- For Members Paintings & Sculpture at the Boston Athenæum: A
Brief History of the Collection The Boston Athenæum has always
been a center for the study and contemplation of the fine and
decorative arts. In 1807, the year of the Athenæum’s founding,
John Thornton Kirkland (1770-1840), president of Harvard and a
founding Trustee of the Athenæum, set forth a plan by which the
new institution would promote “a taste in the fine and pleasing
arts” by collecting “specimens to serve for example and
illustration.” These were to be gathered in a “Repository” that
would be of two parts: “a MUSEUM or CABINET” containing “natural
and artificial curiosities, antiques, coins, medals, vases,
gems, and intaglios,” and “a REPOSITORY OF ARTS” consisting of
“models of new and useful machines; . . . drawings, designs,
paintings, engravings, statues, and other objects of the fine
arts, and especially the production of our native artists.”
These objects would “provide for the improvement and emulation
of art, and for the correctio