Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism
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
Award-winning author and art critic Sebastian Smee will read from and discuss his latest book, Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, as part of the Brattleboro Literary Festival.
From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871 (famously dubbed the “Terrible Year” by Victor Hugo), Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans―then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway commune, ultimately crushed by the French army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris. As Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee shows, it was against the backdrop of these tumultuous times that the Impressionist movement was born―in response to violence, civil war, and political intrigue.
Smee is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic at The Washington Post and the author of The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art and several other books. He teaches at Wellesley College. He worked at the Boston Globe from 2008 to 2016, and has previously worked in London and Sydney for The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Spectator, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, and The Monthly.
The Brattleboro Literary Festival includes three days of author events featuring Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning and emerging authors, Oct.17-19. The festival is free and open to the public.
Join fellow art and literature enthusiasts for a lively book club-style discussion about Paris in Ruins at the next BMAC Reads on Thursday, October 23, at 5:30 p.m.
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