Art, Money, and Celebrity: Portraits as Cultural Currency
@ The Richard H. Driehaus Museum
40 E Erie St, Chicago, IL 60611
Opening Thursday, November 1st, from 6PM - 7:30PM
Join Beauty’s Legacy Curator, Barbara Gallati, for her illuminating talk, which highlights a series of important portrait exhibitions that took place in New York in the 1890s, sparking a trend taken up in other American cities, including Chicago and Boston. Organized by members of the social elite for charitable purposes, the exhibitions featured hundreds of society portraits the cumulative impact of which created a platform not only for the spectacular display of personal grandeur, but also (because the exhibitions benefited charities) functioned as a defensive ploy on the part of the wealthy whose opulent lifestyles were harshly criticized in a time of economic and social strife. Perhaps most important was that the selection of paintings revealed an inherent belief in personal and cultural legacy by depicting members of successive generations of families who figured in the development of the United States as a commercial and cultural power.
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Tags: Art Money and Celebrity: Portraits as Cultural Currency, Barbara Dayer Gallati, Barbara Gallati, Chicago, Illinois, Near North Side, The Richard H. Driehaus Museum
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