cover image Patron Saints: Five Rebels Who Opened America to a New Art 1928-1943

Patron Saints: Five Rebels Who Opened America to a New Art 1928-1943

Nicholas Fox Weber. Alfred A. Knopf, $30 (398pp) ISBN 978-0-394-57854-5

In an arresting, gossipy, lavishly illustrated group portrait of visionaries who changed the cultural landscape of America, Weber depicts re-creates in previous review the interwoven activities of five arts patrons blessed with connections, money and a driving passion for the modern. Lincoln Kirstein and Edward Warburg, while students at Harvard, gave the public its first look at Bauhaus design and Calder's Circus ; they later brought George Balanchine to America and gave key support to Igor Stravinsky and Philip Johnson. Harvard art historian Agnes Mongan, an associate of Bernard Berenson, championed fine drawing and extended women's influence in the male-dominated museum world. James Thrall Soby, a ``paradigmatic New England gentleman,'' enlarged the audience for Balthus and de Chirico as curator of New York's Museum of Modern Art. A. Everett ``Chick'' Austin Jr., director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., organized pioneering exhibitions of work by Picasso and the surrealists. Weber is director of the Josef Albers Foundation and author of books on Albers and Leland Bell. (June)