Learning to Look - Softcover

John Wyndham Pope-Hennessy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0434326852 ISBN 13: 9780434326853

Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd, 1992

Synopsis

Describing how he educated himself and subsequently became the art-historian who changed our view of the Italian Renaissance, Sir John Pope Hennessy also takes this opportunity to deliver a broadside at present day British "philistinism" and Sir Roy Strong's tenure at the V & A.

About this title

From Library Journal

The distinguished art historian has recorded his memoirs of a charmed life hobnobbing with this century's most culturally elite. Born to a privileged British family, he became a specialist in Italian Renaissance art and sculpture, notably Sienese quattrocento art. His scholarly publications and lectures earned him prestigious faculty positions that led to directorships at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum and later as Consultative Chairman of the European Paintings Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His biography contains a firsthand account of museum administration including a peek into the basements, boardrooms, and offices of these mysterious institutions. At 77, Pope-Hennessy now resides in Florence. Not one to mince words, he offers a narrative ranging from rather terse comments to highly amusing anecdotes. Recommended for special, academic, and large public collections.
- Joan Levin, Indian Trails P.L., Wheeling, Ill.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

In this cultivated, extroverted yet dry autobiography, art historian Pope-Hennessy espouses his passions for Italian sculpture, Elizabethan miniatures, Raphael, bronzes and Picasso. An Oxford graduate in history, he is largely self-taught in art criticism. How this distinguished colleague of Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark honed his analytical skills and rose to eminent positions at the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art should make for a fascinating story, but this genteel self-portrait does not live up to its title. Son of a formidable, dynamic mother and a soldier father who painted watercolors, Pope-Hennessy offers sporadic, tantalizing glimpses of such notables as Margaret Thatcher and connoisseur/spy Anthony Blunt.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0434326852
• ISBN 13: 9780434326853
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 85