Description
Item specifics
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Condition
-
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Narrative Type
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Nonfiction
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Intended Audience
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Adult
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Inscribed
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NO
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ISBN
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9781567928037
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Book Title
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In the Company of Art : a Museum Director’s Private Journals
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Publisher
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Godine Publisher, David R.
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Item Length
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8.2 in
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Publication Year
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2024
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Format
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Hardcover
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Language
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English
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Illustrator
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Yes
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Item Height
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0.8 in
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Genre
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Art, Biography & Autobiography
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Topic
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Public Art, General, Museum Studies, Artists, Architects, Photographers
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Item Width
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5.5 in
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Number of Pages
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200 Pages
In the Company of Art: A Museum Director’s Private Journals by
About this product
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Godine Publisher, David R.
ISBN-10
156792803X
ISBN-13
9781567928037
eBay Product ID (ePID)
21062382055
Product Key Features
Book Title
In the Company of Art : a Museum Director’s Private Journals
Number of Pages
200 Pages
Language
English
Topic
Public Art, General, Museum Studies, Artists, Architects, Photographers
Publication Year
2024
Illustrator
Yes
Genre
Art, Biography & Autobiography
Format
Hardcover
Dimensions
Item Height
0.8 in
Item Length
8.2 in
Item Width
5.5 in
Additional Product Features
Intended Audience
Trade
Selected by
Rathbone, Belinda
LCCN
2023-033150
Reviews
“An irreplicable insider’s look at the social and professional life of a museum director in the 1960s and how little as well as how much it has changed. Rathbone’s remarkable candor is the glue that holds it all together.” — Philippe DeMontebello, Director Emeritus, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Praise for In the Company of Art “Rich indeed.” — Art New England “An irreplicable insider’s look at the social and professional life of a museum director in the 1960s and how little as well as how much it has changed. Rathbone’s remarkable candor is the glue that holds it all together.” — Philippe DeMontebello, Director Emeritus, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Synopsis
15 September 1956, Peggy Guggenheim is a nice-very nice, straightforward plain speaking neurotic creature living in simple luxury in a half-ruin on the Grand Canal. Hospitality is not one of her failings. She seemed to take a liking to me after the first drink… 10 April 1961, Just back from a gathering at Brian O’Doherty’s flat in Dartmouth St in honor of Edward Hopper and his wife who had done a TV program for [[the] museum with Brian this evening. Hopper a shy man with a granite-like honesty and few words…. He feels that art is suffering a “depression” today. 18 April 1961, Mrs. Kennedy showed an amazing sense for detail, criticizing the “hotel green” of the dining room which she hoped to have painted white, deploring the recent removal of the Stanford White chimney-piece and its replacement in the Truman administration’s renovation by a routine marble fireplace enclosure. The blue room “tragic” to use her favorite adjective… 6 July 1964, Picasso’s eyes are unforgettable and also his delicate tapered fingers. He was like a child in the studio, following all our interests and enthusiasms and bringing out his special treasures for us to enjoy-Degas pastels and two tiny portraits by Douanier Rousseau., Over the years as the director of the St. Louis Art Museum and later the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Perry T. Rathbone kept a journal. These are his unguarded and spontaneous expressions of the moment, not meant for publication–at least not in his lifetime. Alone in his study at the end of a day, Rathbone wrote in a large, unlined sketchbook, unloading whatever was fresh on his mind. Whether a meeting at the museum, a business trip, or a party he had just returned from, he wrote about whom he met, what he thought of them, the ambiance, the conversation, the art, the wine, and the food. Rathbone’s journals provide a window onto an era of seismic cultural change seen through the eyes of an art czar and a tastemaker. There are meetings with artists such as William de Kooning, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Isamu Noguchi, and Alexander Calder, men of letters such as T.S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley. There are candid impressions of the collectors he courted, entertained, and forbore, such as Peggy Guggenheim and Joseph Pulitzer, and of the eccentric Boston Brahmin families with historic ties to the MFA–the Lowells, Lambs, Warrens, Coolidges, and Codmans. And of course he writes of the thrill of assisting Jaqueline Kennedy in the early 1960s with loans from the MFA to adorn the private quarters in the White House. In the Company of Art opens with journal entries from the later years of Rathbone’s time at the St. Louis Art Museum in the early 1950s. But the greatest concentration of entries focuses on the early 1960s, during the banner years of Rathbone’s directorship of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (the meteoric “Rathbone Era”) when he began to enjoy the rewards of his achievements at the museum with new acquisitions, renovated galleries, rising attendance and membership. “Many of the museum’s great acquisitions,” the Boston Globe wrote, “can be credited to Perry Rathbone, the legendary director of the MFA.” Urbane and charismatic, Rathbone won renown as the dean of museum directors in the United States, rightly celebrated for his ability to transform museums from quiet repositories of art into vibrant cultural centers. This is a unique record of what he thought and how he felt along the way.
LC Classification Number
N406.R38A3 2024
Price : 9.88
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