Art inSight Inc., Adventures in Art History

MORE FAN MAIL

"Just wanted to let you know how much fun your presentations are! I’ve learned so much and appreciate all the work that goes in."  (A. B., Austin)

"I look forward to these mornings - always especially appreciate your maps and historical notes on who lived where when, the overlaps of art, architecture and personal lives." (B. L., Beaverton OR)

"Art inSight greatly enhanced my educational and spiritual well being in my second half of life. Not only the education, but the camaraderie, is what I find nourishing." (M. S., Austin)

"She is elegantly informed and articulate.  I adore her."  (D. B., Austin)

"Thank you for refreshing us on the importance of where we have been."  (J. P., Austin)

"Your lecture series is one of the best and most fun things that I do.  I always look forward."  (K. S., Austin)

"Have really enjoyed being a part of the lectures.  This is the silver lining to COVID!!" (G. G., Houston)

"That [Judy Chicago's Dinner Party] was more interesting than I expected.  I always learn so much.  Thanks and looking forward to next year."  (K. Z., Austin)

"Outstanding Karen. Such research.  Stimulating."  (J. S., Austin)

"I want to return to Paris to visit each point of interest you labeled on your maps.  Thank you for all the research you include in your presentations."  (P. H., Decatur)

"Each time, I think this one is the best ever and my favorite and then, the next time you supersede the previous.  Brava, my friend."  (B. A., Austin)

"They say the secret to staying young is to pursue your passion for as long as you can.  You do that in spades!  Thank you for keeping us inspired with your detailed and upbeat lectures, trips and tips.  It was especially helpful this past year." (L. C., Austin)

"Thank you for the wonderful lectures that are helping all of us get through this time by focusing us on the beautiful in life. Thank God for art and for those who make it come alive for us."  (M. O., Austin)

"If I'd had a professor like her, I might have majored in Art History.  Her enthusiasm and "down to earth" manner are contagious."  (C. A., Fort Worth)

"Thank you for enriching 2015 for me.  The monthly lectures plus the three great trips as well as the most recent day trip--all great adventures in art, history, and beauty.  Hard to pick a favorite day or moment.  So many great memories!"
(AL, Wimberley)

"I have to say that you just get better and better.  The information is interesting, well presented and elicits an interest and hunger to see whatever you’re talking about." ( AL, Austin)

The trip was fabulous as always.  Never disappointed on a KP trip.  (KF, Austin)

Thank you for an amazing trip!!  I’m still trying to process all that wonder!!!   (KO, Austin)

Totally enjoyed today's program, so much good information and friendship.  (CM, Austin)

I want . . .to tell you how much I enjoyed your lifelong learning course.  It was a subject I thought I knew something about, but it turns out I knew almost nothing.  Until now!  (PP, Waco)

'Looking forward to another year of great presentations and engaging company.  (ND, Austin)

"Many thanks for all your time and effort planning these art trips.  They're truly a joy."  (EW, Austin)

"I’m suffering from Zoom fatigue and it was a pleasure to be able to watch this at leisure on my own schedule and even replay parts I wanted to hear again."  (JB, Austin)

John Berendt, The City of Falling Angels, 2005 [Venice the city, society, La Fenice fire and aftermath]

John Berger, The Success and Failure of Picasso, 1965

Isabel Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 1880

Ulrich Boser, The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft, 2009

T. C. Boyle, The Women, 2008 [in the life of Frank Lloyd Wright]

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847

(Discovered in time to read before seeing the Lewis Chessmen in Edinburgh, 2016)
Nancy Marie Brown, Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them, 2015
Nancy Marie Brown, The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman, 2008
Nancy Marie Brown, The Saga of Gudrid the Far-Traveler, 2015
Nancy Marie Brown, Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths, 2014

Bill Bryson, At Home, 2010

Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, 1995 (The Hinges of History, volume 1), 
Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Hinges series, volume 4)
Thomas Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages and the Beginning of the Modern World, 2006 (The Hinges of History, volume 5)
Thomas Cahill, Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World, 2013 (TH/H vol 6)

Charles Calhoun, Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life, 2004

Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark, 1915

Lynne Cheney, James Madison: A Life Reconsidered, 2014

William Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, 1868

Joan Breton Connelly, The Parthenon Enigma, 2014 (reinterpretation of famed Parthenon Frieze)

Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, Friends . . . .
Cathy Davidson, 36 Views of Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan, 2006

Deborah Davis, Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X (2004)

Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, 2014

Edward Dolnick, The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone, 2021

Charles Dunn, Everyday Life in Traditional Japan, 2008

Natalie Dykstra, Clover Adams A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, 2012

Robert Edsel, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, 2010

Cliff Edwards, Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest, 2002

Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, 1998

Bruce Feiler, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths, 2005
Bruce Feiler, Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan, 2004
Bruce Feiler, Looking for Class, 1993 [investigates the enduring mystique of Oxford and Cambridge]

Gustave Flaubert, A Sentimental Education, 1869

Carol Flinders, Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics, 1993
[Clare of Assisi, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux]

Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art, 2019

Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 1998
Gillian Gill, Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale, 2005

Katherine Govier, The Printmaker's Daughter, 2010  [reconstructs the life of Hokusai]

Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, 2011

Gloria Groom, et al.  Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, 2012

S. G. Gwynn, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, 2010

Stephen Harrigan, Remember Ben Clayton, 2012

Lucinda Hawksley, Lizzie Siddal: the Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, 2009

Erica Hirshler, Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting, 2009 [Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, MFA Boston]
Erica Hirshler, William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master, 2016

Christopher Hitchens, Mortality, 2012
Christopher Hitchens, The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification (Updated), 2008
Christopher Hitchens, Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles, 1988

Nancy Horan, Under the Wide and Starry Sky: A Novel, 2014 [the life of Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife]

Hugh Howard, The Painter's Chair, 2009 [George Washington and his portraitists]

Robert Hughes, The Epic History of Art in America, 1997 [+ 6-part documentary]

Henry James, Daisy Miller, 1878

Kathleen Jones, Christina Rossetti: Learning Not to Be First, 2011

Jill Jonnes, Eiffel's Tower, and the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count, 2010

Thomas Kasulis, Shinto: The Way Home, 2004

Ross King, Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism, 2006
Ross King, Leonardo and the Last Supper, 2013 --  good preparation for 2018 Milan study tour
Ross King, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, 2003
Ross King, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies, 2016
Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, 2000

Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape, 2009

Min Jim Lee, Pachinko, 2017

Eunice Lipton, Looking into Degas: Unesasy Images of Women and Modern Life, 1986

Laurie Lisle, Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, 1980
Laurie Lisle, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life, 1990

Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysanthème, 1887 [A French officer experiencing Japanese life]

Albert Lubin, Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent Van Gogh, 1996

Neil MacGregor, Germany: Memories of a Nation, 2014

Fiona MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones, 2011

Rory MacLean, Berlin: Portrait of a City through the Centuries, 2014

Fiona Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age, 2001

Debra Mancoff, Fashion in Impressionist Paris, 2012
Debra Mancoff, Jane Morris, The Pre-Raphaelite Model of Beauty, 2000

Megan Marshall, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, 2013

David McCullough, The Great Bridge, 1972 [Exhaustive, fascinating story of the Brooklyn Bridge]
David McCullough, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, 2011
David McCullough, 1776, 2005
David McCullough, John Adams, 2008

John McKinstry and Harold Kerbo, Japanese Society and History, 2010

Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, 1956
Yukio Mishima, The Sound of Waves, 1994

Frederic Morton, A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889, 1979

Franny Moyle, Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites, 2011

Susan Nagel, Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin, 2005

Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander, 1969

Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea, 1904

Robin Oliveira, I've Always Loved You: A Novel, 2014 [Cassatt and Degas]

Lucy Paquette, The Hammock: A Novel Based on the True Story of French Painter James Tissot, 2012

Ellis Peters, The Cadfael Chronicles, Chronicle #1: A Morbid Taste for Bones, 2014
                                                   Chronicle #2: One Corpse Too Many, 2014
                                                   Chronicle #3: Monk's Hood, 1980

                  (Fun background reading for the 2019 Art inSight study tour to Wales)

Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture, 1964 [what architeture owes the viewer]

P.J.A.N. Rietbergen, A Short History of the Netherlands From PreHistory to the Present Day, 6th edition 2004

Virginia Rounding, Grandes Horizontales: the Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans, 2003

Witold Rybczynski, Now I Sit Me Down, 2016 [history of chairs]

Aline Saarinen, The Proud Possessors, 1958

Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, 2010

Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, 1997

Stacey Schiff, The Revolutionary Samuel Adams, 2022

Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818
Sir Walter Scott, The Talisman, 1825
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, 1820

Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City, 2013 (prep for Amsterdam study tour, Fall 2018)
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony 
                      That Shaped America, 2005 (prep for Hudson River study tour, Spring 2018)

Sebastian Smee, The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art, 2016

Dominic Smith, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos: A Novel, 2016
Dominic Smith, The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre: A Novel, 2007

Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love, 2000

Peter Stark, Astoria: Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier, 2015

Robert Sullivan, My American Revolution: A Modern Expedition through History's Forgotten Battlegrounds, 2013 [organized by all the sites visible from the Empire State Building]

Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters, 1948 [fortunes of a declining family of sisters in Japan c.1941]

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, 2014

Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow, 2016

Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life, 1997

Dawn Tripp, Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe, 2016

Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, 1875

Harlow Unger, Lafayette, 2003

Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr Tiffany, 2011
Susan Vreeland, The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 2007 [Renoir’s painting]
Susan Vreeland, The Passion of Artemisia, 2001 [Artemisia Gentileschi]

Edmund de Waal,  The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, 2010
     [alternate title: The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss]
Edmund de Waal, The White Road: Journey into an Obsession, 2015 [deWaal's obsession with porcelain's history]
Edmund de Waal, Letters to Camondo, 2021

Dennis Washburn, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon [1002], addressing the historic translation by Arthur Waley [1928], 2011

Heather Webb, Rodin's Lover, 2015 [Camille Claudel]

A. N. Wilson, Victoria: A Life (2014) 

Andrea Wulf, Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation, 2012

Emile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise, 1873 (translations may vary) see  PBS Masterpiece series, "The Paradise"
Emile Zola, The Masterpiece, 1886 (Zola's assessment of Impressionism and plein-air painting)