A masterful and superbly researched biography of a figure central to the development of American art and culture in the period from 1880 to 1940. Very progressive in her politics, Maud Howe Elliott was a popular author who appears to have known nearly everybody from Isabella Stewart Gardner to John La Farge and Albert Pinkham Ryder. This is a vital book for anybody interested in the arts in America.
Nancy Whipple Grinnell
Nancy Whipple Grinnell is Curator Emerita at the Newport Art Museum, where she served for 18 years. During that time she produced over 200 exhibitions, expanded the permanent collection by 800 works, oversaw accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums, established endowments for conservation and acquisitions and organized the Archives dating back to 1912. She also wrote a biography of the Museum’s founder, Carrying the Torch: Maud Howe Elliott and the American Renaissance, and authored numerous Museum catalogues and brochures.
Previously Grinnell was librarian and curator for the Weyerhaeuser collection of American and other art at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She assisted the late Robert C. Vose, Jr. in compiling his manuscript for Tales of an Art Dealer, published in 2012.
Grinnell holds an undergraduate degree in art history from the University of Pittsburgh, an MLS from Simmons College, has taken courses from the Harvard Extension Museum Studies Program in conservation and museum administration, and in 2004 received an MA in American Civilization/Museum Studies from Brown University. In 2010 Grinnell updated her archival skills in the University of Rhode Island’s graduate archives course and has nearly completed a certification in Appraisal Studies from NYU.
