Magician of the modern : Chick Austin and the transformation of the arts in America
/ Eugene R. Gaddis
- 1st ed.
- New York : Alfred Knopf, 2000
- 494 p. : illus. ; 25 cm
Index included
Includes bibliographical references (p. [435]-472) and index.
The story of Chick Austin is the story, in Virgil Thomson's words, of "a whole cultural movement in one man." Becoming director of Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum at the age of twenty-six, Austin immediately set about to introduce modern art to America and to transform this conservative insurance capital into a cultural mecca that would become the talk of the art world during the yeasty years between the two world wars.