Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects: American Women Collectors and the Making of Culture, 1800–1940

by Dianne Sachko Macleod

This insightful and beautifully illustrated book offers the first feminist analysis of the phenomenon of women art collectors in America. Dianne Sachko Macleod brings a surprising paradox to light, showing that collecting, which provided wealthy women with a private sense of solace, also liberated them to venture into the public sphere and make a lasting contribution to the emerging American culture. Beginning in the antebellum period, continuing through the Gilded Age, and reaching well into the twentieth century, Macleod shows how elite women enlisted the objets d'art and avant-garde paintings in their collections in causes ranging from the founding of modern museums to the campaign for women's suffrage.

328 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 2008

About the author

Dianne Sachko Macleod is Professor Emerita of 19th-Century, Modern & Gender Studies at the University of California, Davis.