Comes with an enclosed, supportive DVD-ROM The Louvre is the world's most visited art museum, with 8.5 million visitors annually, and houses the most celebrated and important paintings of all time. For the first time ever, The Louvre: All the Paintings collects all 2,981 paintings currently on display in the permanent collection in one beautifully curated volume. Organized and divided into the four main painting collections of the museum— the Italian School, the Northern School, the Spanish School, and the French School— the paintings are then presented chronologically by the artist's date of birth.Four hundred of the most iconic and significant paintings are illuminated with 300-word discussions by art historians Anja Grebe and Vincent Pomarède on the key attributes of the work, what to look for when viewing the painting, the artist's inspirations and techniques, biographical information on the artist, the artist's impact on the history of art, and more. All 2,981 paintings are fully annotated with the name of the painting and artist, the date of the work, the birth and death dates of the artist, the medium that was used, the size of the painting, the Louvre catalog number, and the room in the Louvre in which the painting is found. The DVD-ROM is easily browsable by artist, date, school, art historical genre, or location in the Louvre. This last feature allows readers to tour the Louvre and its contents room by room, as if they were actually walking through the building.

    The monetary value is estimated at over half a billion dollars. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity? The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world’s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and frank interviews, Felch and Frammolino give us a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum and tell the story of the Getty’s dealings in the illegal antiquities trade. The outlandish characters and bad behavior could come straight from the pages of a thriller—the wealthy recluse founder, the cagey Italian art investigator, the playboy curator, the narcissist CEO—but their chilling effects on the rest of the art world have been all too real, as the authors show in novelistic detail. Fast-paced and compelling, Chasing Aphrodite exposes the layer of dirt beneath the polished façade of the museum business.

    The difference is that it is a civilisation of one. The territory it springs from is my imagination...The relationship between my personal themes and obsessions and the vastness of world culture as represented in the British Museum is like a narrow pilgrimage trail across an infinite plain. Grayson Perry's centrepiece to this fascinating journey is a major artwork: a metal tomb in the form of a ship, encrusted with reliefs and artistic cargo based on, or actually cast from, objects in the collection of the British Museum. The occupant sails into the afterlife surrounded by the talismans of many faiths and people. This is a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen that over the centuries have fashioned the man-made wonders of the world, many of which are on display in the Museum. Around the tomb, the other artworks - ceramics, tiles, cast metal sculpture, textiles and prints - are laid out in ritualistic symmetry as if they once belonged somewhere else. Alongside his own works, Grayson Perry presents a personal selection of objects from the British Museum that are the inspiration for his pieces or connected strongly with them thematically or aesthetically. Including an introduction by Grayson Perry and lavishly illustrated, this book takes us to the fantasy world of a contemporary artist who never fails to challenge and unsettle his audience.

    But what constitutes an experience of a work of art? What should be taught and why? What kinds of uniquely valuable experiences are museum educators alone equipped to provide? This book—unlike any other publication currently available—addresses these and myriad other questions and investigates the mission, history, theory, practice, and future prospects of museum education. Every critical issue that has preoccupied the profession throughout its hundred-year history is considered, including lecture- versus conversation-based formats; the place of information in gallery teaching; the relation of art museum teaching to the disciplines of art history, curation, and conservation; the use of questions to stimulate discussion; and the role of playfulness, self-awareness, and institutional context in constructing the visitor’s experience.The book will prove invaluable for all professional museum educators and volunteer docents as well as museum studies students, art and art history teachers, curators, and museum administrators. The essays distill the authors’ decades of experience as practitioners and observers of gallery teaching across the United States and abroad. They offer a range of perspectives on which everyone involved with art museum education may reflect and in so doing, encourage education to take its proper place at the center of the twenty-first century art museum.

    Designed to demonstrate the artists' abilities and to promote racial equality, the exhibition also revealed the art world's anxieties about the participation of African Americans in the exclusive venue of art museums—places where blacks had historically been barred from visiting let alone exhibiting. Since then, America's major art museums have served as crucial locations for African Americans to protest against their exclusion and attest to their contributions in the visual arts.In Exhibiting Blackness, art historian Bridget R. Cooks analyzes the curatorial strategies, challenges, and critical receptions of the most significant museum exhibitions of African American art. Tracing two dominant methodologies used to exhibit art by African Americans—an ethnographic approach that focuses more on artists than their art, and a recovery narrative aimed at correcting past omissions—Cooks exposes the issues involved in exhibiting cultural difference that continue to challenge art history, historiography, and American museum exhibition practices. By further examining the unequal and often contested relationship between African American artists, curators, and visitors, she provides insight into the complex role of art museums and their accountability to the cultures they represent.

    The print, of which numerous multiples were made, shows a monster of a wave rearing up and about to come crashing down on three fishing boats and their crews. One of a monumental series known as 'Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji', Hokusai's Great Wave - with the graceful snow-clad Mount Fuji on the horizon, unperturbed but wittily dwarfed by the towering strength of the wave that threatens to engulf the struggling boats - has become an iconic image of the power of nature and the relative smallness of man. One of the most famous pieces of Japanese art, this extraordinary artwork has had a huge impact worldwide and has served as a source of inspiration to artists, both past and present.This beautifully illustrated book explores the meaning behind Hokusai's Great Wave, in the context of the Mount Fuji series and Japanese art as a whole. Taking an intimate look at the Wave's artistic and historical significance and its influence on popular culture, this concise introduction explains why Hokusai's modern masterpiece had such an impact after its creation in 1830 and why it continues to fascinate, inspire and challenge today.

    Indeed, use of the term has extended far beyond scholarship to the realm of politics and journalism, where it has appeared in speeches at the centers ofpower and on the front pages of the world's leading newspapers. Seen by scholars in numerous fields as a hallmark characteristic of our age, an idea crucial for understanding our present social, political, and cultural conditions, collective memory now guides inquiries into diverse, thoughconnected, phenomena. Nevertheless, there remains a great deal of confusion about the meaning, origin, and implication of the term and the field of inquiry it underwrites.The Collective Memory Reader presents, organizes, and evaluates past work and contemporary contributions on collective memory. Combining seminal texts, hard-to-find classics, previously untranslated references, and contemporary landmarks, it will serve as a key reference in the field. In addition toa thorough introduction, which outlines a useful past for contemporary memory studies, The Collective Memory Reader includes five sections-Precursors and Classics; History, Memory, and Identity; Power, Politics, and Contestation; Media and Modes of Transmission; Memory, Justice, and the ContemporaryEpoch-comprising ninety-one texts. A short editorial essay introduces each of the sections, while brief capsules frame each of the selected texts.An indispensable guide, The Collective Memory Reader is at once a definitive entry point into the field for students and an essential resource for scholars.

    The Companion Book to the Emmy Award-Winning Public Television Series

    This comprehensive book is an essential volume for anyone who wants to learn more about Leonardo da Vinci and to survey his greatest works in one collection.

    Celebrated and world-renowned works of art reveal themselves through cut-out pages that children must keep turning in order to discover the full work of art. Masters such as Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh are just some of the artists featured in this book. Ideal for both the budding artist and young reader, this book is a clever introduction to the world of classic art.

    All designers have their own way of working and their own combinations of the thousands of techniques one can apply when planning a new design project. But there are some dos and don'ts that always figure in any heated debate about what one should or should not accept as the right way to create the best graphic design. This book looks at key dos and don'ts, bringing them together in the form of a classically structured almanac. Packed with practical advice, but presented in a light-hearted fashion, the advisory rather than dictative approach means designers can take or leave the advice presented in each rule as is typical of most creatives with their own strong views on what does and does not constitute good design practice. Individual entries will either bring forth knowing nods of agreement or hoots of derision, depending on whether or not the reader loves or hates hyphenation, has a pathological fear of beige, or thinks that baseline grids are boring. Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans is the must-have collection of the best advice that any graphic designer should have at his fingertips, with each entry combining a specific rule with a commentary from a variety of experienced designers from all fields of the graphic design industry. Grouped into six, color-coded categories-typography, color, layout, imagery, production, and the practice of design-but presented numerically and in mixed groups, the reader can either dip in at random or use the book as the source of a daily lesson in how to produce great graphic design.

    It traces the afterlives of diseased body parts, asking how they came to be in these collections, what happened to them there, and who used them.Pathologists dismembered the dead body and preserved it, whether by injection or by storage in fluid, thereby transforming it into material culture. Thus fragmented body parts followed complex paths - harvested from hospital wards, given to a prestigious institution, or once again fragmented at auction. Human remains acquired new meanings as they were exchanged and, once in museums, specimens were re-integrated to form a physical map of disease. Curators juxtaposed organic specimens with paintings, photographs, and models, and rendered them legible with extensive catalogues - paper, wax, and text formed a series of overlapping systems. They were intended to standardize the educational experience that was the ostensible purpose of most of the museums, and yet visitors refused to be policed, responding powerfully, whether with wonder or disgust.Morbid Curiosities is a history of the material culture of medical knowledge, from prepared human remains to models, illustrations, and even architectural pillars and galleries.

    This guide will help you explore the collection and our exciting new building before, during, and after your visit.30 works are highlighted in this guide along with discussions of Dali's life and the museum's history. Color photos accompany the text. Paperback, 91 pages. Measures 7 3/4 inches x 4 3/4 inches.

    Subtly blending elements from Iran, West Asia, southern India, and sometimes Europe, as well as southern and northern India, the arts produced under these sultanates are markedly different from those of the rest of India and especially from those created under Mughal patronage. This publication, dedicated to the unique artistic output of the Deccan, is the result of a symposium held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008. Updating prior research in this field, the essays in this volume respond to and challenge earlier perceptions of Deccani art by bringing to light previously unpublished paintings, investigating new works of literature, identifying otherwise unattributed carpets and textiles (including several in the Metropolitan Museum), and supplying fresh interpretations of rarely studied architectural monuments. Throughout, the Deccan's connections to the wider world are explored. Special features of the book are the illustration of all thirty-four paintings from a 16th-century copy of the poem the Pem Nem, and new photography by Amit Pasricha of the Ibrahim Rauza in Bijapur, with the first full transcription and translation of the tomb's inscriptions.

    All have been designed to complement the museums they border and to enhance the overall museum experience. Imagine having the Smithsonian's resources and knowledge to solve the problems that confront every gardener: holding four-season interest, experimenting with exotic plants, designing a garden that reflects the architecture around it, creating a contemplative space, recreating historic or themed gardens, and much more.The Smithsonian Gardens are wide ranging: gardens that reflect distinct cultural influences; a rose garden; an intimate, four-season wonder filled with a vast selection of plants; an ever-changing backdrop and contemplative haven for viewing large-scale works of art; an eco-sensitive Native American habitat considered an extension of the building; an urban space dedicated to butterfly gardening; historical gardens that reflect the classic American flower garden and the Victory gardens of World War II; a classical oasis that invites reflection and contemplation; a historic courtyard turned all-season favorite with architectural pinache; the greenhouses that support these gardens and the museums with orchid displays, seasonal interest, and plant materials; and a garden collection that includes both furniture displayed in garden settings and extensive collections documenting historic and contemporary American gardens.

    Scholars, meanwhile, locate happenings in a genealogy of avant-garde performance that descends from futurism, surrealism, and Dada through the action painting of the 1950s. In Radical Prototypes, Judith Rodenbeck argues for a more complex etiology. Allan Kaprow coined the term in 1958 to name a new collage form of performance, calling happenings "radical prototypes" of performance art. Rodenbeck offers a rigorous art historical reading of Kaprow's project and related artworks. She finds that these experiential and experimental works offered not a happy communalism but a strong and canny critique of contemporary sociality. Happenings, she argues, were far more ambivalent, negative, and even creepy than they have been portrayed, either in contemporaneous accounts or in more recent efforts to connect them to contemporary art's participatory strategies.In Radical Prototypes, Rodenbeck recovers the critical force of happenings, addressing them both as theoretical objects and as artworks, investigating broader epistemological and formal concerns as well as their material and performative aspects. She links happenings to scores by John Cage (especially 4'33"), avant-garde theater, and photography, and offers new readings of projects ranging from Kaprow's 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959) to Gerhard Richter's Leben mit Pop (1963).Rodenbeck casts happenings as a form of participatory art that simultaneously delivers a radical critique of that very participation--a view that revises our understanding of contemporary constructions of the participatory as well as of 1960s projects from Fluxus to conceptual art.

    You need a quick reference that makes the process of becoming a sustainable, valued institution less overwhelming. The Small Museum Toolkit is a collection of six books that serves as a launching point for small museum staff to pursue best practices and meet museum standards. These brief volumes address governance, financial management, human resources, audience relations, interpretation, and stewardship for small museums and historic sites. The Small Museum Toolkit, written by thirty-four experienced museum professionals, helps you define the questions you should be asking, gives you tools to achieve your goals, and guides you where to go for help.

    As practitioners, artists, curators, activists and academics,the contributorsexplore the challenges of bearing witness to past conflicts.

    Much has been written about shamanism in both scholarly and popular literature, but few authors have linked it to another significant visual realm—art. In this pioneering study, Rebecca R. Stone considers how deep familiarity with, and profound respect for, the extra-ordinary visionary experiences of shamanism profoundly affected the artistic output of indigenous cultures in Central and South America before the European invasions of the sixteenth century. Using ethnographic accounts of shamanic trance experiences, Stone defines a core set of trance vision characteristics, including enhanced senses, ego dissolution, bodily distortions, flying, spinning and undulating sensations, synaesthesia, and physical transformation from the human self into animal and other states of being. Stone then traces these visionary characteristics in ancient artworks from Costa Rica and Peru. She makes a convincing case that these works, especially those of the Moche, depict shamans in a trance state or else convey the perceptual experience of visions by creating deliberately chaotic and distorted conglomerations of partial, inverted, and incoherent images.

    The exhibitions he mounted as Chief Curator and later Director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum--among them the unprecedented Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective--set a standard of curatorial excellence. A Curator's Quest is the story of the professional life of a pioneering curator who built the Modern's unparalleled collection, and a history of MoMA itself during that key period.For anyone interested in the history and world of modern art, in connoisseurship and collecting, and in art scholarship in general, A Curator's Quest is at once an indispensable addition to the history of modern art and a testament to William Rubin's life and achievements--is truly a publishing event.