Reading the Arts

Posted by Mary Murray on January 10th 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: Museum

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Book Group has been meeting since autumn 2008. Have you ever attended? This spring there are some provocative titles to pique your interest.

January Book Group Title

This month we are reading The Glass Room by Simon Mawer. It’s a sweeping novel about several lives lived over several decades in a Modernist house in the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Though the story is fictional, the house in fact is not. Mawer based his book on the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, built in 1930 and designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the architect who was mentor to Philip Johnson (that’s the tie-in to our current exhibition, Look for Beauty: Philip Johnson and Art Museum Architecture).

January Book Group Title

Join us on Thursday, January 20 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Museum of Art for what promises to be a lively conversation about the importance of art, love, loyalty, and the devastating effects of war, among other things.

But wait! There’s more! In March, the Book Group reads Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci’s Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation, by Margaret Leslie Davis. In May, we will be reading An Object of Beauty, a new novel by comedian and art collector Steve Martin.

What we'll be reading in June.

And in June, we have a book for the Museum of Art’s glamorous summer exhibition, Wedded Perfection: Two Centuries of Wedding Gowns (more about this in the near future), and the book has a great title, too: Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown: Notes from a Single Girl’s Closet, by Adena Halpern.

Please join the discussion. Book group meetings are free and open to the public. Advanced registration is appreciated but not required. Register by contacting the Museum Education Department at 315-797-0000 ext. 2158 or online at mwpai.org.