Treasure Palaces

August 22, 2016
This compilation of 23 articles originally written for the Authors on Museums series in the lifestyle magazine 1843 (formerly known as Intelligent Life) takes readers on an entertaining and idiosyncratic tour of obscure museums that have inspired and challenged famous authors throughout their lives. Julian Barnes, Alan Hollinghurst, Ann Patchett, Ali Smith, and others give thoughtful personal recollections of visiting eclectic galleries such as the Museum of Heartbreak, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and Paris’s Musée Rodin. Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Museum in London, notes in his foreword that “the most rewarding museum visit is one which involves communion between the viewer and a single object”; the authors’ essays reveal connections not only with art and artifacts but with other museum visitors. Roddy Doyle communes with American immigrants at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in N.Y.C.; Frank Cottrell Boyce examines shrunken heads at the Pitts River Museum in Oxford, England; Michael Morpurgo writes about the ghosts of WWI at the Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Belgium; and Claire Messud feels at home at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The collection takes an intimate look both at the writers and the museums themselves, providing deep insights into how artists connect with the world around them.

What makes a museum special?This lively collection brings together 23 short essays that were commissioned by the editors of Intelligent Life for their "Authors on Museums" series. As Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, notes in his foreword, these visits are a "form of pilgrimage." Most of the contributors are British, but editor Fergusson (Michael Morpurgo: War Child to War Horse, 2012, etc.) includes a couple Americans, like Ann Patchett, who chose Harvard's Museum of Natural History. It's "perhaps my favourite place, period. You can feel the science pressing in from every direction." Roddy Doyle visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City. The rooms looked like Jacob A. Riis photographs, and the author was mesmerized by the floral, "gorgeous" wallpaper and other design elements: "It is grand and it is also squalid." Allison Pearson recalls first seeing the sculptures in Paris' Musee Rodin, especially The Kiss, as a "weary" teenager from the Midlands: "Here was remarkable news. Dead people had felt these things; and the living went on feeling them." Children's author Jacqueline Wilson has a soft spot for Paris' Musee de la Poupee (dolls): "It's like stepping straight into a Victorian storybook." Matthew Sweet, a lifetime ABBA fan, delights in visiting their Stockholm Museum, while Julian Barnes travels into Finland's hinterlands to see Jean Sibelius' home, where "high art and practical living" are joined. A.D. Miller is drawn to Odessa's State Literary Museum, a "theatre of both art and suffering." Gogol, Chekhov, Bunin, Akhmatova, and Babel: "They all came to Odessa--all the classic Russian authors I have learned to revere." The most poignant piece is Rory Stewart's tale of his visit to Afghanistan's National Museum in Kabul, with "its empty galleries, its quiet displays and its loyal staff." Other contributors include Claire Messud, Alan Hollinghurst, and Aminatta Forna. These graceful, vicarious tours to museums famous and obscure are almost as good as the real thing. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 15, 2016

In this slim volume, 23 novelists and journalists recount their rambles through museums large and small, foreign and familiar. Commissioned by editor Fergusson and originator Tim de Lisle for the Economist's lifestyle magazine series "Authors on Museums," these accounts are less about the history and scholarly prestige of particular museums than why authors love, remember, and revisit them. The writers reflect upon a wide range of institutions and objects with humor and insight, including Julian Barnes on Ainola, composer Jean Sibelius's home-turned-museum; Margaret Drabble on the Museo dell'Opificio delle Pietre Dure; Don Paterson on the Frick Collection; Roddy Doyle on the Lower East Side Tenement Museum; Ann Patchett on the Harvard Museum of Natural History; and Matthew Sweet on ABBA: The Museum. VERDICT This absorbingly readable collection lets us peek over authors' shoulders into cabinets of curiosities around the world where exhibit cases become time machines and objects become stories. For museum lovers and skeptics alike.--Lindsay King, Yale Univ. Libs., New Haven, CT

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2016
Intelligent Life, a sister magazine of The Economist, launched a series, Authors on Museums, in 2008, inviting writers to revisit and reflect on a museum that evoked a powerful personal memory. Fergusson, who now edits the feature, has compiled this selection of 23 of its best pieces. Among the notable contributors are Ann Patchett, Neil Gaiman, Claire Messud, Julian Barnes, Roddy Doyle, and Margaret Drabble. Among the museums written about are large and famous institutions, including the Frick Collection, the Prado, and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, as well as such smaller ones as the Musee de la Poupee and the Musee Rodin in Paris and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York. Others defy categorization, like the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb and Stockholm's ABBA The Museum. One especially poignant account is Cool under Fire, in which Rory Stewart writes about the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. Armchair and would-be travelers will appreciate the addresses and web sites included with each essay, and anyone who appreciates fine writing will treasure this literary memory palace.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)