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Boston arts institutions flexed their muscles in 2011

Boom town!
By GREG COOK  |  December 28, 2011

AMERICAN GOTHIC
Perhaps all Edward Gorey's pen drawings of orphans and broken homes and the itching suspicion that everything might suddenly be dashed by a falling bit of masonry had something to do with his parents' divorce when he was 11. But wherever his rich vein of macabre melodrama came from, the retrospective "Elegant Enigmas" at the Boston Athenæum showed how charming he could be as he tied dunderheaded American optimism to the railroad tracks and calmly waited for a train to come.

READ MORE: "Review: Gorey at the Athenæum," by Greg Cook

READ MORE: "The man in the yellow fur coat," by Eugenia Williamson

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  Topics: Museum And Gallery , Institute of Contemporary Art , Museum of Fine Arts , Peabody Essex Museum ,  More more >
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