In 2000, Lin Arison and her 15-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, began a month-long journey through France that would change both their lives. Though Ms. Arison was a seasoned traveler with many wonderful experiences in her past, what lay ahead was a spiritual awakening that is chronicled in her book “Travels With Van Gogh and the Impressionists,” published by Abbeville Press.

Ms. Arison, her granddaughter and photographer Neil Folberg will speak at the Hunter Museum of American Art on Tuesday, May 27, from 3 to 4 p.m. A book-signing and reception will be held from 4 to 6 p.m.

She was invited to Chattanooga by sculptor John Henry, who sits on the board of the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, which she and her late husband, Ted, founded. The Arisons started Carnival Cruise Lines and, because of their financial success with that venture and others, spent decades giving money, time and effort to foster the arts.

When her husband died in 1999, Ms. Arison was bereft. Her trip to France with her granddaughter the following year, breathed new life into the widow who was still in deep mourning. In examining the lives, dwellings and paintings of the Impressionists, she said she was moved by their plight and by their ability to triumph through mutual support.

“I now realize why this special aspect of their story moved me so deeply,” she said. “In my own work with NFAA’s youngARTS program, I have observed that, at their schools, budding artists are often looked at as oddballs or even outcasts. The Impressionists had the same experience.”

Ms. Arison decided to tell their story, as well as hers, through a 245-page book that is part memoir, biography, travelogue and art book. She guides readers from Auvers to Arles to Giverny to Mont Sainte-Victoire through reproductions of paintings of the period that are imaginatively paired with Mr. Folberg’s contemporary photographs.

She gives new relevance to the personal lives and art of Pissarro, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot and Van Gogh. Her demystification of Van Gogh’s reputation as a “madman” and her focus on the little-acknowledged, but pivotal importance Berthe Morisot played in the Impressionist movement are just some of the insights that the book provides.

Infusing this familiar period of art history with 21st-century immediacy, “Travels With Van Gogh and the Impressionists” testifies to the universality and continued relevance of the work of Van Gogh and impressionist paintings. With its dialog between old and new, the book is a tribute to the triumphant power of art.

The Hunter Museum is at 10 Bluff View. For information, call 266-9914.