The Ambrose J. and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century American Art

by Matthew Kirkpatrick

A strange museum, an even stranger curator, the deceased artist who haunts him, and the mystery surrounding the museum founders’ daughter, lost at sea as a child . . . The Ambrose J. and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century American Art is by turns a dark comedy, a ghost story, a romance, a whodunit, a family saga, and an exhibition catalog.

Through museum exhibit labels, as well as the interior musings of an elderly visitor wandering through its galleries, the novel’s numerous dramas gradually unfold. We learn of the powerful Seagrave family’s tragic loss of their daughter, the suspicious circumstances surrounding her disappearance during a violent storm, and of the motley conclave of artists (some accomplished, some atrocious) who frequented the Seagrave estate, producing eclectic bodies of work that betray the artists’ own obsessions, losses, and peculiarities. We learn about the curator’s rise to power, his love affair with a deeply troubled ghost—and when a first-time visitor to the museum discovers unexpected connections between the works on exhibit and her painful past, we are plunged into a meditation on the nature of perception, fabrication, memory, and time.

Genres: Fiction

303 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2019

Reviews

[Joe Sacksteder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Hopefully working on a longer review soon.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quoting from odd curator character's description of an abstract piece in the Seagrave Museum:

"Butterfield explained that the work of this period, like that of other artists exploring nonrepresentational art, was about the material. 'These aren't pictures of anything in the way that you want them to be pictures of something,' he said. 'I'm not trying to capture God or heaven or the ocean bottom here. To describe this thing at all is a waste of your time. It's beeswax over some newspapers.'"

One might be tempted to say the same of this novel. It's as much about material/form as it is attempting to depict some kind of narrative (about a disappeared daughter, a mysterious museum visitor, a crazed curator, or a motley collection of forgettable artists). One might say that to describe it, or to analyze it, might be a waste of your time. It's beeswax over some newspapers, figuratively speaking. It's dark jokes buried in twisted art museum tropes.

And yet, even though the fictional Roy Butterfield argues that it's pointless to describe nonrepresentational, form-focused works of art, no one ever said it's pointless to consume them. This is a novel--though not easily described and well outside the norms of narrative storytelling--that is anything but pointless to consume.

[Corvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully inventive novel, a satire written in the form of art cards, about a girl born into a Gilded Age family. I loved it so much!

Updated review: I’m incredibly disturbed to have discovered the novel One Woman Show, by Christine Coulson, which seems to be a complete rip-off of Kirkpatrick’s brilliant book. There’s no way that could be a coincidence. Read this, and support a small press.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Ambrose J. and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century American Art, Matthew Kirkpatrick shows us what the novel can do with language and structure without sacrificing an attention to the strange, varied desires of the human heart. Composed of captions to fictional art works, and interspersed with the slow-play stories of those who view these works, Kirkpatrick's novel offers us multiple approaches to the book - as mystery, as art catalog, as a collective tale of a community of creators. Particularly revelatory and uncanny for me are the collection of doll houses, which give us miniaturized windows onto the girl whose disappearance drives us through these wonderful pages. Most highly recommended!

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whimsical in some ways, serious in others. Inventive and entertaining.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Need I describe what you can easily see with your own eyes?

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! I encourage reading it in hard copy as the formatting plays into the book and adds to the overall experience.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A minor novel but enjoyable and unusual. Most of the book takes the form of short (and usually humorous) descriptions of works of art--none better than mediocre and most well short of that--which are taken from the walls of a very regional and quite forgettable art museum. Often as notable for how much they reveal about the curator who wrote them as for what they have to say about the lack of talent on display, the descriptions build on one another over the course of the book. Interspersed with them are the melancholy musings of a woman in her late years as she walks through the museum, looking back over the missed opportunities and disappointments of her past.

That should have resulted in jarring shifts of tone, but the two threads of the book work together surprisingly well. I can't say any of it reaches a definitive conclusion (none apparent to me, anyway), but the book is interesting, often quite funny, and short enough to fill a thoughtful evening.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

TAJAVTSMO2CAA is a superbly-written text in an incredibly original form. It's humorous, smart, and mysterious. It's definitely re-readable, and I'll definitely be rereading it.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! This format was so cool!

[Nelly Carbonell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love murder mystery through non existent paintings!