Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

Christine Coulson presents METROPOLITAN STORIES : A NOVEL in conversation with Thomas Michie at Boston Public Library

November 21, 2019 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

Free

From a writer who worked at the Metropolitan Museum for more than twenty-five years, an enchanting novel that shows us the Met that the public doesn’t see.

Hidden behind the Picassos and Vermeers, the Temple of Dendur and the American Wing, exists another world: the hallways and offices, conservation studios, storerooms, and cafeteria that are home to the museum’s devoted and peculiar staff of 2,200 people–along with a few ghosts. A surreal love letter to this private side of the Met, Metropolitan Stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant vignettes in which we discover larger-than-life characters, the downside of survival, and the powerful voices of the art itself. The result is a novel bursting with magic, humor, and energetic detail, but also a beautiful book about introspection, an ode to lives lived for art, ultimately building a powerful collage of human experience and the world of the imagination.

Christine Coulson began her career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1991 as an intern in the European Paintings Department. In the 25 years since then, Coulson has risen through the ranks of The Met and has held several positions, including roles in the Development Office, the Director’s Office and the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. In April 2019, she left the Met to write full-time.

Thomas Michie is the Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.

Details

Date:
November 21, 2019
Time:
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Cost:
Free
Event Category:
Event Tags:
,
Website:
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/5d4c42245e6da73a0046aa70

Organizer

Boston Public Library
Phone:
6175365400
Email:
ask@bpl.org
Website:
www.bpl.org

Venue

Commonwealth Salon, Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square
700 Boylston St
Boston, MA 02116 United States
+ Google Map
Phone:
617-536-5400
Website:
http://www.bpl.org/

Did You Know?

Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.