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Join us for an illustrated tour of the Gilded Age, seen through the experiences and artistry of two of its celebrated artists: architect Stanford White and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Author Henry Wiencek and moderator Curt DiCamillo will take us behind the scenes to show how these two cultural trendsetters transcended scandal to enrich their times.

The creator of landmark buildings that elevated American architecture to new heights, Stanford White was a man-about-town and a canny cultural entrepreneur. Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s painstaking work brought emotional depth to American sculpture; he was the son of an immigrant shoemaker, a moody introvert, and a committed procrastinator. These two artists, then in their twenties, came together by accident in New York, where they began a friendship and life-long creative partnership that sustained both of them. White calmed Saint-Gaudens’s troubled spirits and vouched for him as he struggled to complete projects. White felt himself lifted into a higher artistic realm when working with Saint-Gaudens. Both men had numerous romantic affairs, but White’s sordid debaucheries led to his sensational murder atop Madison Square Garden in 1906. In Stan and Gus, the acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek sets these men’s relationship within the larger story of the American Renaissance, where millionaires’ commissions and delusions of grandeur collided with secret upper-class clubs and new aesthetic ideas.

Henry Wiencek, a nationally prominent historian and writer, is the author of several books, including The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999, and, most recently, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves.

Curt DiCamillo is American Ancestors’ Curator of Fine Art. An internationally recognized authority on the British country house, he has written, lectured, and taught in the U.S. and abroad on British history and architecture.  His most recent book is A British Country House Alphabet: A Historical and Pictorial Journey.

Presented by Boston Public Library in partnership with American Ancestors’ American Inspiration series and GBH Forum Network