Showing results for "Life" in Library & Museum Studies

The intimate, inspiring memoir of a “curator extraordinaire” (The Guardian)—part unputdownable coming-of-age story, part insider’s tour of the contemporary art world, part user’s manual on how to live a life driven by curiosity, conversation, and coincidence “A few years ago...

The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from...

Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she steps into the archive of memory, deftly stitching together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in spare, luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear.

The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum.

In December 2008, twentysomething Jill Grunenwald graduated with her master’s degree in library science, ready to start living her dream of becoming a librarian. But the economy had a different idea. As the Great Recession reared its ugly head, jobs were scarce. After some searching, however, Jill was lucky enough to snag one of the few librarian gigs left in her home state of Ohio. The catch? The job was behind bars as the prison librarian at a men’s minimum-security prison. Talk about baptism by fire.

The Psychic Lives of Statues explores both the toppling of colonial statues and the erection of postcolonial ones, illuminating how statues remain powerful and compelling forms of memorialization. Engaging with artists, scholars, and activists, Rao offers a fresh and exciting perspective on how we understand our past and present through iconography.

>Luminous and revealing, a daughter's memoir of the art world and a larger-than-life father. Gabrielle Selz grew up in a home full of the most celebrated artists of the 1960s and 1970s: Rothko, de Kooning, Tinguely, Giacometti, and Christo. Her father, Peter Selz, was the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Selz's father was vibrant and freewheeling, but his enthusiasm for both women and art took its toll on their family life.

Charles Parsons is one of St. Louis' and the nation's most influential yet little-known figures. He was instrumental to the Union cause as a Civil War quartermaster and advisor to generals, politicians, and presidents alike. As a world-traveling art connoisseur, he helped found the first art museum west of the Mississippi, to which he donated his remarkable collection of American, European, and Asian art. To this day, his philanthropic work and dedication to education live on in some of the country's grandest institutions.