The MFA’s Collectors Circle series features some of the world’s foremost art historians, curators, artists, and collectors. Everyone is invited to these lectures. Free with admission.

Come learn about the compulsive opulence of the Gilded Age that Jennifer Angus evokes and reacts to in ‘The Grasshopper and the Ant’ and Other Stories, as told by Jennifer Angus, her current installation at the Museum of Fine Arts. This talk will explore how the vast wealth of the post-Civil War period transformed consumption, resulting in bigger, more conspicuous, more luxurious houses—filled with artistic, costly, and status-bearing objects. Indeed, the accumulation, categorization, and display of things in private homes became a distinguishing feature of the wealthy. Join us to celebrate the visual variety, aesthetic complexity, and sheer novelty of these interiors as they evolve from overwhelmingly filled spaces to an imagined aristocratic magnificence.