Learning: People: Get Smart

Get Smart

Harriet F. Friedlander wants you to sail the rivers and lakes linking St. Petersburg to Moscow aboard a yacht, marvel at masterpieces inside the State Hermitage Museum before it opens in the morning and tour the Kremlin grounds when they are closed to the public—all while listening to an expert in art history discourse on Russian antiquities. Your only responsibility: to save some energy for the caviar and vodka tasting later. “Ancient and Imperial Russia: Waterways of the Tsars Aboard the Volga Dream,” which is being launched this summer, is just one of the adventures Academic Arrangements Abroad arranges for its clientele, which consists exclusively of elite universities, museums and nonprofits. Among the institutions for which the company, cofounded thirty years ago by Friedlander, an author and former French teacher, has created one-of-a-kind experiences are New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Oak Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Trips sponsored by such clients tend to attract curious travelers who, however sophisticated, still yearn to learn. Friedlander’s team organizes approximately 100 expeditions a year (twenty-five or so for the Met alone) that explore everything from art and architecture to ancient history to gardens. Groups generally consist of two dozen or more like-minded travelers, who usually must be (or become) members of the museum or nonprofit. They’re rewarded with access to star faculty and curators; late this summer, for instance, renowned art historian and author Olivier Bernier will join one trip to Bavaria and another to the Mediterranean. Friedlander’s own staff comprises interpreters, educators and historians with a collective fluency in almost a dozen languages, and at least one of them accompanies every journey. In 2008 the company will lead Reinventing Architecture: 500 years of Palladio, for the Met. The trip will celebrate Palladian buildings from Venice to London traveling that route aboard the Orient Express—a somewhat more recent triumph of man-made design. Trips from $4,295 per person.