Tuesday lecture with Natalie Dykstra
Summer Lecture Series
July 9, 2024
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner (2024) illuminates the fascinating story behind one of our nation’s cultural treasures. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum rose from Boston’s Back Bay Fens at the turn of the twentieth century, housing a vast and meticulously selected collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture, decorative arts, and rare books. The museum’s eponymous founder, referred to as “one of the seven wonders of Boston” by a local reporter, emerges in Natalie Dykstra’s award-winning memoir as a complex and singular woman. The story chronicles Gardner’s glittering, bohemian friendships with creative luminaries, awe-inspiring world travels, and ever-expanding collection of beautiful things acquired with a keen eye and competitive pace. Ultimately, Chasing Beauty is a tale of beauty and loss, grit and American self-invention.
Chasing Beauty was supported by a 2018 Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a 2018 Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship.
The Mount’s general COVID-19 Health and Safety Guidelines can be found here.
The Mount is a Massachusetts Cultural Council UP designated organization welcoming participants of all disabilities. Please contact The Mount at 413-551-5100 or by email, info@edithwharton.org, to discuss accommodations needed to participate fully in this event.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Sheila Parekh Blum
Linda Frawley
Naomi Gordon
Kate Wharton
- Sales for all lectures will open for Mount Members on Friday, May 10, and to the general public on Wednesday, May 15. Prices are $25 (Mount Members) and $30 (General Admission). All lectures and panel discussions are free for graduate and undergraduate students, and children under 18. Check back to book online!
- All lectures will take place in an outdoor, open-sided tent. We look forward to seeing you rain or shine.
- Books are available for purchase through The Mount's Bookstore before and during the event.
Natalie Dykstra grew up in the Midwest, first near the shores of Lake Michigan, then in a suburb west of Chicago. She received her undergraduate degree in Classics and graduate degrees in American Studies at the University of Wyoming and the University of Kansas. Dykstra won a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her work on Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life (2012) and grants from the Schlesinger Library and the Massachusetts Historical Society, where she was elected an honorary Fellow in 2011. She received a 2018 Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner (2024), recently published by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. This work also has been supported by the inaugural 2018 Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship. Since 2020, she has served as a board member of Biographers International Organization and, in 2023, co-founded their one-day online conference Biography Lab. Dykstra is an emerita professor of English and senior research professor at Hope College, where she taught writing, literature, and the arts for twenty years. She lives with her husband in Waltham, Massachusetts.
“Thoroughly researched… the author captures the sweep and energy of [Gardner’s] life… A richly detailed biographical portrait.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“An elegant depiction of a larger-than-life trailblazer.”
— Publishers Weekly
“An exquisitely detailed and perceptive biography.”
— New York Times Book Review
“A sympathetic, impeccably researched biography.”
— Wall Street Journal