28 January 2011 | Books, Renaissance
Among the new books I’ve received lately are two on Renaissance art written by distinguished scholars of literature: Michelangelo: A Life on Paper by Leonard Barkan and Blessed and Beautiful by Robert Kiely. I once took a graduate course on the Renaissance revival of antiquity with Barkan, a talented teacher who had us read classic [...]
26 January 2011 | Uncategorized
Recent news: The Art Instinct author Denis Dutton has died. Transnationalism’s all the rage at the MLA. European libraries are digitizing. Art in America has a new editor, journalist Lindsay Pollock. The Haus der Kunst has a new director, Okwui Enwezor. The Carnegie Museums have a new president, John Wetenhall. BBC Radio interviews Anthony Caro, [...]
24 January 2011 | Awards, Books, Modern
In an age of immersive video games, 3-D television, and “reality adventures,” a re-evaulation of the Gesamtkunstwerk seems apt. Nominated for The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award, Modernism after Wagner by Juliet Koss is a “critical history of Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk,” or “total work of art,” from the mid-nineteenth-century to the 1930s. It [...]
A new initiative from Mellon is supporting the publication of emerging scholars’ first illustrated art history texts. Designed to streamline procedures and reduce costs for first-time authors, the program will encourage collaboration amongst four presses – Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University, and The University of Washington – to publish 40 books throughout [...]
19 January 2011 | Asia, Awards, Books
Having reviewed the nominees (1,2,3) for the Alfred Barr, Jr., Award for museum catalogues, I move on now to The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award, which “honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2009, and August 31, 2010.” The shortlist: Molly Emma Aitken, The Intelligence [...]
14 January 2011 | Americas, Books
Does the traditional encyclopedia — printed on paper, written and edited exclusively by experts — still have a role to play in the age of Wikipedia? The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, just published in five hefty volumes, has enormous strengths. It builds on the excellent Grove Encyclopedia of Art (1996), revising and supplementing its [...]
11 January 2011 | Asia, Awards, Books, Museums
On to the third and final nominee for the Alfred Barr, Jr., Award: The exhibition catalogue Tracing the Past, Drawing the Future: Master Ink Painters in Twentieth-Century China, edited by Xiaoneng Yang, is another doorstop of a volume, 450 pages on heavy paper, on which feature a variety of gorgeous and painstakingly assembled illustrations. “All [...]
10 January 2011 | Islamic
Renata Holod, president of the Historians of Islamic Art Association, announced the death of Oleg Grabar on Saturday: Oleg Grabar, professor emeritus of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies, and Aga Khan Professor emeritus at Harvard University passed away this morning at his home in Princeton, NJ. Recently awarded the [...]
6 January 2011 | Awards, Books, Museums
CAA announced its twelve Awards for Distinction, including one for Kantha, saying that the book constitutes a model of how to make a catalogue about specific collections that far outreaches the task of honoring the collectors in question. Offering acute insights into an important region and an understudied medium, Kantha not only celebrates a lively [...]
5 January 2011 | Asia, Books, Museums
The College Art Association today announces the winner of the Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for best exhibition catalogue. I’m in the midst of reviewing the shortlist, selected this year by: Anna Chave, Graduate Center, CUNY (chair) Andrea Bayer, Metropolitan Museum of Art Virginia Fields, LACMA Erica Hirshler, MFA Boston Anne Woollett, J. Paul Getty [...]
