“The Hare with the Amber Eyes”

Welcome to Museum Reads, the Newport Art Museum’s Art-Themed book group for adults! Are you looking to learn more about art and artists, or enjoy digging into some of the issues present in our current exhibitions? Then this friendly discussion group is for you. We meet monthly on the third Thursday at 12 noon, in person and virtually. Join us virtually from the office for an invigorating lunch break, or enjoy an hour of inspiration during a wee one’s nap time, or find us in the gallery for in-person conversation.

The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal

It is the biography of a collection and the biography of my family. It is the story of the ascent and decline of a Jewish dynasty, about loss and diaspora and about the survival of objects. The collection is of 264 Japanese netsuke. It is the common thread for the story of its three Jewish owners and the three rooms in which it was kept over a period of a hundred and forty years.

Museum Reads is free for Members, and $5 for yet-to-be Members.  

Be sure to register online to receive email updates and Zoom links.
For last minute registrations, please call the front desk for the Zoom link at 401-848-8200.

Edmund De Waal was born in Nottingham, England. He apprenticed with the renowned potter Geoffrey Whiting from 1981 to 1983, an experience that catalyzed his interest in bridging Chinese and Japanese ceramic traditions with medieval English techniques. De Waal went on to receive a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge in 1986, followed in 1991 by a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation scholarship, which he used to obtain a postgraduate diploma in Japanese language from the University of Sheffield and to study at the Mejiro Ceramics studio in Tokyo. While in Japan he began writing a monograph on Bernard Leach, the “father” of British studio pottery.