A Place for the Arts: The Macdowell Colony, 1907-2007

by Wiseman, Carter

• ISBN13: 9781584656098
• ISBN10: 1584656093
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-31
• Publisher: Univ Pr of New England

Summary

The MacDowell Colony has nurtured some of the nation's most influential talents in the creative arts, from Edward Arlington Robinson and Thornton Wilder to Leonard Bernstein, Milton Avery, and Alice Walker. Founded in 1907 in Peterborough, New Hampshire, by the pioneering composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, Marian, the MacDowell Colony soon became a catalytic element in American culture. Based on the radically simple idea that creative people work best when they have time, space, privacy, and the opportunity to interact with fellow artists, the Colony has for the past century provided individual studios as well as living accommodations to thousands of writers, visual artists, composers, filmmakers, architects, and interdisciplinary artists who have gone on to chart the course of the nation's artistic life. Richly illustrated with original and vintage photographs, this volume includes a colorful history of the Colony, as well as insightful essays by leading cultural commentators Vartan Gregorian and Robert MacNeil. In addition, it contains pieces by former MacDowell Fellows--Pulitzer Prize-winners Michael Chabon, Paul Moravec, and the late Wendy Wasserstein--on what it means to make art in America. A Place for the Arts documents what this country and the rest of the world continue to gain from the unique support MacDowell provides to the creative process. The book also includes contributions by Joan Acocella, Peter Cameron, Carol Diehl, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Robin Rausch, Ruth Reichl, Jean Valentine, Jacqueline Woodson, and Kevin Young.

Author Biography

CARTER WISEMAN is President of the MacDowell Colony and teaches at the Yale School of Architecture. He was the architectural critic at New York magazine for sixteen years, and he has written on architecture and design for Newsweek, Architectural Record, Interior Design, ARTnews, and American Heritage, among other publications. He is the author of I. M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture (2001) and Twentieth-Century American Architecture: The Buildings and Their Makers (2000). Mr. Wiseman was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. 10
Introduction
A Catalyst for Creativity	p. 16
The Fellows' MacDowell
Landscape of the Imagination	p. 24
Time Out	p. 30
Youngblood	p. 36
Pure Communion	p. 43
A Partnership in Art
The MacDowells and Their Legacy	p. 50
The Making of Art
On Fire, and Not	p. 136
Peace and Buzz	p. 144
Reunion	p. 152
Marks of Distinction
The Edward MacDowell Medal	p. 160
Edward Weeks on Thornton Wilder
Meyer Schapiro on Alexander Calder
John Canaday on Louise Nevelson
John Leonard on Norman Mailer
John Hersey on Lillian Hellman
Elizabeth Hardwick on Mary McCarthy
John Szarkowski on Lee Friedlander
Ned Rorem on Leonard Bernstein
J. Carter Brown on I. M. Pei
William Styron on Philip Roth
Meredith Monk on Merce Cunningham
Richard Serra on Steve Reich
A Common Good
Art and Freedom	p. 178
The Permanence of Creativity
Extended Ownership	p. 204
The Ghosts That Provoke	p. 210
Passing It On	p. 216
Postscript: The Place I Have Been	p. 223
Acknowledgments	p. 224
About the Contributors	p. 226
Index	p. 228
Photograph Credits	p. 239
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