by I finished a great book last night, The Art Forger. The author, B.A. Shapiro, based her literary art-thrilled on the infamous Isabella Steward Gardner Museum heist of 1990.
As I’ve posted many, many times before, I graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, aka the Museum School, which is diagonally across the street from the Gardner Museum. I visited the Gardner a kabillion times, it’s a wonderfully eccentric place, but mostly I went to visit their Vermeer (The Concert) which sat on top of a desk instead of being hung on a wall. You were able to sit down right down in front of the painting, which sat just inches away, and look at it at eye-level. Incredible. Sadly, that was one of the paintings stolen.
That aside, it was really fun to read a book based on that place, and that heist, and where the Museum School makes several appearances. Honestly though, I wouldn’t be posting about it at all if it wasn’t such a page turner! In addition to this great mystery/thriller, Shaprio weaves in great information about art and historical art forgers, which was utterly fascinating. I got into the subject of art forgery when some friends of mine wrote a book about modern art forgers, called Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art. I love books where you also learn something, in an entertaining, seamless way.
I worked the polls yesterday, for 16 hours straight. It’s amazing who you meet. This was at my poll site at PS3. In this picture are at least two well-known people!!
