July Book Club “Old Masters, New World”
Recommended for your summer reading list: Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures, by Cynthia Saltzman. It’s the pick of the season for the Rienzi and Bayou Bend History Book Club.
Rienzi, the MFAH house museum for European decorative arts, hosts a virtual discussion about Old Masters, New World on Wednesday, July 8, at 1:30 p.m. If you and your friends can’t make it, use the reading guide to delve deeper into the book on your own.
About the Book
Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures traces the transit of Europe’s extraordinary Old Master paintings across the Atlantic in the late 19th century, when newly rich, Gilded Age Americans sought social prestige and stature by voraciously snapping up great pictures from European collections. From Henry Clay Frick and his pursuit of Rembrandt’s The Polish Rider to the ambitious efforts of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry Gurdon Marquand, J. Pierpont Morgan, and the Havemeyer family to build their own ranking collections, the competitive frenzy, financial complexities, and fraught trades of these exquisite paintings come to life in Old Masters, New World.
Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures by Cynthia Saltzman
Posts
At-Home Art Activity “Exploring Materials and Creating & Modifying Beads” November 15, 2022
Create your own art while exploring a variety of materials and beads, with inspiration from works in the MFAH collections.
At-Home Art Activity “Exploring Fauvism and Creating Colorful Landscapes” October 10, 2022
Make your own art inspired by the Fauvist movement and André Derain’s The Turning Road, L’Estaque.
At-Home Art Activity Inspired by “Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities” May 20, 2022
Make your own art inspired by the work of Shahzia Sikander in the exhibition Extraordinary Realities.
At-Home Art Activities Inspired by “Dawoud Bey: An American Project” May 6, 2022
Create your own works of art with these projects and inspiration from the photographs in the exhibition Dawoud Bey: An American Project.
At-Home Activities Inspired by Art from the Indigenous Pacific Islands and Australia May 2, 2022
Create your own works of art with inspiration from the Indigenous Pacific Islands and Australia.