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• Lunch with William Middleton, "Double Vision"

  • When
    27 Mar 2019
  •  
    12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
  • Location
    UM Newman Alumni Center, 6200 San Amaro Dr., Coral Gables, FL 33146
  • Spaces left
    103

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  Double Vision: The Unerring Eye of Art World Avatars Dominique and John de Menil

  The first and definitive biography of the celebrated collectors Dominique and John de Menil, who became one of the greatest cultural forces of the twentieth century through groundbreaking exhibits of art, artistic scholarship, the creation of innovative galleries and museums, and work with civil rights.
  
  Dominique and John de Menil created an oasis of culture in their Philip Johnson-designed house with everyone from Marlene Dietrich and René Magritte to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. In Houston, they built the Menil Collection, the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, the Cy Twombly Gallery, and underwrote the Contemporary Arts Museum.

  Now, with unprecedented access to family archives, William Middleton has written a sweeping biography of this unique couple. From their ancestors in Normandy and Alsace, to their own early years in France, and their travels in South America before settling in Houston. We see them introduced to the artists in Europe and America whose works they would collect, and we see how, by the 1960s, their collection had grown to include 17,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, rare books, and decorative objects.

  And here is, as well, a vivid behind-the-scenes look at the art world of the twentieth century and the enormous influence the de Menils wielded through what they collected and built and through the causes they believed in.

  
  

  WILLIAM MIDDLETON is a journalist and editor who has worked in New York and Paris. He has been the Fashion Features Director for Harper’s Bazaar and the Paris Bureau Chief for Fairchild Publications, overseeing W Magazine and Women’s Wear Daily. He has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, House & Garden, Esquire, Texas Monthly, Travel & Leisure, Departures, and the International Herald Tribune. 

   
  

  Photo credit:Tim Walker  
  
  Publisher: Knopf  
  

  LUNCHEON DATE: Wednesday, March 27, 2019.
  

  DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION: Friday, March 22, 2019.

  
  

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• Lunch with Andrew S. Curran, "Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely"

  • When
    25 Apr 2019
  •  
    12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
  • Location
    UM Newman Alumni Center, 6200 San Amaro Dr., Coral Gables, FL 33146
  • Spaces left
    156

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  Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

  A spirited biography of the prophetic and sympathetic philosopher who helped build the foundations of the modern world.

  Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world’s first comprehensive Encyclopédie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity—for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century’s accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot’s most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire.

  In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot’s tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer’s personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.

  
  

  Andrew S. Curran is the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University. The author of two previous books, Sublime Disorder: Physical Monstrosity in Diderot’s Universe and The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment, Curran is a Fellow in the history of medicine at the New York Academy of Medicine and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.
  

   
  

  Photo credit: Olivia Drake  
  
  Publisher: Other Press  

  DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION: Monday, April 22, 2019.

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