Boston Athenaeum

Boston Athenaeum

By Boston AthenaeumSociety & Culture
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Boston Athenaeum episodes

  • Ann Goldstein, “The Art and Craft of Translation”
    March 8, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Join Ann Goldstein—translator of works by Elena Ferrante, Primo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Alessandro Baricco—for a lecture on the art and craft of translation, with examples from the broad range of works she has translated from Italian. Goldstein will offer audience members a peek into the complex considerations of translators with an analysis of two translated sentences from Primo Levi's The Truce.
    38 min
  • Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston, “A Child of Books”
    February 25, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    New York Times best-selling author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers and fine artist Sam Winston will present on their collaboratively created picturebook, A Child of Books. An artistic love letter to reading and the imagination, A Child of Books combines Jeffers’s expressive images and Winston’s immersive typographical landscapes, as a girl and boy adventure through the rich terrain of stories.
    43 min
  • James Conroy, “Lincoln’s White House”
    February 21, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Lincoln’s White House is the first book to capture the look, feel, and smell of the executive mansion from the time of Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861 to his assassination in 1865. During this book talk, author James Conroy will bring to life the people who knew Lincoln’s White House, from servants to cabinet secretaries and more. Conroy relies on fresh research from previously untapped primary sources and a bold character-driven narrative to offer insight on how Lincoln lived, governed, battled, and ultimately, unified the country. Join us for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of day-to-day life in the time of Lincoln and four of the most tumultuous years in American history.
    56 min
  • The Poets’ Theatre, “Boston Poets and Their Predecessors: A Muster of Poets”
    January 18, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Historically, Boston has been home to numerous prominent American poets. This remains true today, making its civic moniker of “the Athens of America” as fitting now as it was in the nineteenth century. This evening’s performance, directed by Poets’ Theatre President and Artistic Director Robert Scanlan, is a gathering of Boston’s best poets, including Jennie Barber, Martha Collins, David Ferry, Regie Gibson, George Kalogeris, Marcia Karp, Fred Marchant, Jill McDonough, Lloyd Schwartz, and Meg Tyler. They will read their own works paired with the works of their nineteenth-century predecessors, invoking the ghosts of poets such as William Cullen Bryant, Lydia Maria Child, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathanial Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman. The program will pay tribute to the Athenæum’s rich historical and literary roots while demonstrating how a living and contemporary literary scene continues to be nourished by this tradition.
    1 hr 39 min
  • Stephen T. Moskey, “Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age”
    February 16, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Until recently, history remembered Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (1876-1948) as the wife of wealthy Bostonian Larz Kilgour Anderson (1866-1937). Their Brookline estate is now Larz Anderson Park. However, the public perception of Mrs. Anderson as an heiress and socialite was shattered in April 2016 with the publication of Stephen Moskey’s Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, a new account of the couple’s extraordinary lives. Based on research conducted in libraries and archives across the US and Europe (including the Boston Athenæum), Moskey’s work has transformed Mrs. Anderson’s legacy and public image. We now know her for what she was: a prolific writer and editor of over 40 titles; a librettist and impresario of popular musicals performed during the Great Depression; and a courageous nurse serving on the battlefields of France and Belgium during WWI. Mrs. Anderson emerges from the pages of this book as an exemplary woman of the early modern era whose deeds anticipated a new role for women in culture and society.
    Art historian Isabel Taube calls the book “corrective to existing perceptions of Gilded Age women like Isabel Anderson.” Moskey’s lecture will focus on Mrs. Anderson’s literary and theatrical accomplishments, with a special focus on her wartime memoir Zigzagging (1918).
    46 min
  • Laird Christensen, "How the Arts Prepare Us for Life in the Time of Climate Change"
    February 15, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    The warnings come one after another, from biologists, meteorologists, pathologists, and hydrologists, all offering some variation on the same story: the world we inhabit is changing rapidly—and not always for the better. Centuries of fossil fuel consumption has caused atmospheric levels of carbon to spike beyond anything our species has ever experienced. Each month brings record temperatures as clean water grows scarce. 200 million environmental refugees are expected by 2050.
    In a world increasingly characterized by the effects of climate disruption—political, environmental, economic, and social—it comes as no surprise that writers and artists have begun to seize and depict the personal and collective implications of climate change. Across media and genre, writers and artists convey urgency and bear witness to the ongoing destruction of our planet, while encouraging humanity to rise to the challenges ahead. This presentation will explore the ways in which American writers and artists imagine and translate the science of climate change.
    1 hr 3 min
  • Michael D. Fay and Tara Leigh Tappert, “Beyond Stereotype: War, Warriors, and the Creative Arts”
    January 30, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Join us to consider the historic and contemporary intersection of art, war, and culture. Guests Michael D. Fay, former United States Marine Corps combat artist, and Tara Leigh Tappert, cultural historian, will discuss the role and influence of wartime experiences on culture and the arts since WWI, addressing both art’s place on the battlefield and its rehabilitative qualities for veterans. They will also discuss contemporary issues surrounding art and war in a post-9/11 era, including art’s capacity to subvert stereotypes about war and the impact art made by combat artists and veterans has on the national discourse on war and the military.
    46 min
  • Dan Souza and Molly Birnbaum - America's Test Kitchen, “Cook’s Science”
    January 26, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    For the past 25 years (and long before it became a trend), America’s Test Kitchen has used the art of science to perfect cooking. America’s Test Kitchen’s carefully crafted process guarantees success through the use of biology, chemistry, and physics to ask big questions about how and why ingredients and cooking techniques work. Cook’s Science: How to Unlock Flavor in 50 of Our Favorite Ingredients distills thousands of kitchen tests and decades of recipes into a landmark cookbook that will change the way Americans cook at home. This book talk will explore the basic science behind different cooking methods that make their ingredients taste best.
    30 min
  • R. Marc Kantrowitz, "Old Whiskey and Young Women: American True Crime Tales..."
    January 25, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Join Marc Kantrowitz to explore some of the most notorious legal cases in American history! Hear about America’s most famous comedian being framed for murder; the country’s first capital case involving an older woman and her (much) younger lover; the fatal shooting of a renowned architect amidst a crowded party by Mad Harry Thaw; and the real-life inspiration for Norman Bates, whose gruesome crimes outmatch that of any fictional character. These cases titillated, if not repulsed, the entire nation but are now nearly forgotten. Discover these infamous characters and many more from the rich pages of history.
    45 min
  • Robert Peck, “The Remarkable Nature of Edward Lear”
    January 19, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Edward Lear (1812-1888) is known and cherished for “The Owl and the Pussycat” and other works of literary nonsense. He was also an accomplished painter of birds, mammals, reptiles, and landscapes. Lear depicted parrots, macaws, toucans, owls, and other birds with scientific accuracy and a noteworthy sense of character, and reproduced his illustrations using the newly invented technique of lithography. An adventurous global traveler, Lear painted mammals ranging from hedgehogs and kangaroos to bats and Tasmanian devils. Although Lear’s nonsense verse has often prompted comparisons to Lewis Carroll, his private and enigmatic disposition has left him little known and less understood than his literary peer. Robert McCracken Peck, author of the new illustrated book The Natural History of Edward Lear, will discuss the remarkable life and work of this beloved children’s writer, who abruptly and mysteriously abandoned his scientific aspirations soon after achieving preeminence in the field.
    47 min

About Boston Athenaeum

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The Boston Athenaeum, a membership library, first opened its doors in 1807, and its rich history as a library and cultural institution has been well documented in the annals of Boston’s cultural life.…