Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Gertrude: The Life and Times of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

Gertrude: The Life and Times of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

Donovan, Fiona

Hardcover

ArtistsBiographies GeneralHistorical Figures

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 037460276X
ISBN13: 9780374602765
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages: 688
Weight: 1.00
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.12 Depth: 9.12
Language: English

A fascinating biography of the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the founder of the Whitney Museum of Art, a rebellious woman who remade the art world in her image.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942) spent her life rebelling against the circumscribed roles society dictated for her. Tall and stylish, with modish cropped brown curls and a distinguished face, and arresting in lifestyle and demeanor--whether dressed in the latest fashions from Paris or her studio smock--Whitney understood from an early age the significance of power and stature. She ached to overcome the strictures of her sex and the regimented life imposed by her ultra-wealthy family and the societal conventions of the Gilded Age.

Whitney is perhaps best known today as the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, though her achievements as a sculptor are striking. She championed American art during an era in which Europe was considered the aesthetic mother lode; she had her portrait painted in pants against her husband's wishes, and when he refused to have it in their home, she hung it in her studio; she traveled alone across Spain; she founded her own museum when the Metropolitan Museum of Art would not display the work she offered.

Gertrude is an engrossing biography with the pacing and intrigue of a novel. In it, Fiona Donovan offers a portrait of an artist and a patron, a fascinating, wholly original woman whose artistic work, generosity, and championing of the talents of other artists reshaped the arts in America for years to come.

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