Join Meri for a visit to the Boston Athenaeum. Optional lunch after the tour at the Carrie Nation Restaurant. The cost of the tour is $5.00.
Please register by February 24.
Founded in 1807, the Boston Athenæum is one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries and cultural institutions in the United States.
The Athenæum has a public gallery; a significant rare books collection; an art collection of 100,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and decorative arts; and one of the world's most important collections of primary materials on the American Civil War. Special treasures include the largest portion of President George Washington's library from Mount Vernon; Houdon busts of Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Lafayette once owned by Thomas Jefferson; a first edition copy of Audubon's "Birds of America;" a 1799 set of Goya's "Los caprichos;" portraits by Gilbert Stuart, Chester Harding, and John Singer Sargent; and one of the most extensive collections of contemporary artists' books in the United States. The Boston Athenæum is also known for the many prominent writers, scholars, and politicians who have been members, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., John Quincy Adams, Margaret Fuller, Francis Parkman, Amy Lowell, John F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy, to name just a few.
