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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

French and Indian War: Struggle for North America

Thu, Jan 20, 2005

William Fowler captures the sweeping panorama of the French and Indian War, and the huge cast of characters who fought it. Field commanders on both sides contended with the harsh realities of disease, brutal weather, and scant supplies, frequently having to build the roads they marched on. For many, the French and Indian War is just the backdrop for *The Last of the Mohicans*, a mere prelude to the American Revolution. Fowler's engrossing narrative reveals it as a turning point in modern history. On May 28, 1754, a group of militia and Indians led by 22-year-old major George Washington surprised a camp of sleeping French soldiers near present-day Pittsburgh. The brief but deadly exchange of fire that ensued lit the match that, in Horace Walpole's memorable phrase, would "set the world on fire." The resulting French and Indian War in North America escalated into a conflict fought across Europe, Africa, and the East and West Indies. Before it ended, nearly one million men had died.

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Amy Lowell: Selected Poems

Tue, Jan 25, 2005

Honor Moore, editor for poet Amy Lowell, discusses the impact of Lowell's work. A cigar-smoking proponent of free-verse modernism in open rebellion against her distinguished Boston lineage, Amy Lowell cut an indelible public figure. But in the words of Moore, "what strikes the modern reader is not the sophistication of Lowell's feminist or anti-war stances, but the bald audacity of her eroticism." Lowell was at the center of a group of pioneering modernists who, in an era convulsed by change, rejected musty Victorian standards and wrote poems of bracing immediacy. This new selection captures her formal range: the "cadenced verse" of her Imagist masterpieces, her experiments in "polyphonic prose," her narrative poetry, and her adaptations from the classical Chinese. It gives a fresh sense of the passion and energy of her work. **Honor Moore** is the author of *The White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter*, a *New York Times* Notable Book in 1996, and of three volumes of poems: *Memoir*, *Darling*, and *Red Shoes*. Her work has appeared in *The New Yorker*, *The NewYork Times*, *The Nation*, *The New Republic*, *The Paris Review*, and *The American Scholar*.

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Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life

Tue, Feb 08, 2005

Charles C. Calhoun shows how the young poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow blended the Federalist politics and Unitarianism of his parents' generation with the German romanticism he discovered on his travels. The result was distinctive American poetry, traditional in form, but nationalistic in sentiment. Longfellow's Paul Revere, Priscilla Alden, Miles Standish, and the Village Blacksmith became American icons. And in his masterpiece, *Evangeline*, Longfellow invented the foundational myth of Acadian and Cajun ethnic identity. Calhoun's *Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life* is a Victorian family saga. As a young man from the provinces, Longfellow gained international celebrity and great wealth; yet his life was afflicted by chronic melancholy, by the tragic deaths of two beloved wives, by a spendthrift son, and by a self-destructive brother. A procession of vivid characters walks through the pages of Calhoun's book, from the poet's Revolutionary War grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, to his friends and acquaintances, including Hawthorne, Emerson, Charles Sumner, Dickens, Carlyle, Fanny Butler, Queen Victoria, and Oscar Wilde.

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One Hundred Years of Egyptian Art at the MFA

Thu, Mar 10, 2005

Few people realize that the first home of the Museum of Fine Arts was the Boston Athenaeum, and that the Athenaeum's galleries once housed several thousand Egyptian objects. Today, the Department of Egyptian Art at the MFA Boston has grown to include some 70,000 objects and is one of the finest collections of its kind in the world. Recently celebrating its 100th anniversary, it is also the oldest such department in the United States. This lecture examines how Boston became interested in ancient Egypt, when the first objects arrived on Boston shores, and how the collection developed to its present size and quality. Using archival photographs, Dr Freed focuses on behind-the-scenes stories of the early years and the Department's pioneering archaeological excavations in Egypt. Dr Rita E. Freed has been working in the MFA Boston's Ancient Egyptian Department for 15 years; she was recently named to the John F. Cogan Jr. and Mary L. Cornille Chair of the Department of Art of the Ancient World. She is also adjunct professor of art at Wellesley College. Dr Freed has curated a number of internationally acclaimed exhibitions on the subject of ancient Egyptian and Nubian Art, including *Rameses the Great*, which toured the country in the late 1980s, and *Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen* in 1999, which traveled to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Leiden, Netherlands. Dr Freed has participated in archaeological excavations in Egypt, Cyprus, and Israel.

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Emma at Home: Lady Hamilton and Her "Attitudes"

Thu, Mar 31, 2005

John Wilton-Ely lectures on the effervescent and much celebrated performance artist, Lady Emma Hamilton, whose "attitudes" made her a phenomenon all across 18th century Europe. This lecture is presented in conjunction with the Royal Oak Foundation.

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Stewart O'Nan's The Good Wife

Thu, Apr 07, 2005

Stewart O'Nan, author of The Speed Queen and A Prayer for the Dying, discusses his newest novel, The Good Wife. On a clear winter night in upstate New York, two young men break into a house believing it is empty. It isn't, and within minutes an old woman is dead and the house is in flames. Soon after, the men are caught by the police. Across the county, a phone rings in a darkened bedroom, waking a pregnant woman. It is her husband. He wants her to know that he and his friend have gotten themselves into a little trouble. So Patty Dickerson's old life ends and a strange new one begins. At once a love story and a portrait of a woman discovering her own strength, The Good Wife follows Patty through the twenty-eight years of her husband's incarceration as she raises her son, navigates a system that has no place for her, and braves the scorn of her community. Compassionate and unflinching, The Good Wife illuminates a marriage and a family tested to the limits of endurance.

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Peabody Sisters: Igniting American Romanticism

Tue, May 17, 2005

Megan Marshall lectures on Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody, the subjects of her 20 years in the making biography, The Peabody Sisters. Marshall focuses on the period during which the Peabody sisters made their indelible mark on history. Her unprecedented research into these lives uncovered hundreds of previously unread letters, as well as other previously unmined original sources. The Peabody Sisters casts new light on a legendary American era. **Megan Marshall**'s work on The Peabody Sisters has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has published numerous articles on women's history and New England history.

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How Free Blacks from Boston Changed America

Fri, Feb 24, 2006

Steven Kendrick and Paul Kendrick discuss the 1847 Massachusetts Supreme Court case of schoolgirl Sarah Roberts, and the lasting impact it made in American history. In 1847, on windswept Beacon Hill, a 5-year-old girl named Sarah Roberts was forced to walk past five white schools to attend the poor and densely crowded black school. Her father, Benjamin, sued the city of Boston on her behalf, turning to 24-year-old Robert Morris, the first black attorney to win a jury case in America. Together with young lawyer Charles Sumner, this legal team forged a powerful argument against school segregation that has reverberated down through American history in a direct legal line to Brown v. Board of Education. When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against Sarah Roberts, Chief Justice Shaw created the concept of "separate but equal", an idea that effected every aspect of American life until it was overturned 100 years later by Thurgood Marshall.

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Tremont Row: Artists' Daguerreotype Rooms

Tue, Feb 28, 2006

Grant Romer, curator of the Addison Gallery of American Art's "Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes" exhibition, shows how new research has revealed that the architecture of the renowned Tremont Row studio played a highly significant role in the development of the distinctive style of the partnership. With ample illustrations, he recounts how this understanding of the physical space was reconstructed and demonstrates how much it has added to appreciating the artistry of these acknowledged masters of early photography. Romer's acclaimed exhibition "Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes" offers an unparalleled opportunity to view 150 perfectly illuminated daguerreotypes created by the famous Boston partnership of Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes. Through their lens we come face to face with great statesman, intellectuals, and celebrities, glimpse intimate family portraits, and examine the very bricks and clouds of the mid-19th century.

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Familiar Faces: Gilbert Stuart's George and Martha Washington

Tue, Mar 21, 2006

Ellen Miles discusses Gilbert Stuart's creation in 1796 of his very familiar life portrait of George Washington, together with its companion portrait of Martha Washington, often known as the "Athenaeum portraits" because they were owned by the Boston Athenaeum for more than 150 years. Miles describes the relationship between the Washingtons and the artist, the reason for the incomplete composition of the two portraits, and the immediate and lasting success of the portrait of the President, in contrast to the relative obscurity of the portrait of Martha Washington.

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