Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner - Natalie Dykstra Speaks with Rachel Cohen

This event was recorded live on April 18, 2024.
Natalie Dykstra’s Chasing Beauty is the vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner - creator of one of America’s most stunning museums and a true American original. A wealthy Boston socialite at the turn of the 20th century, Gardner was misunderstood for her eccentric lifestyle, but found her niche as a patron and friend to artists, including John Singer Sargent, who painted her (scandalous at the time) portrait. Dykstra illuminates how the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir created with objects, displayed per Gardner’s wishes, including not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture. Dykstra speaks about the new book with Rachel Cohen, author of A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, which is being reissued in 2024 by New York Review of Books Classics, among other books.
Presented with the Leon Levy Center for Biography.
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