Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner

October 19, Saturday, 4:30 p.m.

ADMISSION:
Free

LOCATION
In person at BMAC, 10 Vernon Street, Brattleboro VT 05301

ACCESSIBILITY QUESTIONS?
Email office@brattleboromuseum.org or call 802-257-0124 x101.

The Brattleboro Literary Festival and BMAC are pleased to present award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, who will read from and discuss her latest book, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Dykstra’s impeccably researched biography tells 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.

Book signing to follow. Cash bar by Windham Wines.

Acclaim for Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner:

“Isabella Stewart Gardner has found the ideal biographer in Natalie Dykstra, who gives Gardner, her nerves of steel, her expert eye, and her singular curiosity their due in this wise, sparkling book.” — Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams and Cleopatra: A Life

“Natalie Dykstra has written an absorbing, deeply researched biography that is also a travelogue, Edwardian period drama, and art history primer, with a supporting cast that includes Henry James, John Singer Sargent, Edith Wharton, and Henry Adams. In these pages, Isabella Stewart Gardner comes to life as a feminist pathbreaker finally given her due—and an artist in her own right.” — Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

“The complex, magnificent life of Isabella Stewart Gardner pours through the pages of Natalie Dykstra’s wonderful, definitive biography. Gardner left an incomparable legacy; at long last, she has found a biographer who can match her in range, profundity, and eye for detail. It is thrilling to watch the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum rise again in this powerful, timely book.” — Rachel Cohen, author of A Chance Meeting: American Encounters

“An exquisitely detailed and perceptive biography.”  — New York Times Book Review