Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Chip Colwell has navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. This book offers his personal account of the process of repatriation, following the trail of four objects as they were created, collected, and ultimately returned to their sources: a sculpture that is a living god, the scalp of a massacre victim, a ceremonial blanket, and a skeleton from a tribe considered by some to be extinct. These specific stories reveal a dramatic process that involves not merely obeying the law, but negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics. Things, like people, have biographies. Repatriation, Colwell argues, is a difficult but vitally important way for museums and tribes to acknowledge that fact—and heal the wounds of the past while creating a respectful approach to caring for these rich artifacts of history.

    It features images from the Jim Crow Museum, the nation's largest publicly accessible collection of racist objects. These pictures document the social injustice that Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as a pus-filled boil “which must be exposed to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” Each chapter concludes with a story from the author's journey, challenging the integrity of racial narratives.

    It wasn’t addressed to anyone at all, but Ben knew it was for him. It would lead him to an old, shambolic museum, full of strange and bewitching creatures. A peculiar world of hidden mysteries and curious family secrets . . . and some really dangerous magic.Filled with her own wonderful illustrations, The Hippo at the End of the Hall is Helen Cooper's debut novel.

    Exhibitions since the 1980s have presented his long career as a chronological sequence. This publication, which will coincide with an exhibition at the British Museum, takes a fresh approach based on innovative scholarship: thematic groupings of late works are related to the major spiritual and artistic quests of Hokusai’s life.Hokusai’s personal beliefs are contemplated here through analyses of major brush paintings, drawings, woodblock prints, and illustrated books. The publication gives due attention to the contribution of Hokusai’s daughter Eijo (Oi), also an accomplished artist. Hokusai continually explored the mutability and minutiae of natural phenomena in his art. His late subjects and styles were based on a mastery of eclectic Japanese, Chinese, and European techniques and an encyclopedic knowledge of nature, myth, and history.Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave draws on the finest collections of his work in Japan and around the world, making this the most important publication for years on Hokusai and a uniquely valuable overview of the artist’s late career.

    Opened in September 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture welcomes all visitors who seek to understand, remember, and celebrate this history. The guidebook provides a comprehensive tour of the museum, including its magnificent building and grounds and eleven permanent exhibition galleries dedicated to themes of history, community, and culture. Highlights from the museum's collection of artifacts and works of art are presented in full-color photographs, accompanied by evocative stories and voices that illuminate the American experience through the African American lens.

    While previous publications have mainly analyzed Wyeth’s work thematically, this publication places him fully in the context of the long 20th century, tracing his creative development from World War I through the new millennium.   Published to coincide with the centenary of Wyeth’s birth, the book looks at four major chronological periods in the artist’s career: Wyeth as a product of the interwar years, when he started to form his own “war memories” through military props and documentary photography he discovered in his father’s art studio; the change from his “theatrical” pictures of the 1940s to his own visceral responses to the landscape around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and his family’s home in Maine; his sudden turn, in 1968, into the realm of erotic art, including a completely new assessment of Wyeth’s “Helga pictures”—a series of secret, nude depictions of his neighbor Helga Testorf—within his career as a whole; and his late, self-reflective works, which includes the discussion of his previously unknown painting entitled Goodbye, now believed to be Wyeth’s last work.

    Stepwells are unique to India and from around the 3rd century CE were built throughout the country, particularly in the arid western regions. Excavated several stories underground in order to reach the water table, these cavernous spaces not only provided water all year long but also fulfilled other functions; they offered pilgrims and other travelers a respite from the heat, and became places in which villagers could socialize. Stepwell construction evolved so that, by the 11th century, the wells were amazingly complex feats of architecture and engineering.The journalist Victoria Lautman first encountered stepwells three decades ago and now, a seasoned traveller to India, she has devoted several years to documenting these fascinating but largely unknown edifices before they disappear. Of the thousands of stepwells that proliferated across India, most were abandoned as a result of modernization and the depletion of water tables. Often commissioned by royal or wealthy patrons, the wells vary greatly in scale, layout, materials and shape. Those in what is now Gujarat state also served as subterranean Hindu temples that featured columned pavilions and elaborate stone carvings of deities. Islamic wells were generally less flamboyant, but incorporated arched side niches. Today, few stepwells are in use. The majority have been left to silt up, fill with rubbish and crumble into disrepair. Gradually, however, the Indian government and heritage organizations have come to recognize the need to preserve these architectural wonders. In 2014 India’s best-known stepwell, the Rani ki Vav in Patan, northern Gujarat, became a UNESCO World Heritage site.In her introduction, Lautman discusses why and where the stepwells were built. She reflects on the reasons they became derelict and considers how the appreciation of stepwells is changing with the work of organizations and individuals who aim to protect and restore them. The main part of the book is arranged in a broadly chronological order, with up to six pages devoted to each of c. 80 stepwells, every one unique in design and engineering. The name, location (including GPS coordinates) and approximate date of each well accompany color photographs and a concise commentary by Lautman on the history and architecture of the well and her experience of visiting it. While many of the stepwells are rather decrepit, their magnificent engineering and great beauty cannot fail to impress.

    Collecting captures the past in a way useful to the present and the future. Exhibits play to our senses and orchestrate our impressions, balancing presentation and preservation, information and emotion. Curators consider visitors' interactions with objects and with one another, how our bodies move through displays, how our eyes grasp objects, how we learn and how we feel. Inside the Lost Museum documents the work museums do and suggests ways these institutions can enrich the educational and aesthetic experience of their visitors.Woven throughout Inside the Lost Museum is the story of the Jenks Museum at Brown University, a nineteenth-century display of natural history, anthropology, and curiosities that disappeared a century ago. The Jenks Museum's past, and a recent effort by artist Mark Dion, Steven Lubar, and their students to reimagine it as art and history, serve as a framework for exploring the long record of museums' usefulness and service.Museum lovers know that energy and mystery run through every collection and exhibition. Lubar explains work behind the scenes--collecting, preserving, displaying, and using art and artifacts in teaching, research, and community-building--through historical and contemporary examples. Inside the Lost Museum speaks to the hunt, the find, and the reveal that make curating and visiting exhibitions and using collections such a rewarding and vital pursuit.

    But if her father, a museum curator, has his way, she might be a grandmother before she ever gets the chance.One day, while mischievously exploring the museum’s warehouse with her brother Ike and best friend Helen, Mary stumbles across an old travel trunk belonging to her grandfather.Inside, they discover an nondescript glass globe. Curious about the simple object, Mary touches the globe, and is shocked when the room is suddenly consumed by the most amazing view of Earth.The magnificent globe lets the friends zoom closer and closer toward the earth’s surface, eventually bringing them close enough to touch the trees. That's when the globe entirely disappears, and they find themselves falling.Suddenly, they're far from home, in place that's either a paradise, or the place where they will die.Sleep, water, and food become precious and scarce. A native tribe may hold the keys to their survival as well as clues to help them get back home. But it won’t be easy. The rain forest is a big place, and when others find out what the globe can do, Mary, Ike and Helen will need a plan, allies, and a little luck.

    World-renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has worked in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, performance art, and installation. Kusama's iconic Infinity Mirror Rooms, which originated with Phalli's Field in 1965, situate viewers in kaleidoscopic spaces filled with multicolored lights or whimsical forms. These mirror-lined installations reflect endlessly, distorting rooms to project the illusion of infinite space. Over the years, the works have come to symbolize different modalities within the various contexts they have inhabited, from Kusama's self-obliteration in the Vietnam War era to her more harmonious aspirations in the present. By examining her early unsettling installations alongside her more recent ethereal atmospheres, this volume aims to historicize the body of work amidst the resurgence of experiential practices within the global landscape of contemporary art. Generously illustrated, this publication invites readers to examine the series' impact over the course of the artist's career. Accompanying essays, an interview with the artist, and a scholarly chronology round out the book.Published in association with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

    A museum-originated practice increasingly seen as holding wide educational benefits, slow looking contends that patient, immersive attention to content can produce active cognitive opportunities for meaning-making and critical thinking that may not be possible though high-speed means of information delivery. Addressing the multi-disciplinary applications of this purposeful behavioral practice, this book draws examples from the visual arts, literature, science, and everyday life, using original, real-world scenarios to illustrate the complexities and rewards of slow looking.

    They have also become vibrant educational centers, full of engaging exhibits that share those discoveries with students and an enthusiastic general public.   At the heart of it all from the very start have been curators. Yet after three decades as a natural history curator, Lance Grande found that he still had to explain to people what he does. This book is the answer—and, oh, what an answer it is: lively, exciting, up-to-date, it offers a portrait of curators and their research  like none we’ve seen, one that conveys the intellectual excitement and the educational and social value of curation. Grande uses the personal story of his own career—most of it spent at Chicago’s storied Field Museum—to structure his account as he explores the value of research and collections, the importance of public engagement, changing ecological and ethical considerations, and the impact of rapidly improving technology. Throughout, we are guided by Grande’s keen sense of mission, of a job where the why is always as important as the what.   This beautifully written and richly illustrated book is a clear-eyed but loving account of natural history museums, their curators, and their ever-expanding roles in the twenty-first century.

    The lushly white-coated Saki, an arboreal monkey from the Brazilian rainforests. The olinguito, a native of the Andes, which looks part mongoose, part teddy bear. These fantastic species are all new to science—at least newly named and identified; but they weren’t discovered in the wild, instead, they were unearthed in the drawers and cavernous basements of natural history museums. As Christopher Kemp reveals in The Lost Species, hiding in the cabinets and storage units of natural history museums is a treasure trove of discovery waiting to happen. With Kemp as our guide, we go spelunking into museum basements, dig through specimen trays, and inspect the drawers and jars of collections, scientific detectives on the hunt for new species. We discover king crabs from 1906, unidentified tarantulas, mislabeled Himalayan landsnails, an unknown rove beetle originally collected by Darwin, and an overlooked squeaker frog, among other curiosities. In each case, these specimens sat quietly for decades—sometimes longer than a century—within the collections of museums, before sharp-eyed scientists understood they were new. Each year, scientists continue to encounter new species in museum collections—a stark reminder that we have named only a fraction of the world’s biodiversity. Sadly, some specimens have waited so long to be named that they are gone from the wild before they were identified, victims of climate change and habitat loss. As Kemp shows, these stories showcase the enduring importance of these very collections.The Lost Species vividly tells these stories of discovery—from the latest information on each creature to the people who collected them and the scientists who finally realized what they had unearthed—and will inspire many a museumgoer to want to peek behind the closed doors and rummage through the archives.

    As bombs fell and soldiers marched through the streets, her mother stood guard, reminding her children to not be afraid?not of the bombs or anything else that may follow. They would always have their family and their faith. Soon thereafter, Tasoula found herself homeless and nation-less. A refugee.Decades later, she's a successful entrepreneur and the Honorary Consul of Cyprus in The Netherlands . But family and faith have remained her touchstones?and she's never lost her longing for "home" or for the gorgeous Cypriot churches and their icons.  One day, a dubious art dealer offers her a chance to buy stolen sacred artifacts looted from Cyprus during the war. Icons hold a special place in the hearts of Orthodox Christians. They are not just masterpieces?they are artistic manifestations of faith and a gateway to the divine.Outraged, Tasoula sets out on a quest to repatriate these artifacts. An immensely legally challenging and expensive undertaking, as provenance of icons are and other holy artifacts are easily manipulated by corrupt dealers and greedy auction houses.  Taking on these "merchants of God" will test Tasoula's fortitude and threaten her safety, yet she feels this mission is her calling.  In this book, she reveals her perilous road to “The Munich Case”?the largest art trafficking sting in European history since WWII?which is filled with mind games, subterfuge, global politics, and as shady figure named Van Rijn, whose motives are never entirely clear...  By turns heart-pounding and inspiring, The Icon Hunter is a powerful and gripping story that will resonate long after the final page.

    In this book, Andrew Denson explores the public memory of Cherokee removal through an examination of memorials, historic sites, and tourist attractions dating from the early twentieth century to the present. White southerners, Denson argues, embraced the Trail of Tears as a story of Indian disappearance. Commemorating Cherokee removal affirmed white possession of southern places, while granting them the moral satisfaction of acknowledging past wrongs. During segregation and the struggle over black civil rights, removal memorials reinforced whites' authority to define the South's past and present. Cherokees, however, proved capable of repossessing the removal memory, using it for their own purposes during a time of crucial transformation in tribal politics and U.S. Indian policy. In considering these representations of removal, Denson brings commemoration of the Indian past into the broader discussion of race and memory in the South.

    1956) is one of the most highly acclaimed book illustrators in the world. This handsome volume is the first to examine his creative process and his many sources of inspiration. The book features dozens of lavish color plates, from early work to the exquisitely wrought watercolors that are the basis of his  best-known books, along with pages excerpted from his forthcoming first graphic novel, Fish Girl. Also included are works by some of the artists most influential to Wiesner, including Marvel comic book legends, Surrealist and avant-garde masters, and mid-20th-century graphic artists. While illustration has often been marginalized in the world of fine art, the vibrant interplay among paintings, prints, comic books, graphic novels, iconic 20th-century films, and cartoons in Wiesner’s art gives evidence to the complexity of the American tradition of picture book illustration.

    Taking a global view, it covers the key ideas, approaches and contentious issues in the field. Balancing theory and practice, the book address important questions such as:What are museums and galleries?Who decides which kinds of objects are worthy of collection?How are museums and galleries funded?What ethical concerns do practitioners need to consider?How is the field of Museum and Gallery Studies developing?This user-friendly text is an essential read for anyone wishing to work within museums and galleries, or seeking to understand academic debates in the field.

    However, changes to the field's approaches to collections stewardship have come much more slowly. Active Collections critically examines existing approaches to museum collections and explores practical, yet radical, ways that museums can better manage their collections to actively advance their missions.Approaching the question of modern museum collection stewardship from a position of tough love, the authors argue that the museum field risks being constrained by rigid ways of thinking about objects. Examining the field's relationship to objects, artifacts, and specimens, the volume explores the question of stewardship through the dissection of a broad range of issues, including questions of quality over quantity, emotional attachment, dispassionate cataloging, and cognitive biases in curatorship. The essays look to insights from fields as diverse as forest management, library science, and the psychology of compulsive hoarding, to inform and innovate collection practices.Essay contributions come from both experienced museum professionals and scholars from disciplines as diverse as psychology, education, and history. The result is a critical exploration that makes the book essential reading for museum professionals, as well as those in training.

    They include a near-life-sized nude mysteriously stolen from the Christchurch's McDougall Art Gallery and never seen again; an international court battle around ownership of major Italian paintings stolen from their Jewish owners by the Nazis, bought by a NZ soldier during WWII and later sold to Dunedin Public Art Gallery; a leading NZ painter who sold copies of his work as originals; paintings illegally sold by an unscrupulous art dealer; a blatant theft from the Auckland Art Gallery, and the embarrassing rip-offs by Goldie forger Karl Sim.Jackson shows that NZ is far from immune to the criminal activities increasingly affecting art around the world. 2015 saw the establishment of the NZ Art Crime Research Trust, of which Jackson is a founding trustee. Art Thieves, Fakes and Fraudsters will be launched first at the September 30 opening of a major art crime exhibition, The Empty Frame, at Waikato Museum, and featured at the trust’s second symposium, City Gallery Wellington, October 15.

    When we look at a piece of clothing, a coat, a dress, an undergarment, we see an item that is more personal, more closely related to the human body than nearly anything else it comes in contact with throughout the day. Garments can do far more for exhibitions and interpretation than merely providing a bit of color and beauty. Clothing is both artistic and utilitarian and is capable of adding so much to the story of who we are and where we came from. The Care and Display of Historic Clothing aims to assist with the full integration of costume collections into the interpretation of the past. Often relied on for their ability to add beauty and color to exhibitions, these collection items provide a very personal side to any story at a given moment in history. The topics explored in this publication range from the care and identification of items in a costume collection to discussions about both physical display and how they can be used to engage audiences. The book's focus is on costume collections and discussion topics will include information in regards to -costume collection storage, -display techniques, -basic identification, and -ideas on how to incorporate costumes into exhibitions and programming. A list of further resources at the back of the book helps provide supplemental, in-depth information on individual areas. The layout of this work will aim to provide information that slowly leads from understanding your costume collection and obtaining physical control to incorporating it in a significant and informative way into the work of the organization. Providing all of these resources in one place will make the incorporation of costumes a more obtainable goal for small to mid-sized museums and historical societies.

    It is organized around the questions and ethical dilemmas that drive public history in a variety of settings, from local community-based projects to international case studies. This book is designed for use in undergraduate and graduate classrooms with future public historians, teachers, and consumers of history in mind.The authors are practicing public historians who teach history and public history to a mix of undergraduate and graduate students at universities across the United States and in international contexts. This book is based on original research and the authors' first-hand experiences, offering a fresh perspective on the dynamic field of public history based on a decade of consultation with public history educators about what they needed in an introductory textbook. Each chapter introduces a concept or common practice to students, highlighting key terms for student review and for instructor assessment of student learning. The body of each chapter introduces theories, and basic conceptual building blocks intermixed with case studies to illustrate these points. Footnotes credit sources but also serve as breadcrumbs for instructors who might like to assign more in-depth reading for more advanced students or for the purposes of lecture development. Each chapter ends with suggestions for activities that the authors have tried with their own students and suggested readings, books, and websites that can deepen student exposure to the topic.

    In 1943, after being asked by his daughter why she couldn’t immediately see the photograph he had just taken, American inventor and scientist Edwin H. Land conceived of the technology required to make this seemingly impossible demand a reality—within an hour. Land’s creation was a groundbreaking scientific accomplishment that also heralded an exciting new chapter of artistic expression. Through the efforts of thousands of photographers the world over, as well as the corporation’s own artist support program, which provided many with materials, Polaroid would help shape the artistic landscape of the late twentieth century.   Published to accompany a major traveling exhibition, The Polaroid Project is a creative exploration of the relationship between Polaroid’s many technological innovations and the art that was created with their help. Richly designed with over 300 illustrations, this beautiful volume showcases not only the myriad and often idiosyncratic approaches taken by such photographers as Ansel Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ellen Carey, and Chuck Close, but also a fascinating selection of the technical objects and artfacts that speak of the sheer ingenuity that lay behind the art. With essays by the exhibition’s curators and leading photographic writers and historians, The Polaroid Project provides a unique perspective on the Polaroid phenomenon—a technology, an art form, a convergence of both—and its enduring cultural legacy.   Contributors: William A. Ewing, Barbara P. Hitchcock, Deborah G. Douglas, Gary Van Zante, Rebekka Reuter, Christopher Bonanos, Todd Brandow, Peter Buse, Dennis Jelonnek, and John Rohrbach.   Exhibition dates: Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth: June 3–September 3, 2017 WestLicht Museum of Photography, Vienna: December 5, 2017–March 4, 2018 C/O Berlin: March 16­–May 27, 2018 MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA: early 2019

    A reference tool that is accessible in approach yet comprehensive in scope, this book takes you step by step through securing and managing a historic house museum for years to come.In straightforward language, utilizing case studies from historic house museums, and providing sample documents to get you started, Financial Fundamentals for Historic House Museums guides you on how to: Incorporate as a tax-exempt organizationFind historic property designation options and successfully applyUnderstand contributed income opportunities and raise moneyCreate sustainable earned income opportunitiesUnderstand basic accounting and financial planning to ensure the future of your historic house museum.--Kenneth C. Turino, Manager of Community Engagement and Exhibitions, Historic New England and adjunct faculty, museum studies, Tufts University

    Drawing on testimony gathered from surveys, focus groups and interviews with female museum professionals, the book examines the nature of gender bias in the profession as well as women's varied responses to it. In doing so, it clarifies how women's work in museums differs from men's and reveals the entrenched nature of gender bias in the museum workplace. Offering a clear argument as to why museums must create, foster and protect an equitable playing field, the authors include a gender equity agenda for individuals, institutions, graduate programs, and professional associations.Written by experienced museum professionals, Women in the Museum is the first book to examine the topic in depth. It is useful reading for students of gender and museum studies alike, as well as museum professionals, gender equality advocates and the general reader interested in equality in the workplace.

    Book examples present best practices that move beyond the turning point, where curation and education are engaged in full and equal collaboration. With a mix of theory and models for practice, the book: - provides a rationale for visitor-centered exhibitions; - addresses important related issues, such as collaboration and evaluation; and, - presents success stories written by educators, curators, and professors from the United States and Europe. - introduces the edu-curator, a new vision for leadership in museums with visitor-centered exhibition practices. The book is intended for art museum practitioners, including educators, curators, and exhibitions designers, as well as higher education faculty and students in art/museum education, art history, and museum studies.

    The world's largest medical library and a federal government agency, it maintains and makes publicly available a diverse and world-renowned collection of materials dating from the 11th to the 21st centuries, and it produces a variety of electronic resources that millions of people around the globe search billions of times each year. The library also supports and conducts research, development, and training in biomedical informatics and health information technology, and it coordinates the National Network of Libraries of Medicine that promotes and provides access to health information in communities across the United States. As the library anticipates its third century of public service, this book offers a visual history of its development from its earliest days through the late 20th century, as the institution has involved generations of visionary leaders and dedicated individuals who experienced the American Civil War, the world wars, the Cold War, and the dawn of the information age.