Museum Reads: An Art Themed Book Group

Join us for the last meeting in 2021 of Museum Reads, the Newport Art Museum’s Art-Themed book group for adults.

NOTE: This month Museum Reads will meet on WEDNESDAY, November 17!

This book is a wonderful introduction to this great artist. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, daughter of an artist, studied the masterworks of Rubens, Rembrandt and Van Dyck. While studying at France’s Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, she made her way painting portraits, to include Marie Antoinette. Her detailed memoir recounts her travels as an independent woman and artist, with lively tales of meeting Catherine the Great, the hazards of painting sessions with live eagles and her sharp observations of daily life in post-revolutionary France and pre-revolutionary Russia.

Book group this month will meet in person at the Museum and virtually on Zoom. 

Be sure to register to receive the Zoom link.

We are pleased that Rebecca Kelly will be joining the conversation in person to discuss the life of Vigée Le Brun.

Rebecca Kelly is an art historian with a dress and textile specialty. She is currently an instructor at The Rhode Island School of Design and previously worked as a conservator holding positions at The Preservation Society of Newport County and the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She continues to work as a consultant assisting numerous organizations and private clients with the interpretation of collections and the installation of textile exhibitions. Her research interests include the production and consumption of fashion luxury goods and how fashion and textiles are represented in visual culture. She has a long-held interest in the work of Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and will share her insights into her life, work, and connections to the fashion trade.