Belinda Rathbone, editor of In the Company of Art

When:
Thursday, May 30, 2024 7:00p -
8:00p

Where:
Porter Square Books
25 White St.
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140

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Admission:
FREE

Hosted by:
...
psb_events Porter Square Books

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Event website:
https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/belinda-rathbone-editor-company-art

Porter Square Books is thrilled to welcome Belinda Rathbone for the release of In the Company of Art, the journals of Museum of Fine Arts former museum director Perry Rathbone! This event will take place on Thursday, May 30 at 7pm at Porter Square Books (25 White St. Cambridge, MA 02140).


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ABOUT IN THE COMPANY OF ART

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.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Perry T. Rathbone (1911–2000) was one of the leading American art museum directors of the twentieth century. He served as director of the St. Louis Art Museum from 1940 to 1955, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1955 to1972.

Belinda Rathbone is a biographer and historian who has written widely on 20th-century American art and photography. In addition to The Boston Raphael, she is the author of Walker Evans: A Biography, George Rickey: A Life in Balance, a memoir, The Guynd, and edited In the Company of Art: A Museum Director's Private Journals by Perry T. Rathbone.

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05/30/2024 19:00:00 05/30/2024 20:00:00 America/New_York Belinda Rathbone, editor of In the Company of Art <p><strong>Porter Square Books</strong>&nbsp;is thrilled to welcome&nbsp;<strong>Belinda Rathbone&nbsp;</strong>for the release of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9781567928037...

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