Boston Athenæum

November 5, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. The Athenæum’s collections offer a wonderful glimpse into the Gilded Age through paintings, drawings, and prints by John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and others, as well as through the writing of Walt Whitman, Henry James, and William Dean Howells. The Gilded Age saw the birth of modern America, and the greatest outpouring of art and architecture, as well as literature, in our history. The period began with the “Golden Spike” in 1869, which unified the nation by rail and made vast commercial expansion and the creation of great fortunes possible. Boston saw the construction of Richardson’s Romanesque Trinity Church in 1876 and McKim’s classical Boston Public Library in 1893. Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. will examine the failures and successes of the greatest artists of the period as well as the often contradictory writings of Henry James and Mark Twain.