Join American Ancestors at the Boston Public Library for an illustrated tour of the Gilded Age, seen through the experiences and artistry of two of its celebrated artists: architect Stanford White and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Author Henry Wiencek and moderator Curt DiCamillo will take us behind the scenes to show how these two cultural trendsetters transcended scandal to enrich their times.

The creator of landmark buildings that elevated American architecture to new heights, Stanford White was a man-about-town and a canny cultural entrepreneur. Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s painstaking work brought emotional depth to American sculpture; he was the son of an immigrant shoemaker, a moody introvert, and a committed procrastinator. These two artists pursued their own careers in Italy and France, then came together again in New York, where they maintained an friendship and partnership that sustained them. White calmed Sant-Gaudens’s troubled spirits and vouched for him when he failed to complete projects. Saint-Gaudens challenged White to take his artistic gifts seriously and supported him even through the sordid debaucheries that led to White’s sensational murder. In Stan and Gus, the acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek sets these men’s relationship within the larger story of the American Renaissance, where millionaires’ commissions and delusions of grandeur collided with secret upper-class clubs, new aesthetic ideas.