The Boston Athenæum Shows "Faces & Places" From 19th Century Boston

Written by Clive Davidson Tuesday, 18 October 2011 21:00

Boston.- Celebrating the city of Boston and the people who made it great, the Boston Athenæum is proud to present "Faces & Places: Mid-19th Century Boston" on view through September 17th. This installation features over forty paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and artifacts that share the common genre of portraiture, whether they be portraits of people or images of the city itself. In the decades leading up to and encompassing the middle of the nineteenth century--a historical period that would end with the Civil War--Boston produced an impressive number of social reformers, political leaders, writers, and artists. Among these were John Albion Andrew, James Elliott Cabot, Edward Everett, Annie Adams Fields, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thomas H. Perkins, William H. Prescott, and Daniel Webster. All of these people, and more, will be represented in the exhibition by portraits of great historical interest, aesthetic quality and technical brilliance, and sharp insight into the lives and personalities of their subjects. In a final, dedicated section of the installation, Charles Sumner, the great senator, abolitionist, and patron of the arts, will be given special attention in acknowledgement of this, the 200th anniversary of his birth.

The Boston Athenæum is one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries and cultural institutions in the United States. It was founded in 1807. It grew out of a slightly earlier organization known as the Anthology Society which had been formed in 1805 by a group of Bostonians with the primary purpose of producing a magazine that they called The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review. In now creating the Boston Athenæum, their purpose was to form "an establishment similar to that of the Athenæum 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 new Athenæum flourished in culture-starved Boston and, as it voraciously acquired books, art, and artifacts, it grew rapidly. In 1827, it added an Art Gallery and began a series of yearly exhibitions of American and European art. For nearly half a century the Athenæum was the unchallenged center of intellectual life in Boston, and by 1851 had become one of the 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 Athenæum supports a dynamic exhibition program 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.

The Athenæum's collections resided briefly in a group of structures known as Joy's buildings on Congress Street, but by the spring of 1807, it was firmly established in Scollay's buildings on Tremont Street near the present site of Government Center. The Athenæum remained in that location until 1809, when the Trustees purchased the Rufus Amory House, adjacent to the King's Chapel Burial Ground at what was then the easternmost point of the Boston Common. In 1822 the growing collections were moved again, this time to a mansion in Pearl Street that had been given to the Athenæum by Trustee James Perkins. In 1847, construction began on the Athenæum's present Beacon Street building, designed by Edward Clarke Cabot and opened two years later in 1849. The first floor was originally a sculpture gallery, the second floor housed the library's growing collection of books, and the third floor, which was originally the top floor of the building and was equipped with skylights, served as a painting gallery. The building was completely renovated in 1913-1914, at which time the fourth and fifth floors were added and the entire structure fireproofed. Architect Henry Forbes Bigelow designed these improvements.

The Athenæum's five galleried floors overlook the peaceful Granary Burying Ground, and, as Gamaliel Bradford wrote in 1931, "it is safe to say that [no library] anywhere has more an atmosphere of its own, that none is more conducive to intellectual aspiration and spiritual peace." The building was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966. The Art Department at the Boston Athenæum has the primary function and responsibility of overseeing a large, historic collection of art that includes paintings, sculpture, prints, photographs, and decorative arts. Secondarily, the department plans and executes exhibitions of both historical and contemporary art in the Athenæum’s Norma Jean Calderwood Gallery.


During its early years, the Boston Athenæum became a center for the fine arts in Boston and, in fact, functioned as the city’s first museum of fine arts. As one historian has written of that period, "For almost fifty years following [the Athenæum’s] first art gallery exhibition in 1827, the trustees purchased paintings and sculpture, European and American, and fostered the production of works of art by exhibitions." By the time of the Civil War, the Athenæum had purchased or otherwise acquired a number of major paintings and sculptures by contemporary American artists. In addition, it had built an important collection of casts of antique sculptures and fine copies of Old Master paintings (as well as a few originals), making it a destination for artists and art lovers alike.  At the same time, it was amassing a collection of American prints and photographs that spans the entire history of these mediums and is now one of the finest such collections in the country.

The Athenæum was instrumental in the founding of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 1870. The new museum actually held its earliest exhibitions in the Athenæum’s galleries before moving into its own building on Copley Square in 1876. Today, many remarkable works of art can be seen in the Athenæum’s Beacon Street building. These include busts of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and the Marquis de Lafayette by the French master Jean-Antoine Houdon; portraits of John Adams by Mather Brown and Gilbert Stuart; John Singer Sargent's portraits of Annie Adams Fields and George McCulloch; exquisite pastels by John Singleton Copley; Thomas Sully’s life-size image of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, one of the Athenæum’s most important early benefactors; and grand-manner portraits of Daniel Webster and John Marshall by Chester Harding. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.bostonathenaeum.org

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