Artful Readers Book Club

Join fellow art and book lovers for casual, engaging literary discussion at the Artful Readers Book Club. Each month, we’ll gather in the Michael Victor II Art Library at the Springfield Art Association to discuss an art-related book. Light refreshments will be provided by the members of the SAA Library Committee.

​The Artful Readers Book Club is free and open to anyone age 21 or older, but registration is requested. To sign up, please contact the SAA by phone at 217-523-2631, by email : office@springfieldart.org or on the Facebook event page.

September 25, 2018
7:00 - 8:30 p.m.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
"In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke's in Holland, the first woman to be so recognized. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain--a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, a decision that will haunt her. Because now, half a century later, she's curating an exhibit of female Dutch painters, and both versions threaten to arrive. As the three threads intersect, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos mesmerizes while it grapples with the demands of the artistic life, showing how the deceits of the past can forge the present."
-goodreads.com





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October 30, 2018
7:00 - 8:30 p.m.

The Gardner Heist, by Ulrich Boser

"The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft,” The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser is a fascinating account of a brazen and amazing criminal act—a book that could help police and investigators solve the mystery of the 1990 break-in and burglary at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. “A tantalizing whodunit” (Boston Globe) and a “riveting, wonderfully vivid account [that] takes you into the underworld of obsessed art detectives, con men, and thieves” (Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting), The Gardner Heist is true crime history at its most spellbinding."
​-goodreads.com








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November 27, 2018
7:00 - 8:30 p.m.

Vanessa and her Sister, by Priya Parmar

"London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There they bring together a glittering circle of bright, outrageous artistic friends who will grow into legend and come to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. And at the center of this charmed circle are the devoted, gifted sisters: Vanessa, the painter, and Virginia, the writer.

The work of exciting young newcomer Priya Parmar, Vanessa and Her Sister exquisitely captures the champagne-heady days of prewar London and the extraordinary lives of sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf."
​-goodreads.com