Long before the establishment of Boston’s public art museums, Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, was a major attraction for visitors and a pleasure ground shaping artistic taste. Its picturesque landscape, ornamented with tasteful works of commemorative art, was designed to provide solace to the bereaved and inspiration to the living. In the era before the founding of Boston’s public art museums, Mount Auburn, founded in 1831, offered one of the few venues where the public could see the work of European as well as the first generation of American sculptors and monument carvers. Mount Auburn was a virtual outdoor museum—an interwoven tapestry of art and nature—featuring memorials by artists such as Thomas Crawford, Stanford White, and Edmonia Lewis.

Please register here In collaboration with the Cary Library.

Thanks to the Friends of the Bedford Free Public Library.

RECORDING NOTE: This program will be recorded.  All registrants will receive the recording via email within 48 hours of the program.

About our speaker:

Meg L. Winslow is Curator of Historical Collections & Archives at Mount Auburn Cemetery where for 30 years, she has been responsible for developing and overseeing the Cemetery’s permanent collections including more than 3,500 linear feet of archives, and significant artistic monuments on the grounds. Meg is co-author with Melissa Banta of The Art of Commemoration and America’s First Rural Cemetery, Mount Auburn’s Significant Monument Collection, in its third printing. She currently serves on the Sculpture Committee for the Friends of the Boston Public Garden. And, at Mount Auburn, has a deep love of the connection between art and nature.