Taste of the Month

The culmination of the Boston Athenæum’s Bicentennial in 2007 was the large retrospective exhibition entitled Acquired Tastes: 200 Years of Collecting for the Boston Athenæum.The exhibition emphasized the extensive and diverse collections that were carefully formed by the Athenæum during its first two centuries. The comprehensive nature of the exhibition, which included maps, prints, photographs, manuscripts, and examples of  the decorative arts, required that most the Library's first floor be temporarily converted into exhibition space. "The Taste of the Month" is a new feature of the Athenæum's website that will give readers an opportunity to review some of the items that were in the exhibition and are recorded in its catalogue. These objects have been chosen to represent some of the best and, sometimes, most unusual items that together make the Athenæum a special place. 

Egyptian Decorative Shrine Hanging	Golden Age	Demosthenes and Sophocles	Venus de' Medici	A View of Part of the Town of Boston
Letter Pouch and Chalice Veil, Italian	Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis, cum calendario, Books of Hours	The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian	Liber chronicarum, Nuremberg, 1493	The Bloody Massacre
Cloisonné, Chinese, Qianlong Era	Judith with the Head of Holofernes, n.d.	Apollo Belvedere	Boston, 1828	Historic Weapons, Lawrence Collection
Primus Liber [Septum librorum] Viginti missarum, 1532	Giovanni Paolo Panini, "Interior of St. Peter's, Rome," 1756-1757	Busts of Franklin and Lafayette by Jean-Antoine Houdon	View of the Town of Gloucester, Mass., 1835-1836, by Fitz Henry Lane	Armed Lodestone, European, mid-18th century
Iniunccions Geven by the Moste Excellent Prince, Edward the Sixte and Tractatio de sacramento eucharistiae	Francis William Pitt Greenwood, 1840	John Adams, 1788	John Adams, 1818, by John B. Binon	Medal of Simon Bolivar, 1825.
Bible. Old Testament. Pslams. Hebrew. [Psalter]	John Adams, ca. 1815, by Gilbert Stuart	Venus Victrix and The Judgment of Paris, Horatio Greenough	Dorothea Lynde Dix, 1845