Search results for ""museum of fine arts,boston""

The tremendous political, religious, and cultural changes that swept across Europe in the years from 1000 to 1800 fundamentally transformed the practices and purposes of painting and sculpture—from elaborately carved and gilded medieval Christian altars to Renaissance self-portraits touting the skill of the artist to eighteenth-century penetrating portraits in marble of the era’s leading thinkers. The one hundred highlights from the impressive European art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gathered here offer an accessible introduction to the story of art from the medieval period to the Enlightenment. Modern notions of art and artists, the art market, as well as the births of art history and the art museum as an institution, all trace their origins to Europe in these centuries, which produced work of fascinating variety and enduring beauty.

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A mother stitches a few lines of prayer into a bedcover for her son serving in the Union army during the Civil War. A formerly enslaved African American woman creates a quilt populated by Biblical figures alongside celestial events. A quilted Lady Liberty, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln mark the resignation of Richard Nixon. These are just a few of the diverse and sometimes hidden stories of the American experience told by quilts and bedcovers from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Spanning more than four hundred years, the fifty-eight works of textile art in this book express the personal narratives of their makers and owners and connect to broader stories of global trade, immigration, industry, marginalisation, and territorial and cultural expansion. Made by Americans of European, African, Native, and Hispanic heritage, these engaging works of art range from family heirlooms to acts of political protest, each with its own story to tell.

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The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston houses a world-famous collection of European painting and sculpture, including such masterpieces as Renoir’s Dance at Bougival, Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, Degas’s Little Dancer, Turner’s Slave Ship and the largest collection of paintings by Claude Monet outside of France. This overview features these well-known and much-loved works, divided into thematic chapters that represent major art movements, with an introduction that describes the phenomena that helped chart the course of art in the period. In all more than 100 highlights from this impressive collection are illustrated and discussed, each testifying to the richness and complexity of European art in the modern era. The MFA Highlights series presents the best of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s collections accessibly and affordably. Its aim is threefold: to make available the greatest masterworks in the MFA; to provide an informative, readable overview of various artistic genres, cultures, and periods, for use by students, visitors, and scholars; and, over time, to create a library that will act as a general tour of world art through the ages.

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Sometime in the early fourth century bc, an unknown Egyptian master carved an exquisite portrait in dark-green stone. The statue that included this remarkably lifelike head of a priest, who was likely a citizen of ancient Memphis, may have been damaged when the Persians conquered Egypt in 343 bc before it was ritually buried in a temple complex dedicated to the worship of the sacred Apis bull. Its adventures were not over, though: after almost two millennia, the head was excavated by August Mariette, a founding figure in French Egyptology, under a permit from the Ottoman Pasha. Returned to France as part of a collection of antiquities assembled for the inimitable Bonaparte prince known as Plon-Plon, it found a home in his faux Pompeian palace. After disappearing again, it resurfaced in the personal collection of Edward Perry Warren, a turn-of-the-twentieth-century American aesthete, who sold it to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Along the way, this compelling and mysterious sculpture, known worldwide as the Boston Green Head, has reflected the West’s evolving understanding of Egyptian art – from initial assertions that it was too refined to be the product of a lesser civilization, to recognition of the sophistication of the culture that produced it.

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In this vivid account of one of Boston’s best-loved paintings, leading American art specialist Erica E. Hirshler illuminates the context of Childe Hassam’s 1880s city scene. With its rosy rust tones, nurturing woman, and quiet expanse of snow-laden park, today At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight) seems to encourage reflection, yet Hirshler reveals the ways in which it heralded the emerging modern city, from subtleties about women’s place in the urban landscape to the uproarious clang of the streetcars that would have been heard on the busiest block in Boston. Enriched with related paintings and archival illustrations, this evocative volume explores the countered conventions and bulldozed buildings behind the canvas’s creation. Carefully researched and elegantly presented, the latest addition to the MFA Spotlight series will delight Hassam fans and history buffs alike.

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How Kahlo collected, celebrated and depicted Mexican folk arts in both her painting and her persona The visionary and supremely self-fashioning artist Frida Kahlo (1907–54) drew inspiration throughout her career from arte popular—painted ceramics, embroidered textiles, religious votives, effigies and children's toys, and other objects created in Mexico’s rural and Indigenous communities. The hundreds of folk-art objects that filled her home and studio attest to her nationalist politics and her fascination with the work of carvers, weavers, sculptors of papier-mâché and vernacular painters. She depicted these objects in her paintings and adopted elements of traditional dress and ornament in her own self-presentation, playing on modernist fascination with folk culture and on her own relation to layered Mexican identity. This bilingual book, the first in-depth exploration of Kahlo’s varied and sophisticated responses to arte popular, situates her within the broad artistic and intellectual movements of her time, examines her professional ambitions and illuminates the innovative techniques she used in her lifelong encounter, both playful and powerful, with the folk art of Mexico.

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The first book to focus exclusively on Hokusai’s landscapes, by one of the world’s leading ukiyo-e specialists The best known of all Japanese artists, Katsushika Hokusai was active as a painter, book illustrator and print designer throughout his ninety-year lifespan. Yet his most famous works of all – the colour woodblock landscape prints issued in series, beginning with Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji – were produced within a relatively short time, in an amazing burst of creative energy that lasted from about 1830 to 1836. Hokusai’s landscapes not only revolutionized Japanese printmaking but within a few decades of his death had become icons of world art as well. With stunning colour reproductions of works from the largest collection of Japanese prints outside Japan, this book examines the magnetic appeal of Hokusai’s designs and the circumstances of their creation. The book includes all published prints of the artist’s eight major landscape series: Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (1830–32), A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (1833–34), Snow, Moon and Flowers (1833), Eight Views of the Ryukyu Islands (1832–33), One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean (1832–33), Remarkable Views of Bridges in Various Provinces (1834), A True Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poetry (1833) and One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse (1835). Working prolifically in the years just before Japan opened to the West in 1853, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was the first Japanese artist to be internationally recognized. His cleverly composed ukiyo-e prints of everyday life and the landscapes of Edo Japan arrived in a 19th-century Europe gripped by Japonisme-mania, where they influenced artists such as Degas, Gauguin, Manet and Van Gogh.

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This latest volume in the MFA Highlights series showcases over 100 stunning photographs from the museum's collection. An extensive introductory essay traces the aesthetic and technical history of photography as an art form, from the early days of the camera obscura through the invention of the daguerreotype and calotype and into the present digital age. In the selection of objects that compose the body of this beautifully designed volume, careful juxtapositions emphasize the graphic qualities of the photos, and extended captions compare and contrast images from different times and places, underscoring shared techniques, sensibilities or subjects. A wide range of photographers--from early experimenters such as Eugène Cuvelier, Charles Marville and Anna Atkins to modern giants Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, as well as contemporary practitioners such as James Nachtwey, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Loretta Lux--are represented by portraits and figure studies, city scenes and still lifes, landscapes and seascapes.

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Even in paradise, adolescence is complicated. The photos in Coming of Age in Wonderland see teenagers simultaneously wedded to the tyranny of cool while rebelling against it. These portraits of Bermuda's teenagers are as stirring and unique as the island itself. Debra Friedman has a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and an MFA from the Chicago Art Institute. Pamela Gordon Banks was the first woman, and youngest person, ever to serve as the Premier of Bermuda. Tom Butterfield is founder and executive director of the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art.

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A quality notecard set featuring great Japanese prints by masters like Hokusai and Hiroshige. These notecards illustrate 16 outstanding Japanese prints from the world-class collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The front of each card features a striking detail of a print, while the back shows the entire print along with a caption. All the best-loved themes of Japanese art are represented, including landscape, nature, and fantasy. Presented in a handsome box, these notecards are the perfect stationery for all art lovers and Japanophiles. Published as a companion to the book Pictures of the Floating World: An Introduction to Japanese Prints ISBN 9780789214393.

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There is a mystery afoot at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A hole appears here, a tiny bite there. Someone has been eating the art! Join Riley the Museum Dog, who is specially trained to sniff out pests, as he attempts to catch the mischievous culprit. Children will enjoy the antics, as the hunt leads them past and introduces them to some of the world's great art. Featuring works by John Singleton Copley, Frida Kahlo, Claude Monet, Kehinde Wiley, and more. Co-produced by The Boston Globe and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Adventures of Riley the Museum Dog is authored by Devra First, with hand-drawn illustrations by Ryan Huddle.

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Published to accompany the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this catalogue examines the impact of Futurism and Cubism on British modernist printmaking from the beginning of World War I to the beginning of World War II. Imagery ranges from powerful artistic impressions of the first fully mechanized war, to radical geometric abstractions, to the colourful, streamlined jazz age images of speed, sport and diversion which the Grosvenor School artists created in order to introduce a broader public to modern art and design. Interest in this era is peaking among collectors, curators and art historians and this is an ideal moment to introduce these innovative British printmakers to a wider public.

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In Edo Japan, woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e (“pictures of the Floating World”) captured the entertainment culture of the urban elite and eventually many other subjects as well. These beautiful prints were the result of a meticulous craft process, in which an artist’s initial drawing was translated by expert carvers into multiple printing blocks for different colours. In this attractive volume, Sarah E. Thompson, curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, provides a highly readable overview of the cultural and artistic history of ukiyo-e, showcasing 120 exceptional prints from the museum’s world-class collection, by masters including Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. She explores each of the principal genres in turn: beauty and fashion, the kabuki theatre, landscape, nature, history and literature, and fantasy. Pictures of the Floating World features a traditional Japanese stab binding and is housed in a durable slipcase together with three remarkable prints, suitable for framing. It will be a must-have for all art lovers.

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This sumptuous publication of the archaeological excavation in northwest Cyprus (1971–1973) is sponsored by Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The authors present the site, its objects, and its chronological and historical significance against the wider background of Cypriote archaeology, casting new light on the problems of Cypriote pottery classification and the links between Cyprus and the Aegean world, especially Crete. Descriptions of the Mound and Tombs and the catalogues of their contents are supplemented by essays on individual classes of objects.The book is lavishly illustrated with detailed diagrams and nearly 2,000 photographs and drawings to help the reader understand this active industrial area and its changes through successive generations from the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age. An appendix of technical analyses, an inventory of the finds, a list of published references to the excavation, and a bibliography complete the documentation.

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A rigorous account of the European origins of American art museums American art museums share a mission and format that differ from those of their European counterparts, which often have origins in aristocratic collections. This groundbreaking work recounts the fascinating story of the invention of the modern American art museum, starting with its roots in the 1870s in the craft museum type, which was based on London's South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum. At the turn of the twentieth century, American planners grew enthusiastic about a new type of museum and presentation that was developed in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. Called Kulturgeschichte (cultural history) museums, they were evocative displays of regional history. American trustees, museum directors, and curators found that the Kulturgeschichte approach offered a variety of transformational options in planning museums, classifying and displaying objects, and broadening collecting categories, including American art and the decorative arts. Leading institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, adopted and developed crucial aspects of the Kulturgeschichte model. By the 1930s, such museum plans and exhibition techniques had become standard practice at museums across the country.

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Over thousands of years, the art of Chinese painting has evolved, while also staying loyal to its traditional roots. Despite various schools of thought, styles and techniques, three primary categories have emerged across the discipline: landscape, figure and bird-and-flower. Using fine ink and water brush strokes on paper or silk, Chinese artists have developed a unique style—one that's famous throughout the world.This book highlights 50 Chinese paintings, pulled from museum collections in China and around the world, including: British Museum, London Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas Osaka City Museum of Art, Osaka Palace Museum, Beijing Palace Museum, Taipei Shanghai Museum, Shanghai The paintings shown are representative of the categories, historical periods and styles of this artistic tradition.Detailed professional interpretations and notes allow readers to learn more about the pieces themselves, the artists and the context in which they were created. Plus, photo enlargements of key details get readers up close to these masterpieces. As one of the world's oldest continuous art forms, Chinese painting has a truly special history. This comprehensive guide allows modern readers to travel through time, experiencing important moments in Chinese history and society through beautiful pieces of artwork.

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A landmark retrospective that examines William Merritt Chase and his lasting contribution to the history of modern art The history of modern art owes a great debt to William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), one of America’s influential artists and educators. Chase was a leading member of the international artistic avant-garde and was best known for his mastery of a wide range of subjects in oil and pastel, including figures, landscapes, urban park scenes, interiors, and portraits. As a teacher and founder of the Shinnecock Summer School of Art and the New York School of Art, Chase mentored a new generation of modernists, including Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Joseph Stella. A century after his death, the breadth and richness of Chase’s career are celebrated in this beautifully illustrated publication. Five essays by prominent scholars of American art offer new insights into Chase’s multi-faceted artistic practice and his position in the international cultural climate at the turn of the 20th century.Published in association with The Phillips CollectionExhibition Schedule:The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (06/04/16–09/11/16)Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (10/09/16–01/16/17)Ca’Pesaro-Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Venice (02/11/17–05/28/17)

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The fruits of sixteen years of discriminating acquisition on the international art market, Robert Smith's is one of the most important collections of European bronzes in private hands today. The collection embraces the Renaissance in Italy and northern Europe in such a way that its components complement and enhance the appreciation of each other. Central to the collection is a group of thirteen pieces that illustrate the legacy of Giambologna in Florence. Also assembled are pieces by independent contemporaries: Alessandro Vittoria and Francesco Segala in the Veneto, and the younger Genoese-born Niccolo Roccatagliata, whose surviving work is of the utmost rarity. A selection of fine early North Italian bronzes serves as an introduction to the collection; the Netherlands and France are also well represented. Many pieces have distinguished provenances, and all have been exhaustively researched. The book comprises not just a catalogue but an important and original contribution to scholarship in its own right. This new and extended version of the first edition retains the entries written by Anthony Radcliffe with a few additions or corrections, and an entry that he drafted on the miniature cannon signed by Orazio Antonio Alberghetti has also been incorporated. New entries have been supplied by Marietta Cambareri, currently Curator of Sculpture in the 'Arts of Europe' section of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by Fabio Barry, Mellon intern for 2004 in the Department of Sculpture at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and by Nicholas Penny.

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Nineteenth-century stoneware by enslaved and free potters living in Edgefield, South Carolina, highlights the central role of Black artists in the region’s long-standing pottery traditions Recentering the development of industrially scaled Southern pottery traditions around enslaved and free Black potters working in the mid-nineteenth century, this catalogue presents groundbreaking scholarship and new perspectives on stoneware made in and around Edgefield, South Carolina. Among the remarkable works included are a selection of regional face vessels as well as masterpieces by enslaved potter and poet David Drake, who signed, dated, and incised verses on many of his jars, even though literacy among enslaved people was criminalized at the time. Essays on the production, collection, dispersal, and reception of stoneware from Edgefield offer a critical look at what it means to collect, exhibit, and interpret objects made by enslaved artisans. Several featured contemporary works inspired by or related to Edgefield stoneware attest to the cultural and historical significance of this body of work, and an interview with acclaimed contemporary artist Simone Leigh illuminates its continued relevance.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (September 9, 2022–February 5, 2023) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (March 6–July 9, 2023) University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (August 26, 2023–January 7, 2024) High Museum of Art, Atlanta (February 16–May 12, 2024)

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The first comprehensive consideration of Life magazine’s groundbreaking and influential contribution to the history of photography From the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, the vast majority of the photographs printed and consumed in the United States appeared on the pages of illustrated magazines. Offering an in-depth look at the photography featured in Life magazine throughout its weekly run from 1936 to 1972, this volume examines how the magazine’s use of images fundamentally shaped the modern idea of photography in the United States. The work of photographers both celebrated and overlooked—including Margaret Bourke-White, Larry Burrows, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Frank Dandridge, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Fritz Goro, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith—is explored in the context of the creative and editorial structures at Life. Contributions from 25 scholars in a range of fields, from art history to American studies, provide insights into how the photographs published in Life—used to promote a predominately white, middle-class perspective—came to play a role in cultural dialogues in the United States around war, race, technology, art, and national identity. Drawing on unprecedented access to Life magazine’s picture and paper archives, as well as photographers’ archives, this generously illustrated volume presents previously unpublished materials, such as caption files, contact sheets, and shooting scripts, that shed new light on the collaborative process behind many now-iconic images and photo-essays. Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum Exhibition Schedule:Princeton University Art MuseumMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston

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For nearly two decades, Preston Singletary has straddled two unique cultures, melding his Tlingit ancestry with the dynamism of the Studio Glass Movement. In the process, he has created an extraordinarily distinctive and powerful body of work that depicts cultural and historical images in richly detailed, beautifully hued glass. Singletary has translated the visual vocabulary of patterns, narratives, and systems of Native woodcarving and painted art into glass, a material historically associated with Native peoples through an extensive network of trading routes. Singletary entered the world of glassblowing as an assistant, mastering the techniques of the European tradition as he worked alongside Seattle-area artists such as Benjamin Moore and Dante Marioni. He also had opportunities to learn the secrets of the Venetian glass masters while working with Italian legends Lino Tagliapietra and Pino Signoretto. The Northwest Native icons, supernatural beings, transformative themes, animal spirits, shamanism, and basketry design of Singletary's Tlingit heritage are manifested in his work, creating a unique whole that resonates on many levels and reveals a new artistic direction. This mid-career retrospective of his work includes contributions by Melissa G. Post, Steven Clay Brown, and Walter Porter, as well as a DVD of Singletary working in his studio. Preston Singletary's works are in museum collections around the world, including the National Museum of the American Indian; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Seattle Art Museum; Corning Museum of Glass; Mint Museum of Art; the Heard Museum; and the Handelsbanken (Stockholm, Sweden).

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The Pyramids on the Giza Plateau represent perhaps the most famous archaeological site in the world, capturing on tomb walls frozen moments from almost every aspect of life in ancient Egypt. This book, by one of the foremost experts on the history of Giza, explores new approaches to “cataloging” the site, highlighting efforts at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Harvard University.The site experienced its first “golden age” as the burial place of three pharaohs of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (Dynasty 4, ca. 2640–2510 BCE). A second golden age came almost five millennia later, when the first modern excavators applied their newly devised archaeological craft to the Giza Plateau. Now, with the advent of many new technologies in the twenty-first century, the Giza Necropolis is available in two, three, and even four dimensions. Children and specialized scholars alike may study the material culture of this ancient civilization from afar, often with greater access than could be achieved in person. However, these new approaches do raise questions: Does 3-D modeling and animation truly improve scholarly comprehension and interpretation? Can interacting with animations still be called scholarship? Where is the border between academic knowledge and mere entertainment?Through specific case studies and an in-depth history of this important project, Peter Der Manuelian provides an excellent model for other digital visualization initiatives. He also offers more general philosophical reflection on the nature of visualization in archaeology and speculates about emerging technologies and how they may be useful in the future.

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In Museum Skepticism, art historian David Carrier traces the birth, evolution, and decline of the public art museum as an institution meant to spark democratic debate and discussion. Carrier contends that since the inception of the public art museum during the French Revolution, its development has depended on growth: on the expansion of collections, particularly to include works representing non-European cultures, and on the proliferation of art museums around the globe. Arguing that this expansionist project has peaked, he asserts that art museums must now find new ways of making high art relevant to contemporary lives. Ideas and inspiration may be found, he suggests, in mass entertainment such as popular music and movies.Carrier illuminates the public role of art museums by describing the ways they influence how art is seen: through their architecture, their collections, the narratives they offer museum visitors. He insists that an understanding of the art museum must take into account the roles of collectors, curators, and museum architects. Toward that end, he offers a series of case studies, showing how particular museums and their collections evolved. Among those who figure prominently are Baron Dominique Vivant Denon, the first director of the Louvre; Bernard Berenson, whose connoisseurship helped Isabella Stewart Gardner found her museum in Boston; Ernest Fenollosa, who assembled much of the Asian art collection now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Albert Barnes, the distinguished collector of modernist painting; and Richard Meier, architect of the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles. Carrier’s learned consideration of what the art museum is and has been provides the basis for understanding the radical transformation of its public role now under way.

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The first comprehensive survey of the photographs, films, and videos of Ori Gersht, this richly illustrated book presents the best of Gersht's achingly beautiful work and explores how he intertwines spectacles of painterly and narrative imagery with personal and collective memory, metaphysical journeys, contextualized spaces, and the history of art and photography. Pushing the camera to the limits of what it can record, Gersht engages an aesthetic that reflects both a highly researched and instinctive approach to his chosen media. Be it the scars left on the sunlit yet war-torn interiors of buildings in Sarajevo, the white noise of a modern-day train journey to Auschwitz, or the clearing of trees in a forest that once stood witness to mass murder in the Ukraine, Gersht's vision bridges a history that is full of violent horror and a world of emergent, transcendent beauty. Ori Gersht was born in Israel in 1967 and is currently based in London. A conduit between the past and present, his large-scale photographs and videos wed old masters to new technologies, quoting from such sources as Spanish and Dutch still- life painting and the Hudson River Valley School. Gersht's interest in history also goes beyond the visual arts, encompassing the political history that has shaped his personal identity and that of all of us scarred by violence in our contemporary world. His work has been acquired and commissioned by major art institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, London, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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Charlotte Salomon was born in Berlin in 1917 and was murdered at Auschwitz at the age of twenty-six. While in exile in the south of France from 1940 until her deportation in 1943, she created some 1,325 small gouaches using only the three primary colors plus white. From these she gathered nearly 800 into a work that she titled Life? or Theater?: A Play with Music, which employs images, texts, and musical and cinematic references. The narrative, informed by Salomon's experiences as a talented, cultured, and assimilated German Jew, depicts a life lived in the shadow of Nazi persecution and a family history of suicide, but also reveals moments of intense happiness and hope. The tone of the gouaches becomes increasingly raw and urgent as Salomon is further enmeshed in grim personal as well as political events. The result is a deeply moving meditation on life, art, and death on the eve of the Holocaust. Salomon's art, discovered after the war in the south of France where she had left it for safekeeping, was first exhibited in 1961 and has gained steadily in reputation since then. A major exhibition focused on Life? or Theater? appeared at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1998, subsequently at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Jewish Museum in New York City. This book, lavishly illustrated with many color plates, is the first to analyze Salomon's work critically, historically, and aesthetically. It includes a chronology of Salomon's life and a list of exhibitions of Life? or Theater?. Featuring contributions from prominent art historians, literary and cultural critics, and historians, Reading Charlotte Salomon celebrates the genius and courage of a remarkable figure in twentieth-century art.

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Paolo Ventura’s Short Stories are whimsical narratives told through pictures—tales of love, war, and family—where things magically appear or disappear, set in an imaginary past of World War II Italy. Much like in silent films, the drama unfolds with no words or captions. For these works, Ventura constructed life-sized sets, in which he situated himself and members of his family (casting his son, wife, and twin brother as actors), in stories that are at once charming and disquieting. While seemingly simple, Ventura’s vignettes come with larger implications: brothers who encounter each other by surprise on the battlefield, jugglers who appear from above, a man who packs himself into his suitcase, a small-town magician who accidently makes his son disappear for real, and many others. Here, Ventura has built a world of realistic proportions and actors, in fantastical tales and against painted backdrops—challenging notions of what is real and what is make-believe. This book collects the entire series of Ventura’s Short Stories together for the first time, including three previously unpublished, and offers a glimpse into the artist’s extraordinary imagination. Paolo Ventura (born in Milan, 1968) graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan in 1991. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at Forma International Center for Photography, Milan; Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France; and Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris. He also created a series of works for the Italian pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. His works have been acquired by prominent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and the Margulies Collection, Miami. His monographs include War Souvenir (2006), Winter Stories (Aperture and Contrasto, 2009), and The Automaton (2012).

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Lines of Discovery: Four Centuries of American Drawing presents a major new thematic and chronological catalogue survey of the Columbus Museum's most significant holdings of drawings and works on paper, including examples in graphite, charcoal, monotype and pastel. At the heart of the Columbus Museum's collection, and of this volume, is the work of a remarkable individual, Dr. Phillip L. Brewer, who has amassed a truly significant collection of American works on paper – both in terms of its depth and breadth. For the first time this volume presents nearly 200 of these master drawings, 120 of the most important of which are grouped into six chapters, illustrated in full colour, and accompanied by extended catalogue entries written by leading experts. A further 79 works are presented as colour and mono thumbnails interspersed amongst the images of the key works. Included are images by Copley, West and Cole that date from the earliest years of American nationhood; works by Oscar Bluemner, Arthur Dove and Morton Schamberg which herald the advent of modernism; while others by Hans Hoffmann, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Blanche Lazzell and Rico Lebrun confirm its continued presence through such varied expressions as social realism, surrealism and abstraction. While artists like Milton Avery, Jack Beal, Paul Cadmus, Philip Evergood, Nancy Grossman, and Louise Nevelson explore the strength and beauty of the human form, James Valerio and Andrew Wyeth document the changing faces of the natural world. Together these works, and Lines of Discovery, offer a comprehensive survey of the history of American art. AUTHOR: Stephen C.Wicks is curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Columbus Museum. Charles T. Butler is director of the Columbus Museum. Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. is John Moors Cabot Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 155 colour & 80 b/w illustrations

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A revealing look at ancient art in the Menil Collection that addresses the problem of objects lacking archaeological context This innovative anthology discusses a diversity of ancient Mediterranean objects—a Mesopotamian votive figure, a Egyptian relief from the New Kingdom, and a Greek Geometric fawn among them—in the Menil Collection and three other US museums. It offers new models for understanding works from antiquity that lack archaeological context. Essays by 13 authors written with the layperson in mind employ a creative mixture of iconography, technical studies, and modern provenance research to gain insight into the meaning of the objects themselves and what they can teach us more broadly aboutarchaeology, art history, and collecting practices. They take on complex issues of cultural heritage, legality, and taste to bring to life works that are often consigned to either the imperial past or a conceptual limbo. Essays on related groups or single objects introduce fresh frameworks to engage with the multilayered history these objects represent. The eight object biographies on ancient artifacts in the Menil are the first in-depth studies published on the collection. Essays by seven university professors probe works in their areas of expertise, while those by seven curators lay bare one object biography; frame provenance studies at the San Antonio Museum of Art, Getty Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and survey war’s effect on ancient works. The editors’ introduction and an epilogue responding to the other 13 texts review theoretical and practical issues in the study of artifacts lacking archaeological findspots (provenience). Recommended for programs and libraries in museum studies, archaeology, and art history; art and heritage law programs; and readers fascinated by cold-case detective work on the material culture of the ancient Mediterranean.Distributed for the Menil Collection

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“Hyman is awesomely consistent, brilliant, ascetic—more and more people say he is the best painter in America, and so he is.” –Robert Lowell This important publication, the first of its kind, presents the paintings and drawings of an aesthetic and mystical searcher in the tradition of William Blake, Albert Pinkham Ryder and Odilon Redon, who strove for the moment when, in his own words, “the mood is as intense as it can be made.” Hyman Bloom’s work, influenced by his Jewish heritage (whose impression on his painting he described as a “weeping of the heart”) and Eastern religions, touches on many of the themes of 20th-century culture and art: the body, its immanence and transience, abstraction and spiritual mysticism. Bloom was admired by leading figures in the art world of his time, including Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Dorothy Miller; Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning hailed him as “the first Abstract Expressionist.” The poet Robert Lowell praised Bloom, writing in a letter to Elizabeth Bishop, “Hyman is awesomely consistent, brilliant, ascetic—more and more people say he is the best painter in America, and so he is.” The book’s illustrations include ten previously unpublished masterworks, plus images of the figure as powerful and provocative as the paintings by Francis Bacon that were once exhibited alongside them. Hyman Bloom (1913–2009) was born in Lithuania, now Latvia. He and his family immigrated to the United States in 1920, escaping anti-Semitic persecution. He lived and worked in the Boston area until his death. His work is held in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Whitney Museum of American Art and others.

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A forensic conceptualist's inventory of the ordinary and extraordinary lives in a Venetian hotel In 1981 Sophie Calle took a job as a chambermaid for the Hotel C in Venice, Italy. Stashing her camera and tape recorder in her mop bucket, she not only cleans and tidies, but sorts through the evidence of the hotel guests' lives. Assigned 12 rooms on the fourth floor, she surveys the state of the guests' bedding, their books, newspapers and postcards, perfumes and cologne, traveling clothes and costumes for Carnival. She methodically photographs the contents of closets and suitcases, examining the detritus in the rubbish bin and the toiletries arranged on the washbasin. She discovers their birth dates and blood types, diary entries, letters from and photographs of lovers and family. She eavesdrops on arguments and love-making. She retrieves a pair of shoes from the wastebasket and takes two chocolates from a neglected box of sweets, while leaving behind stashes of money, pills and jewelry. Her thievery is the eye of the camera, observing the details that were not meant for her, or us, to see. The Hotel now manifests as a book for the first time in English (it was previously included in the book Double Game). Collaborating with the artist on a new design that features enhanced and larger photographs, and pays specific attention to the beauty of the book as an object, Siglio is releasing its third book authored by Calle, after The Address Book (2012) and Suite Vénitienne (2015). Sophie Calle (born 1953) is an internationally renowned artist whose controversial works often fuse conceptual art and Oulipo-like constraints, investigatory methods and the plundering of autobiography. The Whitechapel Gallery in London organized a retrospective in 2009, and her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hayward Gallery and Serpentine, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. She lives and works in Paris.

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Nineteenth-Century European Painting: From Barbizon to Belle Époque represents a comprehensive guide to the range of stylistically diverse genres of nineteenth-century European painting. Accessible and insightful, this exquisitely illustrated volume presents the historical context behind the century's essential artistic movements including Romantic Painting, The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Realist Painting, Academic Painting, and Impressionist Painting. Influenced by an overwhelming wave of political, military and social change, nineteenth-century Europe represented an era more diverse in painterly subjects and styles than any before it. Indeed, it was a period that saw many European painters moving away from the strictures of the academy system, choosing instead to use their training to develop new techniques and traditions. A collection of independent stories, this book also outlines the unique progression between the different movements, exciting and enlightening the reader about the most magnificent period of art the world has ever known. Contents: Foreword; Dr. Vern G. Swanson; Introduction; Author's Note; STYLES: The Barbizon School; Romantic Painting; Orientalist Painting; The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Realist Painting; Academic Painting; Impressionist Painting; The Newlyn School; Post-Impressionist Painting; SUBJECTS: Landscape Painting; Venetian View Painting; Maritime Painting; Sporting Painting; Animal Painting; Genre Painting; Cardinal Painting; Costume Painting; British Neoclassical Revival Painting; Belle Époque Painting; Conclusion; Endnotes; Bibliography. Featured works from museums and collections including: Louvre, Paris, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Wallace Collection, London, Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, The Tate Gallery, London, The Schaeffer Collection, New South Wales, The Royal Collection, The Royal Academy of Arts, England, The Musée D Orsay Paris, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Collection), The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, England, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Stanhope Forbes, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA, USA, Paisnel Gallery, London, National Gallery, London, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy, Museo de Arte, Ponte, Puerto Rico, Musée Marmottan, Paris, Musée D Orsay, Paris, Auguste Renoir, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among many others.

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Craft Across Continents presents 50 objects in two-parts: the first 22 plates focus on works by Japanese makers; the second section of 21 plates on works by American and European practitioners. Marking the mid-way point of the volume is a special 8-page section, printed on a different uncoated paper stock, featuring large-scale, full-page images, including a portrait of the collectors and views of the glass, ceramics, bamboo and other objects as seen in the domestic setting of the collectors' private home. The wide-ranging and highly personal collection includes masterworks of twenty-first-century Japanese wood-fired ceramics, as well as works in porcelain by Satoshi Kino and Machiko Ogawa. Moreover, an additional 20-plus objects were gifted to the Mint in 2021 including further Japanese ceramics, a fine collection of Japanese bamboo sculptures by several generations of makers-a unique feature of the Collection-as well as an indigo resist-dyed wall hanging by Rowland Ricketts, an artist and farmer based in Bloomington, Indiana, using natural dyes and historical Japanese processes to create contemporary textiles. From Europe and the United States, there are major glass sculptures, a seminal installation by Danish maker Tobias Mohl, a mobile by Polish-trained artist Anna Skibska, and fine examples of cast blown, and lamp-worked glass. One of the most spectacular large glazed ceramic vessels in the collection is by the British maker, Gareth Mason. AUTHORS: Jen Sudul Edwards is chief curator and curator of Contemporary Art at The Mint Museum. Joe Earle is an author and curator. He was chair of the Asia, Oceania, and Africa department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and served as vice president and director for the Japan Society Gallery at Japan Society from 2007-2011. Annie Carlano is senior curator of Craft, Design & Fashion at The Mint Museum. Rebecca Elliot is assistant curator of craft, design, and fashion at The Mint Museum. SELLING POINTS: . A wide-ranging and highly personal collection which through both its contents and its structure underscores the subtle interplay of Asian and Western craft practitioners and makers . Reveals how traditional methods of Japanese wood firing and textile dying inform and inspire contemporary makers in Europe and the USA . Accompanies a unique exhibition, which celebrates Lorne Lassiter and Gary Ferraro's unique collection of international craft acquired over decades, and which they have gifted to the Mint Museum to form a central part of its permanent craft collection . A a special 8-page central section features large-scale, full-page images of selected pieces from, and views of the collection as seen in the domestic setting of the collectors' private home 100 colour illustrations

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