The Golden Calves

by Louis Auchincloss

Overview

A young Manhattan art museum curator goes to questionable lengths to garner success in this dramatic novel by the author of Diary of a Yuppie.

In a world of opulent museums, lavish homes, and extravagant dreams, public spectacle pales before private intrigue, and the pursuit of power is the finest art. Welcome to the world of master storyteller Louis Auchincloss.

“In a small but distinguished museum on Central Park West, battle lines are arranged, pitting a brash young curator, imbued with a craving for personal grandeur and a lust for the directorship of the museum, against colleagues whose main concern is the integrity of the collections they guard . . . . Auchincloss . . . is a deft guide through a closed-in world.” —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547994970
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	03/19/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	213
Sales rank:	235,756
File size:	613 KB

About the Author

In 2000, Louis Auchincloss was honored as a “Living Landmark” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. During his long career he wrote more than sixty books, including the story collection Manhattan Monologues and the novel The Rector of Justin. The former president of the Academy of Arts and Letters, he resided in New York City until his death in January 2010.

Editorial Reviews

. . . [Al]though [Auchincloss] is refreshingly revealing about the nonpublic side of art institutions, the Styrofoam characters and quickie scenario of The Golden Calves don't begin to tap the rich, ripe material offered by America's rampant cultural ambitions.
—New York Times

Grace Glueck

In his 40th book, Auchincloss continues the fictional chronicles of the New York elitist establishment and their insidiously controlling power plays. This time the art world is the locale. In a small but distinguished museum on Central Park West, battle lines are arranged, pitting a brash young curator, imbued with a craving for personal grandeur and a lust for the directorship of the museum, against colleagues whose main concern is the integrity of the collections they guard. In order to pin down the collection of an aged patrician benefactor, Miss Evelyn Speddon, opportunist Mark Addams even agrees to marry her companion, a young woman who works in the museum and who is dedicated to the preservation of the Speddon collection. Predictably, on the death of Miss Speddon, the museum president disregards her will, begins to deaccession items and embarks on a strategy that will aggrandize his reputation as an innovative developer and builder. Although sex plays a pivotal role in the byzantine relationships of curators and collectors, Auchincloss is not as successful in portraying credible liaisons as he is in making real the ways in which art is big business. Auchincloss, who is president of the Museum of the City of New York, is a deft guide through a closed-in world. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Auchincloss examines the moral ambiguities involved in mixing art and commerce in this mildly entertaining satire. A wealthy art collector, trying to match up her young protegee with the ambitious museum director, has been persuaded to grant the Museum of North America some freedom over her collection's disposition. Upon her death, love, revenge, and respect for great art all enter into the battle among rival factions. While the dialogue is brightly written, there could have been more descriptive detail. Oddly colorless for a novel dealing with the visual arts. Laurie Spector Sullivan, Transportation Authority Archives, Boston

Library Journal