as and the settlement of North America. Inspired by these holdings, we are well as rural American towns. French’s fame for male-oriented masterpieces is well deserved, but he was equally proficient at modeling the female figure, especially in its classicizing, idealized form.This aspect of pleased to present a three-part series that highlights diverse and lesser-told French’s work has been little acknowledged and even less studied. It is the goal of this exhibition to fill that gap stories of life, culture, and commerce in the burgeoning nation. in scholarship. Daniel Chester French: The Female Form Revealed explores French’s allegorical representation of the female form primarily through a group of preliminary models and studies, created not only for major public commissions, but also for a number of his more intimate and personal works. LECTURE freedom. Johns Hopkins Professor of History LECTURE François Furstenberg will explore the early GEORGE WASHINGTON’S history of the abolitionist movement from MUSLIMS IN AMERICA LIBRARY AT THE the perspective of book history, using these SINCE 1619 ATHENÆUM leaflets to link Mount Vernon to a global network of early abolitionists. Lecture with Muslim Chaplain Transatlantic Dialogues of Shareda Hosein TASTING EVENT Slavery and Freedom Tuesday, December 13, 6-7 pm Lecture with Professor of History BLACK PEPPER Registration begins November 29 at 9 am P R Members $15 Non-members $30 François Furstenberg Taste a Revolutionary Story Wednesday, November 2, 6-7 pm Community Registration begins October 19 at 9 am Black pepper in the history Muslim Chaplain P R Members $15 Non-members $30 of American cuisine and retired US Army Reserves A selection of Wednesday, November 16, 5:30-7:30 pm Lieutenant tracts from George Registration begins November 2 at 9 am Colonel Shareda Washington’s M Members $40 Hosein will personal library, chronicle the housed in the Join us for a signature cocktail and three small experiences of collections bites that celebrate black pepper and its place free and enslaved Muslims who served in of the Boston in American cuisine. Food blogger Sarah US wars, including the Revolutionary War Athenæum, Lohman will examine the cultural and and the Civil War. Hosein will also explore reveals a broad culinary impact of black pepper and its connections between the Founding Fathers transatlantic conversation about slavery and surprising connections to Boston’s history. and global Muslims, and the impact of these relationships on US history. Daniel Chester French, The Spirit of the Waters, Maquette (Trask Memorial), 1913, plaster, 11 7/8 x 9 1/4 x 5 1/8 inches. Chesterwood, a National Trust Site, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Gift of Daniel Chester French Foundation. Photograph by Paul Rocheleau, courtesy THE VICISSITUDES MUSEUMS WITHOUT WALLS Chesterwood. OF PLURALISM The Sculpture Collection of the ONGOING EXHIBITION William Orville Thomson endowed Boston Common, the Boston October 7, 2016–February 19, 2017 lecture with Professor Emeritus Public Garden, and the Norma Jean Calderwood Gallery Peter L. Berger Commonwealth Avenue Mall P Members Free Non-members $5 Tuesday, November 15, 6-7 pm Illustrated lecture with curator M F R Registration begins November 1 David Dearinger at 9 am CURATOR’S LECTURE Tuesday, November 29, 12-1 pm Thursday, November 10, 6-7 pm In The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward F P Registration not required Registration begins October 27 at 9 am a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age, P Members Free Non-members $15 Berger argues that, contrary to popular belief, Greater Boston boasts a number of art we don’t live in a secular age—we live in a museums, each of which, naturally, is Exhibition co-curator David Dearinger, PhD, pluralist one.