Top Ten Tuesdays- Recommendations for Art Lovers

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme created by The Broke and the Bookish blog.

I’m so excited TTT is back from their hiatus!

This week’s topic is: Ten Recommendations for ____. I’ve chosen to list some recommendations for art lovers.

 

1. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

This classic children’s book is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. Konigsburg’s story of two siblings who runaway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is as captivating today as it was at its first publication. After all, what kid hasn’t imagined themselves hiding out in a museum after reading this gem?

 

2. Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him by Danielle Ganek

The contemporary New York art scene comes to life in this novel about a gallery receptionist, and an artist who gains international fame after his untimely death the night of his first opening. The painting titled “Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him,” sparks a frenzy of interest in the art world, as a host of wacky characters vie for the chance to own it.

 

3. If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend by Alison Pace

Despite its unfortunate title, If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend is a fun and charming contemporary read. It’s a novel full of life, love, art, and travel, as a gallery manager accompanies an artist on his months-long international art fair tour.

 

4. The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft by Ulrich Boser 

I so wish this book was a work of fiction. Instead, it is a masterfully researched account of the 1990 heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boser writes engagingly about the theft, the on-going investigation, and the fascinating history of the museum itself.

 

5. The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier 

Tracy Chevalier’s famous novel imagines a background story to Vermeer’s luminous painting. Her descriptive writing vividly brings to life seventeenth-century Delft.

 

6. The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro

This novel combines the fictional story of a struggling artist with the real-life Gardner art theft. Shapiro has crafted a dramatic story peppered with descriptive art world details.

 

 

 

7. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Set in the NYC art world, An Object of Beauty explores themes of modern urban life- wealth, desire, ambition, social status, and relationships. Steve Martin is a passionate and knowledgeable collector of modern and contemporary art-a fact that shines through his novel.

 

8.  The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson

This is an entertaining explanation of the (often crazy) economics of the contemporary art world.

 

9. The Muse by Jessie Burton

The Muse is a captivating novel about a mysterious painting, set in both 1930’s Spain and 1960’s London. It’s a story about art, identity, friendship, obsession, and loss. Burton’s prose is beautiful and transportive.

 

10. Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo

Provenance is non fiction that reads like a thriller. Art crime is a fascinating topic and this story of forgery makes for riveting reading.

 

 

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