Acquired Tastes

This book celebrates the 200th anniversary of the historic Boston Athen¾um, one of this country's earliest and most prestigious repositories of books, paintings, sculpture, engravings, maps, photographs, manuscripts, decorative arts, and other artifacts of history and design. Acquired Tastes is the first in-depth, scholarly study of the Boston Athen¾um's collections and the manner in which they were gathered from the early nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. These topics are expanded and brought into sharper focus in fully-illustrated catalogue entries on a wide variety of objects that represent the breadth of the Athen¾um's holdings.

From its founding in 1807, the Boston Athen¾um's primary mission has been to provide collections that stimulate study, discussion, and debate on all topics of interest to the enquiring mind. In the Enlightenment of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuriesÑthe historic period that saw the founding of the Boston Athen¾um and similar organizationsÑit was believed that intellectual endeavors more easily germinated and thrived in an atmosphere that was spacious, comfortable, quiet, and aesthetically pleasing. Here, books and manuscripts could be preserved, logically organized, and made accessible, and utilitarian objects could be logically grouped with didactic ones for comparison and discussion. In this setting, too, fine examples of paintings, sculpture, drawings, and engravings fulfilled their traditional purposes of education and inspiration andÑtogether with those from the world of scienceÑstimulated imaginations, im proved morals, and refined aesthetic tastes. Celebrate the Boston Athen¾um's 2007 bi-centennial with this lavish tribute, published in conjunction with one of the most ambitious Athen¾um exhibitions ever mounted.