Registration for Programs
Edmund De Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss
Thursday, September 30, 2010, 5:30 PM
Renowned British potter Edmund de Waal tells the story of his family, 264 Japanese netsuke, three Jewish owners, and the three rooms which housed the netsuke collection over a period of 140 years. Mr. de Waal is the fifth generation to inherit the collection, and he describes the way in which the maintenance and care of the collection dominated his life for over 30 years.
Free to members. RSVP to Susan Gallo at 215-925-2688 or sgallo@philaathenaeum.org
Michael Capuzzo, The Murder Room
Wednesday, October 13, 2010, 5:30 PM
Best selling author, Michael Capuzzo, here illuminates the story of the Vidocq Society of Philadelphia, which was the brainchild of three wildly different men brought together by their desire to speak for the dead: freewheeling ex-boxer turned forensic sculptor Frank Bender; FBI and U.S. Customs agent William Fleisher; and pre-eminent forensic psychologist and profiler Richard Walter. What began as an informal meeting of colleagues in 1990 evolved into an expansive international think tank of sorts modeled and named after France's famed criminal-turned-sleuth Eugene Vidocq, a model for Sherlock Holmes.
Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities
Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 5:30 PM
Prize-winning author, Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, and architecture critic Witold Rybczynski draws upon a lifetime of observing cities to craft an insightful book that is both an intellectual history and a provoking critique. In Makeshift Metropolis, he describes how current ideas about urban planning evolved from several movements: City Beautiful, Garden City, and the influences of both Frank Lloyd Wright and Jane Jacobs.
Anne Trubek, A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses
Wednesday, December 8, 2010, 5:30 PM
In A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses Anne Trubek takes a vexed, often funny, and always thoughtful tour of a number of house museums across the nation which have become meccas for the literary public. These include Ernest Hemingway's shrine in Key West, the home of the young Samuel Clemens in Hannibal, MO, homes for Hawthorne, Emerson adn Thoreau in Concord, MA and the many sites devoted to Edgar Allen Poe. Cited as an anti-travel guide, A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses explores places that have served as pilgrimage sites, tokens of local pride and color, and zones that make us think about the complexities of literary and historical interpretation.
