Stockbridge, MA
Chesterwood
Margaret French wrote a line or two a day in the diaries that she kept in the early 20th century. French was the only child of Mary and Daniel Chester French, the sculptor best known for the Lincoln Memorial. He and his wife and daughter spent as much time as possible at his Berkshire summer estate, Chesterwood, until his death in 1931. Margaret’s entries in the diaries were terse and factual. On August 9, 1905, she wrote: “Went down to the store in morning. Played tennis in aft. And drove over to Stockbridge. Mamma & Pappa went to Concord, NH, for a week.” When Roberley Bell came to Chesterwood as its 2015 artist-in-residence, she didn’t know of Margaret French’s habit, but she had been chosen on the basis of her proposal to do an object a day for the month of May, an idea that resonated with Chesterwood’s executive director Donna Hassler. …see the entire review in the print version of March’s Sculpture magazine.
