151 books match the query 'Exhibitions' and 12 start with a

cover of A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s

A Feast of Astonishments

Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s

Edited by Lisa Graziose Corrin and Corrine Granof

Northwestern University Press, 2015

Charlotte Moorman was a bold, barrier-breaking musician and performance artist and a tireless champion of experimental art, whose avant-garde festivals in New York City brought new art forms to a broad public. To date, recognition of Moorman has been limited mostly to her collaborations with other artists, including composer John Cage and pioneering multimedia artist Nam June Paik, and to her 1967 performance of Paik’s "Opera Sextronique," for which she became known as the "topless cellist" after being arrested on indecency charges. A Feast of Astonishments looks deeper to portray Moorman as a leading international figure in her own right.

With more than 150 color images and essays by art historians, curators, and musicologists, this catalog will offer a fresh perspective and complement an exhibition that opens at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in January 2016 before traveling to New York University’s Grey Art Gallery in Manhattan and the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, Austria. The exhibition will feature original sculptures, photographs, video, props and costumes, annotated music scores, archival materials, film clips, and audio recordings, many drawn from the Charlotte Moorman Archive at the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library. The exhibition is a partnership between the Block Museum and the Northwestern University Libraries.

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cover of A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund

A Force for Change

African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund

Daniel Schulman

Northwestern University Press, 2009

The Julius Rosenwald Fund has been largely ignored in the literature of both art history and African American studies, despite its unique focus, intensity, and commitment. Spertus Museum in Chicago has organized an exhibition, guest curated by Daniel Schulman, that presents and explores the work of funded artists as well as the history of the Fund. Through it, and this accompanying collection of essays, illustrations, and color plates, we see the Fund’s groundbreaking initiative to address issues relating to the unequal treatment of blacks in American life. The book constitutes a veritable Who’s Who of African American artists and intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century, as well as a roll call of modern contributors who represent the leading scholars in their fields, including Peter M. Ascoli, grandson and biographer of Julius Rosenwald, and Kinshasha Holman Conwill, deputy director of the National Museum of African American Art and Culture. With far-reaching influence even today, the Julius Rosenwald Fund stands alongside the Rockefeller and Carnegie funds as a major force in American cultural history.
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cover of A Long March: The Lives of Frank and Alice Baldwin

A Long March

The Lives of Frank and Alice Baldwin

By Robert H. Steinbach

University of Texas Press, 1990

During a distinguished military career, in which he rose to the rank of brigadier general and twice won the Medal of Honor, Frank Baldwin saw service in the Civil War, the Indian wars on the Great Plains, and the Spanish-American War. His wife, Alice Blackwood Baldwin, shared the "long march" with him, from his Plains service onward. In this first biography of the Baldwins, Robert Steinbach combines military and personal history to vividly portray a marriage that survived both the harshness of frontier army life and the restrictive Victorian concept of "separate spheres" for husband and wife.

Drawing on a wealth of diaries, letters, and other family papers, Steinbach re-creates the Baldwins' life on the Plains. Moving from post to post in Kansas, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota, and Texas, they faced danger, excitement, separations, poverty, and many other hardships. Frequently they clashed over Alice's desire to be something more than "an ornament to society"—a wish eventually granted as Frank's long absences and chronic ill health required Allie to take responsibility for herself and their daughter.

With insights into military campaigns on the Great Plains in the years 1865–1890 and a revealing look at the human side of those campaigns, A Long March will appeal to a wide audience.

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cover of Alberto Giacometti: Drawings and Watercolours. The Bruno Giacometti Bequest

Alberto Giacometti

Drawings and Watercolours. The Bruno Giacometti Bequest

Monique Meyer

Scheidegger and Spiess, 2014

Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901–66) was one of the leading surrealist sculptors and inarguably one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. His sculptures and drawings—displaying emaciated figures isolated in space—offer a revealing look into issues of mortality, embodiment, and the human condition, while giving physical expression to Giacometti’s twin obsessions, the human form and the alienation of modern life. In this book, Monique Meyer presents previously unpublished drawings and watercolors by the prolific artist from the collection Giacometti’s youngest brother Bruno bequeathed to Kunsthaus Zürich.
           
Comprising about one hundred of Giacometti’s works on paper, this well-guarded family treasure represents the artist’s entire life, from his youth in Stampa, Switzerland to his later years in Paris. This collection includes very early copies of works by old masters as well as studies of ancient Egyptian and Roman sculptures from the 1920s. It also shows how closely Giacometti looked at the art of Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, and Auguste Rodin, which then led to highly individual interpretations of their work. In addition, it contains important drawings of some of Giacometti’s relatives along with self-portraits, alpine landscapes from his native Val Bregaglia, and masterful figure studies from the 1950s and 60s.
           
Featuring 144 color images, this concise book features the first selection of these works the world has seen alongside an essay on their history and significance and an illustrated catalogue of the entire collection.
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cover of American Coal: Russell Lee Portraits

American Coal

Russell Lee Portraits

Mary Jane Appel and Douglas Brinkley

University of Texas Press, 2024

More than 100 powerful images by noted photographer Russell Lee that document the working conditions and lives of coal mining communities in the postwar United States; publication coincides with an exhibition at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

In 1946 the Truman administration made a promise to striking coal miners: as part of a deal to resume work, the government would sponsor a nationwide survey of health and labor conditions in mining camps. One instrumental member of the survey team was photographer Russell Lee. Lee had made his name during the Depression, when, alongside Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, he used his camera to document agrarian life for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Now he trained his lens on miners and their families to show their difficult circumstances despite their essential contributions to the nation's first wave of postwar growth.

American Coal draws from the thousands of photographs that Lee made for the survey—also on view in the US National Archives and Records Administration’s exhibition Power & Light—and includes his original, detailed captions as well as an essay by biographer Mary Jane Appel and historian Douglas Brinkley. They place his work in context and illuminate how Lee helped win improved conditions for his subjects through vivid images that captured an array of miners and their communities at work and at play, at church and in school, in moments of joy and struggle, ultimately revealing to their fellow Americans the humanity and resilience of these underrecognized workers.

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cover of Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece

Ancient Thrace and the Classical World

Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece

Jeffrey Spier

J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2024

A captivating examination of the profound impact Thracian art and culture had on the Greeks and the entire northern Aegean region.

The Thracians—a collection of tribal peoples who inhabited territories north of ancient Greece, an area that comprises present-day Bulgaria, much of Romania, and parts of Greece and Turkey—were renowned for their skill as warriors and horsemen, as well as for their wealth in precious metals. Thracians left few written records, and knowledge of their history and customs has long been dependent on brief accounts from ancient Greek authors. They appeared in Greek myth as formidable adversaries in the Trojan War, cruel kings, and followers of the ecstatic god Dionysos. Spectacular archaeological discoveries made in Thracian lands during modern times, however, have provided firsthand evidence of this remarkable culture, illuminating Thrace’s interactions with Greece, Persia, and Rome.

Ancient Thrace and the Classical World reproduces more than two hundred glorious objects dating from the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC, to the end of the first century AD, when Thrace became part of the Roman Empire. Experts explore topics such as Thracian royal tombs, the Greek colonization of the Black Sea coast, Thracian religion, and more, placing Thracian culture in a broader historical context that highlights its complex relationships with the surrounding region.

This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa from November 6, 2024, to March 3, 2025.
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cover of Andy Coolquitt

Andy Coolquitt

By Rachel Hooper

University of Texas Press, 2012

Andy Coolquitt makes objects and environments that exist in symbiosis with human relationships. During the 1990s, his life and work revolved around an expansive studio/artist commune/performance space/living sculpture/party place on the east side of Austin, Texas, where he continues to live, work, and host events. Intrigued by social contracts, Coolquitt creates artwork that facilitates conversation and interaction, augmenting the energy and frictions generated by individuals forming a community. He chooses materials that show the wear and tear of practical use, and, over the years, he has refined an artistic practice based on the collection, study, and reuse of things scavenged from the streets around him. Since his 2008 solo exhibition iight in New York City, Coolquitt’s work has gained a wide national and international audience.

Andy Coolquitt is the first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s work. Published in conjunction with a solo museum exhibition at Blaffer Art Museum, this volume displays the full range of Coolquitt’s work over the past twenty-five years, including images of site-specific installations that no longer exist. Accompanying the color plates are an introduction and chronology of the artist’s work by exhibition curator Rachel Hooper, an essay tracing Coolquitt’s connections to other contemporary artists and designers by Frieze magazine senior editor Dan Fox, an in-depth exploration of Coolquitt’s concepts and process by art writer Jan Tumlir, an interview with Coolquitt by director and chief curator of White Columns Matthew Higgs, and Coolquitt’s biography and bibliography.

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cover of Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East

Archaic Bookkeeping

Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East

Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow, and Robert K. Englund

University of Chicago Press, 1993

Archaic Bookkeeping brings together the most current
scholarship on the earliest true writing system in human
history. Invented by the Babylonians at the end of the
fourth millennium B.C., this script, called proto-cuneiform,
survives in the form of clay tablets that have until now
posed formidable barriers to interpretation. Many tablets,
excavated in fragments from ancient dump sites, lack a clear
context. In addition, the purpose of the earliest tablets
was not to record language but to monitor the administration
of local economies by means of a numerical system.

Using the latest philological research and new methods
of computer analysis, the authors have for the first time
deciphered much of the numerical information. In
reconstructing both the social context and the function of
the notation, they consider how the development of our
earliest written records affected patterns of thought, the
concept of number, and the administration of household
economies. Complete with computer-generated graphics keyed
to the discussion and reproductions of all documents referred
to in the text, Archaic Bookkeeping will interest
specialists in Near Eastern civilizations, ancient history,
the history of science and mathematics, and cognitive
psychology.
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cover of Architects of Being: The Creative Lives of Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina

Architects of Being

The Creative Lives of Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina

Catherine Walworth

University of Arkansas Press, 2025

Born just nine years apart in Ukraine and Siberia, respectively, Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina were both children of Jewish families who fled Russian governmental repression and conflict. Both made early marriages of convenience or convention that were short-lived. Both went to New York in the 1920s, struggling to become artists amid the Great Depression. Both overcame the accepted modes of making, moving between art forms in expansive, category-defying ways. The parallels are poignant, including their similarly fearless devotion to abstract art in an era that had yet to fully embrace it. Architects of Being pays homage to these two women who were direct and dauntless.

Fittingly, this book draws its title from Nevelson’s insight that “there’s something very important about character: character is structure. Character is the architecture of the being.” The connection between inner self and outward manifestation—both one’s art and one’s self-fashioning—is at the heart of Architects of Being. This richly illustrated and expertly researched exhibition catalog celebrates Nevelson’s and Slobodkina’s artistic journeys and architectural affinities, expanding our understanding of how these pioneering figures dissolved boundaries between art forms in ways that prefigured what we see throughout the art world today.

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cover of Armenia: Masterpieces from an Enduring Culture

Armenia

Masterpieces from an Enduring Culture

Theo Maarten van Lint and Robin Meyer

Bodleian Library Publishing, 2015

Between East and West, Armenian culture bears the influence of the country’s long history of foreign occupation, with a vibrant national art and literature that reinterprets elements from a wide variety of cultures, from the Sasanian dynasty of Iran to the Byzantine Empire.
           
Published to accompany an exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Armenia: Masterpieces from an Enduring Culture draws on the Libraries’ magnificent collection of Armenian manuscripts and early printed books, as well as works of art and religious artifacts to tell the story of the region. The book contains nearly two hundred color illustrations of some of the most treasured masterpieces, from philosophical treatises to splendidly illuminated gospel manuscripts. Also including four essays by experts in the field, the book affords ample insight into the perseverance of the Armenian people in the face of tremendous adversity.
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cover of Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now

Art for a New Understanding

Native Voices, 1950s to Now

Mindy N. Besaw

University of Arkansas Press, 2018

Art for a New Understanding, an exhibition from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art that opened in October 2018, seeks to radically expand and reposition the narrative of American art since 1950 by charting a history of the development of contemporary Indigenous art from the United States and Canada, beginning when artists moved from more regionally-based conversations and practices to national and international contemporary art contexts.

This fully illustrated volume includes essays by art historians and historians and reflections by the artists included in the collection. Also included are key contemporary writings—from the 1950s onward—by artists, scholars, and critics, investigating the themes of transculturalism and pan-Indian identity, traditional practices conducted in radically new ways, displacement, forced migration, shadow histories, the role of personal mythologies as a means to reimagine the future, and much more.

As both a survey of the development of Indigenous art from the 1950s to the present and a consideration of Native artists within contemporary art more broadly, Art for a New Understanding expands the definition of American art and sets the tone for future considerations of the subject. It is an essential publication for any institution or individual with an interest in contemporary Native American art, and an invaluable resource in ongoing scholarly considerations of the American contemporary art landscape at large.
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cover of Arthur Tress: Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows

Arthur Tress

Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows

James A. Ganz

J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2023

This richly illustrated volume is the first critical look at the early career of Arthur Tress, a key proponent of magical realism and staged photography.

Arthur Tress (b. 1940) is a singular figure in the landscape of postwar American photography. His seminal series, The Dream Collector, depicts Tress’s interests in dreams, nightmares, fantasies, and the unconscious and established him as one of the foremost proponents of magical realism at a time when few others were doing staged photography.

This volume presents the first critical look at Tress’s early career, contextualizing the highly imaginative, fantastic work he became known for while also examining his other interrelated series: Appalachia: People and Places; Open Space in the Inner City; Shadow; and Theater of the Mind. James A. Ganz, Mazie M. Harris, and Paul Martineau plumb Tress’s work and archives, studying ephemera, personal correspondence, unpublished notes, diaries, contact sheets, and more to uncover how he went from earning his living as a social documentarian in Appalachia to producing surreal work of “imaginative fiction.” This abundantly illustrated volume imparts a fuller understanding of Tress’s career and the New York photographic scene of the 1960s and 1970s.

This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from October 31, 2023, to February 18, 2024.
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