Description
Welcome to the Boston Athenum and the exhibition Lafayette: An American Icon.
This exhibition has been organized by the Boston Athenum and curated by Dr. David Dearinger, the Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings & Sculptures and Director of Exhibitions at the Athenum. The exhibition comprises over seventy paintings, sculptures, works-on-paper, manuscripts, and artifacts. A comprehensive checklist of the exhibitions contents can be found in the exhibition catalog which is available for purchase at the Circulation Desk near the entrance to the exhibition gallery.
Eleven of the objects in the exhibition are from the Athenums own collection; the rest have been brought together here from other museums and libraries including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville Arkansas, Cornell University, and Lafayette College in Easton Pennsylvania. The exhibition remains open through September 27.
Born in 1757 into the aristocracy of France, Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette dreamed of achieving glory and of becoming a hero of chivalric proportions. An unwavering optimism eventually joined with a faith in human rights to serve the young Marquiss plans well. By the time he was twenty years old, Lafayette was on his way to becoming one of the most famous Europeans of his day.
Beginning in 1777, when he came to America to volunteer to fight with the Americans in their rebellion against the British, he enthralled his countrymen and earned the adoration of his new friends in the New World. Within a year, George Washington thought of Lafayette as an adopted son, Lafayette considered himself to be a citizen of two worlds, and Americans were beginning to refer to him as Our Marquis. Lafayettes fame was assured when he went back to France in 1779 to plead the American cause and subsequently returned to these shores with the French governments promise of support. This alliance turned the tide of the American Revolution.
This exhibition, which is inspired by the recent reconstruction of the Hermione, the ship that brought Lafayette back to America in 1780, celebrates Lafayettes role in the founding of this country. It focuses on portraits of Lafayette and illustrations of the events that brought him closest to this country and its citizens.
Among these, are the American Revolutionary battles of Brandywine and Yorktown and the winter that the American forces spent at Valley Forge; Lafayettes relationship with Washington and his family as exemplified by the Marquiss visits to Mount Vernon; and Lafayettes triumphant farewell tour of the United States made on the occasion of the nations 50th anniversary. As is the case with all heroesand as will be seen in these galleriesLafayettes ideals and the events of his life provided artists on both sides of the Atlantic with the narrative and iconographic material that they needed to make great art. Thus they could frame Lafayettes ideals as worthy of emulation and his life as a reliable source of inspiration.
Before you enter the galleries, we would like to thank you for visiting the Boston Athenum and Lafayette: An American Icon today.
Membership in the Athenum is open to everyone. For more information, including details about the many benefits of membership, please inquire at the Circulation Desk, which is near the entrance to the galleries, or visit our Membership Office which is located here on the first floor.
In any case, we hope you will return to the Athenum, visit the exhibition again, and tell your friends and colleagues about what you have seen and experienced here today.
On behalf of the members and staff of the Boston Athenum, thank you!