is honored to announce
the Winner of the
19th Marfield Prize
for outstanding writing
about the arts in 2024 to
Natalie Dykstra
author of
“Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner”
Ms.dykstra will receive $10,000
as the Marfield award winner for 2024.
“All her life, she was known for the way she moved, for her speed, for wanting to be first. She was thought to be the fastest runner at her girls’ school in New York City, and when she flew across the dance floor, queries were made: wherever did she learn to dance like that? Isabella Stewart was born on April 14, 1840, the first of four siblings, in New York City, a metropolis also on the move. Lithographs from the time show tall sailing ships crowding its waters. The city’s protected port on the south end of Manhattan and the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made it ideal for foreign and domestic trade. New York would more than double in population as Belle grew up, to approximately 800,000 residents by 1860. The Stewart family lived first at 142 Greene Street, and then, in 1842, they leased a red-brick mansion at 10 University Place, which crosses Eighth Street, two blocks from Broadway and Washington Square. The neighborhood was then popular with rising merchants and the city’s social elite. Belle’s sister, Adelia, was born in 1842; David Jr. six years later; and James much later, in 1858, when Belle’s mother, also named Adelia, was in her late forties.”
Natalie Dykstra is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, which won a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award. For her recent book, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, she received a Public Scholars grant from the NEH and the inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship from the Biographers International Organization. She has been a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society since 2011 and is an emerita professor of English at Hope College. She lives with her husband near Boston.
Finalists:
3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool
by James Kaplan
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
by Philip Gefter
The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War
by James Shapiro
Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See
by Bianca Bosker
Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist
by Jane Rosenberg
The Marfield Prize Committee would like to thank all volunteer readers, both Club members and community members, who generously gave their time and insights to read and rate dozens of books that were considered during the initial phase of the 2024 Marfield Prize.
The Marfield Prize or the National Award for Arts Writing is given annually by the Arts Club of Washington to the author of a nonfiction book about the visual, literary, media, or performing arts. Established to generate broader interest in the arts among general readers, the award celebrates prose that is clear, eloquent and inspiring, creating a strong connection with the arts and artists. Books are judged by a distinguished independent panel of judges. First given in 2006, the prize's endowment was established by a devoted and generous Arts Club member Jeannie S. Marfield.