front cover of Antipodean Early Modern
Antipodean Early Modern
European Art in Australian Collections, c. 1200-1600
Edited by Anne Dunlop
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
A Prayer Book owned by the Rothschilds, an Italian bronze casket by Antico, a lavishly illustrated Carnival chronicle from sixteenth-century Germany, an altarpiece by Pieter Brueghel the Younger - much of the artwork in this book, held by Australian collections, is essentially unknown beyond the continent. The authors of these essays showcase these extraordinary objects to their full potential,revealing a wide range of contemporary art and historical research. This collection of essays will surprise even specialists.
[more]

front cover of Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance
Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance
A Contribution to the History of Collecting
Julius von Schlosser
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2021

For the first time, the pioneering book that launched the study of art and curiosity cabinets is available in English.

Julius von Schlosser’s Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance (Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance) is a seminal work in the history of art and collecting. Originally published in German in 1908, it was the first study to interpret sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cabinets of wonder as precursors to the modern museum, situating them within a history of collecting going back to Greco-Roman antiquity. In its comparative approach and broad geographical scope, Schlosser’s book introduced an interdisciplinary and global perspective to the study of art and material culture, laying the foundation for museum studies and the history of collections. Schlosser was an Austrian professor, curator, museum director, and leading figure of the Vienna School of art history whose work has not achieved the prominence of his contemporaries until now.
 
This eloquent and informed translation is preceded by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s substantial introduction. Tracing Schlosser’s biography and intellectual formation in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, it contextualizes his work among that of his contemporaries, offering a wealth of insights along the way.

[more]

logo for Duke University Press
The Brummer Collection of Medieval Art
Duke University Museum of Art
Caroline Bruzelius and with Jill Meredith
Duke University Press, 1991
The Brummer Collection of Medieval Art in the Duke University Museum of Art is one of the finest to be found in any American university museum. It is remarkable for its breadth and the variety of objects represented, with works varying in scale from monumental stone pieces to small-scale objects in wood, ivory, or metal, and ranging from the seventh to eighth centuries through the sixteenth century. This fine catalog makes available for the first time this rich but little-known collection.
Five studies by leading art scholars focus on key works in the collection and contribute to a new understanding of the origins of many of the pieces. Two introductory essays comment on the character of the collection as a whole, its acquisition by Duke University, and its conservation. Finally, the catalog section discusses the more important pieces in the collection and is followed by a checklist of entries and smaller photographs of all other objects.

Contributors. Ilene H. Forsyth, Jean M. French, Dorothy F. Glass, Dieter Kimpel, Jill Meredith, Linda S. Roundhill

[more]

front cover of The Cone Sisters of Baltimore
The Cone Sisters of Baltimore
Collecting at Full Tilt
Ellen B. Hirschland
Northwestern University Press, 2008
Over a period of fifty years, sisters Claribel and Etta Cone amassed one of the most acclaimed collections of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century art in America. Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta were two halves of an idiosyncratic team—Claribel bold and assertive and Etta reflective and sensitive—who used the fortunes of their German Jewish immigrant family to seek out works that inspired and pleased them, regardless of public opinion and with only self-taught expertise.

This richly illustrated biography documents their lives from a unique perspective: that of their great-niece, who wrote this book with her daughter. Ellen B. Hirschland and Nancy Hirschland Ramage delve into Claribel’s and Etta’s world, following the sisters through letters and personal stories as they travel to meet some of the artists whose works would turn their adjoining apartments into a gallery. They bought art by Manet, Gauguin, and Cézanne, as well as of Picasso and Matisse, whom they came to know well. The sisters’ experiences in Paris from 1901 through the 1920s provide an exceptional view of the bright artistic ferment in the city at that time. They were two Victorian women from Baltimore buying avant-garde masterpieces, attending salons with friends Gertrude and Leo Stein, and building a collection that would initially enrage the conservative people around them. Only with time would their keen eyes and unwavering taste prove them right.

[more]

front cover of Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, Fascicule 10
Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, Fascicule 10
Athenian Red-Figure Column and Volute Kraters
Despoina Tsiafakis
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2019
This expansive catalogue of ancient Greek painted pottery brings an important series into the digital age with a new open-access format. Cataloging some hundred thousand examples of ancient Greek painted pottery held in collections around the world, the authoritative Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (Corpus of Ancient Vases) is the oldest research project of the Union Académique Internationale. Nearly four hundred volumes have been published since the first fascicule appeared in 1922.
 
This new fascicule of the CVA—the tenth issued by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the first ever to be published open access—presents a selection of Attic red-figure column and volute kraters ranging from 520 to 510 BCE through the early fourth century BCE. Among the works included are a significant dinoid volute krater and a volute krater with the Labors of Herakles that is attributed to the Kleophrades Painter.

The free online edition of this open-access catalogue is available at www.getty.edu/publications/cva10/. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book, CSV and JSON downloads of the object data, and JPG downloads of the catalogue images.
[more]

front cover of
"History Is Bunk"
Assembling the Past at Henry Ford's Greenfield Village
Jessie Swigger
University of Massachusetts Press, 2014
In 1916 a clearly agitated Henry Ford famously proclaimed that "history is more or less bunk." Thirteen years later, however, he opened the outdoor history museum Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. It was written history's focus on politicians and military heroes that was bunk, he explained. Greenfield Village would correct this error by celebrating farmers and inventors.

The village eventually included a replica of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory, the Wright brothers' cycle shop and home from Dayton, Ohio, and Ford's own Michigan birthplace. But not all of the structures were associated with famous men. Craft and artisan shops, a Cotswold cottage from England, and two brick slave cabins also populated the village landscape. Ford mixed replicas, preserved buildings, and whole-cloth constructions that together celebrated his personal worldview.

Greenfield Village was immediately popular. But that only ensured that the history it portrayed would be interpreted not only by Ford but also by throngs of visitors and the guides and publicity materials they encountered. After Ford's death in 1947, administrators altered the village in response to shifts in the museum profession at large, demographic changes in the Detroit metropolitan area, and the demands of their customers.

Jessie Swigger analyzes the dialogue between museum administrators and their audiences by considering the many contexts that have shaped Greenfield Village. The result is a book that simultaneously provides the most complete extant history of the site and an intimate look at how the past is assembled and constructed at history museums.
[more]

logo for University of Massachusetts Press
History Is Bunk
Assembling the Past at Henry Ford's Greenfield Village
Swigger Jessie
University of Massachusetts Press

front cover of Korean Treasures
Korean Treasures
Rare Books, Manuscripts and Artefacts in the Bodleian Libraries and Museums of Oxford University
Minh Chung
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2011
The Bodleian Library and the museums of the University of Oxford are home to many historically significant and valuable manuscripts, rare books, and artifacts related to Korean history and culture. Despite their importance, many of these items have been overlooked within the libraries’ collections and largely neglected by scholars. Korean Treasures seeks to change this by highlighting the many noteworthy and unusual archaeological relics and artworks in the collections and presenting them together in a single volume for the first time. 
 
Notable items included here are the court painting scroll of the funeral procession of King Yongjo (1694–1776); a presentation edition of a book given by King Yongjo to his son-in-law; a group of documents issued by Emperor Kojong (1852–1919) between 1885–86 to confer various titles to his civil and military officials; a sundial made by the famous maker Kang Yun (1830–1898) for Emperor Kojong; a ceramic dish made and signed by Princess Yi Pangja (1901–1989) as well as a rare example of a suit of armor, an ornate helmet of the early sixteenth century, and a general’s quiver and arrows. In addition to the numerous color images of items from the collection, Korean Treasures provides a thorough overview of the extent of the Korean book collections in Oxford and a guide to the locations where some of these treasures can be found.
[more]

front cover of Latin Inscriptions in the Kelsey Museum
Latin Inscriptions in the Kelsey Museum
The Dennison and De Criscio Collections
Steven L. Tuck
University of Michigan Press, 2006
The Latin inscriptions in the Kelsey Museum are among the best primary sources we have for documenting the lives of the lower classes in the Roman world. They provide unique evidence of the details of Roman daily life, including beliefs, occupations, families, and attitudes toward death.

The 400 entries in this volume include all of the Latin inscriptions on stone or metal in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan; they represent the largest, and arguably the most important, collection of Latin inscriptions in the Western Hemisphere. The collection is notable not just for its size but for the fact that almost all the inscriptions were acquired by purchase for their scholarly and educational value to the members of the university community. Because of this, the collection is also an important testimony to a seminal phase in the development of the study of Classics at the University of Michigan. For the first time ever, this project makes the Latin inscriptions of the Kelsey available in one volume and has provided an opportunity to reexamine some texts that have not been edited in over a century. The commentaries for this edition have benefited from a wealth of recent scholarship resulting in some amended readings and reidentification of texts.

Steven L. Tuck is Assistant Professor of Classics at Miami University of Ohio.

The Kelsey Museum Studies series, edited by University of Michigan professors Elaine Gazda, Margaret Cool Root, and John Pedley, is designed to publish unusual material in the Museum's collections, together with reports of current and past archaeological expeditions sponsored by the University of Michigan.
[more]

front cover of Navajo Textiles
Navajo Textiles
The Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Laurie D. Webster
University Press of Colorado, 2017

Navajo Textiles provides a nuanced account the Navajo weavings in the Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science—one of the largest collections of Navajo textiles in the world. Bringing together the work of anthropologists and indigenous artists, the book explores the Navajo rug trade in the mid-nineteenth century and changes in the Navajo textile market while highlighting the museum’s important, though still relatively unknown, collection of Navajo textiles.

In this unique collaboration among anthropologists, museums, and Navajo weavers, the authors provide a narrative of the acquisition of the Crane Collection and a history of Navajo weaving. Personal reflections and insights from foremost Navajo weavers D. Y. Begay and Lynda Teller Pete are also featured, and more than one hundred stunning full-color photographs of the textiles in the collection are accompanied by technical information about the materials and techniques used in their creation. An introduction by Ann Lane Hedlund documents the growing collaboration between Navajo weavers and museums in Navajo textile research. 

The legacy of Navajo weaving is complex and intertwined with the history of the Diné themselves. Navajo Textiles makes the history and practice of Navajo weaving accessible to an audience of scholars and laypeople both within and outside the Diné community.

[more]

front cover of Proof
Proof
Photographs from Four Generations of a Texas Family
Byrd M. Williams IV
University of North Texas Press, 2016

front cover of Rethinking America's Past
Rethinking America's Past
Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection
Edited by Tim Gruenewald
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019
While visitors to art and history museums may be there to simply enjoy the curated objects, the question of what is included (and excluded) in these collections and who has the power over this process echoes the struggle for inclusion that is so central to the African American experience. Since its inception, the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection® has played an important role in this struggle, seeking out objects that give voice to previously excluded experiences, and providing an alternative to the limits of institutional collections.
 
Among the first scholarly books dedicated to a private African American collection, Rethinking America’s Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection both chronicles the reach of this important cultural collection and contributes to its project by sharing selected objects and stories with a broader audience. Essays range in subject from iconic African American artists, such as Loïs Mailou Jones and Beauford Delaney, to important historical figures such as Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King, to individuals whose experiences might be lost to history but for the found objects that preserve their stories. Rethinking America’s Past demonstrates how the African American story, from slavery through the present, is represented and can be actively remembered through the act of collecting.
 
Rethinking America’s Past will appeal to audiences interested in African American history as well as art history, but its real power is in linking the two, showing how important collections are in constructing and repairing historical narratives, and how in the words of editor Tim Gruenewald, “Collecting overlooked aspects of our past and sharing such collections enables a deeper understanding of the present moment, and facilitates a more inclusive and just future.”
 
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
The School of Prague
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann
University of Chicago Press, 1988
The School of Prague provides both a much-needed catalogue raisonné of painting in Rudolfine Prague and a significant reassessment of Renaissance art theory and practice. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann masterfully reconstructs the Prague court, discussing the "mannerist" art it patronized and the artists who were active in it.
[more]

front cover of Something All Our Own
Something All Our Own
The Grant Hill Collection of African American Art
Grant Hill
Duke University Press, 2003
Since 1990, Grant Hill has thrilled sports fans with his artistry on the basketball court, first as an All-American player at Duke University and then as a six-time NBA All-Star for the Detroit Pistons and the Orlando Magic. During these years, Hill has amassed a collection of art by African Americans that he now shares with the public through this book, which accompanies a traveling exhibition.
The forty-six pieces documented here include thirteen works that span the career of the great Romare Bearden, from his 1941 gouache painting Serenade to the important collages of the 1980s. Hill’s fascination with artists’ depiction of women is represented in Elizabeth Catlett’s lithographs, many of them from the 1992 series “For My People,” and her sculptures in stone, bronze, and onyx. In addition to these two giants of twentieth-century art, the Hill Collection features pieces by Phoebe Beasley, Arthello Beck Jr., John Biggers, Malcolm Brown, John Coleman, Edward Jackson, and Hughie Lee Smith.
Hill began collecting art in the early 1990s after learning from his parents to appreciate artworks not only as objects of beauty but as expressions of heritage and culture. According to the internationally known curator Alvia J. Wardlaw, he is part of an emerging group of young African American collectors who have “raised the bar for others.” Hill writes, “Getting to know yourself means understanding your background and appreciating those who have come before you. My father has a saying he uses in speeches: ‘To be ignorant of your past is to remain a boy. ‘The interest in my heritage as an African American is reflected in this collection.”
Something All Our Own features Wardlaw’s essay on the history of African American collecting. It also features articles about Bearden and Catlett by the scholars Elizabeth Alexander and Beverly Guy-Sheftall and reflections about Hill by the historian John Hope Franklin, Duke’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, and the sportswriter William C. Rhoden. Hill and his father, the NFL great Calvin Hill, contribute a dialogue that explores their motivations for collecting art.
At the heart of the book are the exquisite color photographs of the forty-six artworks included in the exhibition, with commentary by Wardlaw and by Hill himself.
As a star athlete, Grant Hill is well aware that African Americans who excel in sports and entertainment are more broadly recognized than their counterparts in artistic fields. He strives to inspire young people to explore their heritage and broaden their concept of excellence by learning more about African American art. By sharing his artworks with collectors and fans, Hill reminds us that while the jump shot is ephemeral, art is enduring.
[more]

front cover of Strata
Strata
William Smith’s Geological Maps
Edited by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Lavishly illustrated with full-color geological maps, tables of strata, geological cross-sections, photographs, and fossil illustrations from the archives of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the Geological Society, the London Natural History Museum, and others, Strata provides the first complete presentation of the revolutionary work of nineteenth-century geologist William Smith, the so-called father of English geology. It illustrates the story of his career, from apprentice to surveyor for hire and fossil collector, from his 1799 geological map of Bath and table of strata to his groundbreaking 1815 geological strata map, and from his imprisonment for debt to his detailed stratigraphical county maps.
 
This sumptuous volume begins with an introduction by Douglas Palmer that places Smith’s work in the context of earlier, concurrent, and subsequent ideas regarding the structure and natural processes of the earth, geographical mapping, and biostratigraphical theories. The book is then organized into four parts, each beginning with four sheets from Smith’s hand-colored, 1815 strata map, accompanied by related geological cross-sections and county maps, and followed by fossil illustrations by Smith contemporary James Sowerby, all organized by strata. Essays between each section explore the aims of Smith’s work and its application in the fields of mining, agriculture, cartography and hydrology. Strata concludes with reflections on Smith’s later years as an itinerant geologist and surveyor, plagiarism by a rival, receipt of the first Wollaston Medal in recognition of his achievements, and the influence of his geological mapping and biostratigraphical theories on the sciences—all of which culminated in the establishment of the modern geological timescale.
 
Featuring a foreword by Robert Macfarlane, Strata is a glorious testament to the lasting geological and illustrative genius of William Smith, a collection as colossal and awe-inspiring as the layers of the Earth themselves.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Ukraine under Western Eyes
The Bohdan and Neonila Krawciw Ucrainica Map Collection
Steven Seegel
Harvard University Press

From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, the geopolitical placement of Ukraine drew the attention of some of Europe’s most influential cartographers. Many of these maps, including ones of exceptional rarity, were collected by the Ukrainian scholar and journalist Bohdan Krawciw.

Krawciw traced the physical and aesthetic depiction of Ukraine across its changing borders as a means of self-recognition and as a cultural and political history of the contested nation and its peoples. Of special interest are his maps of Ukraine from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the crossroads of four empires: Habsburg, Ottoman, Russian, and Soviet.

As part of his personal archive, Krawciw’s maps were bequeathed to Harvard University upon his death in 1975. This book serves as both a catalog of his collection and a description of how the maps he collected serve as an invaluable source for Ukraine’s history and a symbol of Ukrainian national identity. The book contains nearly 100 examples from the collection, many in full color, as well as indices listing maps by cartographer and by place name.

[more]

front cover of Western Apache Material Culture
Western Apache Material Culture
The Goodwin and Guenther Collections
Alan Ferg
University of Arizona Press, 1987
"Western Apache Material Culture is a collection of essays specifically about the Guenther and Goodwin Western Apache ethnographic collections at the Arizona State Museum, and about Western Apache culture. . . . This is an important book and will become the standard reference on Western Apache material culture." —American Indian Quarterly

"This book will surely appeal not only to those who are interested in the Apache, material culture studies, or the potential of Native American museum resources as cultural and historical documents, but also to those who are concerned with the way humans adapted to the environment and thus 'utilized their world so well.'" —African Arts

"It is a remarkably beautiful and detailed catalog of the Goodwin and Guenther collections of Wester Apache artiffacts in the Arizona State Musuem—and a lot more! . . . A section of thirty-two color photographs by award-winning photographer Helga Teiwes is the delectable frosting on this rich and satisfying cake." —Journal of Arizona History
[more]

front cover of Woven from the Center
Woven from the Center
Native Basketry in the Southwest
Diane D. Dittemore
University of Arizona Press, 2024
In the beginning was basketry. Around the world, the intertwining of fibers by hand to form a container is a most ancient of crafts. It is older than pottery and metalwork, older than loom weaving.

Woven from the Center presents breathtaking basketry from some of the greatest weavers in the Southwest. Each sandal and mat fragment, each bowl and jar, every water bottle and whimsy is infused with layers of aesthetic, cultural, and historical meanings. This book offers stunning photos and descriptions of woven works from Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’odham, Hopi, Western Apache, Yavapai, Navajo, Pai, Paiute, New Mexico Pueblo, Eastern Apache, Seri, Yaqui, Mayo, and Tarahumara communities.

This richly illustrated volume stands on its own as a definitive look at basketry of the Greater Southwest, including northern Mexico. It also serves as a companion to the peerless collection of U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexican Native American basketry curated at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, Arizona. Comprehensive in its coverage, this work is based on decades of research on weavers, collectors, and donors. It includes ample illustrations of basket weavers, past and present, bringing to life the people behind these wonderful woven treasures.
[more]

front cover of The Yorkshire Tea Ceremony
The Yorkshire Tea Ceremony
W. A. Ismay and His Collection of British Studio Pottery
Helen Walsh
Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021
The remarkable collection of the UK’s most prolific collector of postwar British studio pottery.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, “professional Yorkshireman” W. A. Ismay (1910–2001) amassed over 3,600 pieces by more than 500 potters. Surrounded by his family of pots, he lived in a tiny terraced house in Wakefield, Yorkshire, and left his collection and its associated archive to the city of York upon his death. This eclectic group of works contains objects created by many of the most significant potters working in the United Kingdom, including Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Bernard Leach, and Michael Cardew, as well as lesser-known makers. 

With new academic research into this little-studied collection and archive, Yorkshire Tea Ceremony explores Ismay’s journey as a collector and offers fresh perspectives on a marginalized area of British Modernism. Tracing the collection’s journey from private to public ownership illuminates issues surrounding the acquisition and reveals the transformative effect it has had on both curatorial practice and the ambition of regional public institutions. The W. A. Ismay Collection offers a well-documented example of the valuable contribution collectors can make to the British studio ceramics movement.

Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the collection’s move from private to public ownership, this volume accompanies an exhibition at York Art Gallery’s Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA).
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter