In almost thirty interviews, Donatien Grau probes some of the world’s most prominent thinkers and preeminent arts leaders on the past, present, and future of the encyclopedic museum.

Over the last two decades, the encyclopedic museum has been criticized and praised, constantly discussed, and often in the news. Encyclopedic museums are a phenomenon of Europe and the United States, and their locations and mostly Eurocentric collections have in more recent years drawn attention to what many see as bias. Debates on provenance in general, cultural origins, and restitutions of African heritage have exerted pressure on encyclopedic museums, and indeed on all manner of museums. Is there still a place for an institution dedicated to gathering, preserving, and showcasing all the world’s cultures?

Donatien Grau’s conversations with international arts officials, museum leaders, artists, architects, and journalists go beyond the history of the encyclopedic format and the last decades’ issues that have burdened existing institutions. Are encyclopedic museums still relevant? What can they contribute when the Internet now seems to offer the greater encyclopedia? How important is it for us to have in-person access to objects from all over the world that can directly articulate something to us about humanity? The fresh ideas and nuances of new voices on the core principles important to museums in Dakar, Abu Dhabi, and Mumbai complement some of the world’s arts leaders from European and American institutions—resulting in some revealing and unexpected answers. Every interviewee offers differing views, making for exciting, stimulating reading.

Includes interviews with George Abungu, National Museums of Kenya; Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York University; Homi K. Bhabha, Harvard University; Hamady Bocoum, Musée des Civilisationes Noires, Dakar; Irina Bokova, UNESCO; Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University; Thomas Campbell, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; James Cuno, J. Paul Getty Trust; Philippe de Montebello, New York University; Bachir Souleymane Diagne, Columbia University; Kaywin Feldman, National Gallery of Art; Marc Fumaroli, Collège de France; Massimiliano Gioni, New Museum; Michael Govan, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Camille Henrot, artist; Max Hollein, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Henri Loyrette, Musée du Louvre; Jean Nouvel, architect; Zaki Nusseibeh, United Arab Emirates; Mikhail Piotrovsky, State Hermitage Museum; Grayson Perry, artist; Krzysztof Pomian, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Mari Carmen Ramírez, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Fiammetta Rocco, The Economist; Sabyasachi Mukherjee, CSMVS Mumbai; Bénédicte Savoy; Collège de France; Kavita Singh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Amit Sood, Google Arts & Culture.

 
 

Abundantly illustrated, this essential volume examines depictions of the Underworld in southern Italian vase painting and explores the religious and cultural beliefs behind them.

What happens to us when we die? What might the afterlife look like? For the ancient Greeks, the dead lived on, overseen by Hades in the Underworld. We read of famous sinners, such as Sisyphus, forever rolling his rock, and the fierce guard dog Kerberos, who was captured by Herakles. For mere mortals, ritual and religion offered possibilities for ensuring a happy existence in the beyond, and some of the richest evidence for beliefs about death comes from southern Italy, where the local Italic peoples engaged with Greek beliefs. Monumental funerary vases that accompanied the deceased were decorated with consolatory scenes from myth, and around forty preserve elaborate depictions of Hades’s domain.

For the first time in over four decades, these compelling vase paintings are brought together in one volume, with detailed commentaries and ample illustrations. The catalogue is accompanied by a series of essays by leading experts in the field, which provides a framework for understanding these intriguing scenes and their contexts. Topics include attitudes toward the afterlife in Greek ritual and myth, inscriptions on leaves of gold that provided guidance for the deceased, funerary practices and religious beliefs in Apulia, and the importance accorded to Orpheus and Dionysos. Drawing from a variety of textual and archaeological sources, this volume is an essential source for anyone interested in religion and belief in the ancient Mediterranean.

In 2016, in response to recent attacks on cultural heritage sites in Syria, Iraq, and Timbuktu, the J. Paul Getty Trust convened a meeting at the British Academy in London to discuss the need for an international framework to protect cultural heritage in zones of armed conflict. To further explore these questions, the Trust subsequently launched the J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy series.

The fifth issue of this series, written by Irina Bokova, former director-general of UNESCO, focuses on the value that UNESCO can bring to the fight to protect cultural heritage. During her two terms at UNESCO, Bokova worked to promote international peace and cooperation by raising awareness of the value of cultural heritage and partnering with local communities to rebuild and revitalize their damaged heritage—and themselves. One of Bokova’s most successful campaigns, #Unite4Heritage, has created a global social network of people who are sharing stories, knowledge, and personal experiences about their heritage in an effort to challenge the hate-filled narratives put forward by extremists and keep threatened cultures alive and vital.

This retrospective of the photographer Uta Barth traces her use of the camera to explore both how and what we see.

Los Angeles–based contemporary artist Uta Barth (b. 1958) has spent her decades-long career exploring the complexities and limits of human and mechanical vision. At first, her photographs appear to be deceptively simple depictions of everyday objects—light filtering through a window, tree branches bereft of leaves, a sparsely appointed domestic interior—but these images, visually spare yet conceptually rigorous, emerge from her investigation of sight, perception, light, and time.

In this richly illustrated monograph, curator Arpad Kovacs and contributors Lucy Gallun and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe chart Barth’s career path and discuss her most significant series, revealing how she has rejected the primacy of a traditional photographic subject and instead called attention to what is on the periphery. The book includes previously unpublished bodies of work made early in her career that add much to our understanding of this important artist. Also included is Barth’s most recent work, ...from dawn to dusk, an ambitious commission marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Getty Center.