Kathleen M. Morris – författare

A beautifully illustrated, concise critical analysis of the art, careers, and reception of the husband-wife team of artists known as Les LalanneFrançois-Xavier (1927–2008) and Claude (1925–2019) Lalanne were a husband-wife team of artists who created inventive and often surprising works that have been widely admired and collected since the 1960s. This book presents a carefully selected group of sculptures that focus on a shared preoccupation of the artists: the transformation of natural forms to serve new purposes, such as François-Xavier’s giant grasshopper sculpture that opens into a bar and Claude’s bench made of galvanized metal branches and vines such that it remains as much a forest as a place to sit. Critical analysis explores the full breadth of the artists’ careers; considers the complex issues of reception and categorization of their work; and prompts a reevaluation of the place their art occupies in the context of art museums, all while encouraging readers to consider relationships among nature, art, and their own encounters with both.Distributed for the Clark Art InstituteExhibition Schedule:Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA(May 8–October 31, 2021)

During the 19th century, New York City’s grand mansions on Fifth and Madison Avenues boasted sumptuous interiors, often with each room decorated in a different historic style. Financier, art collector, and philanthropist Henry Gurdon Marquand famously commissioned eminent British painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) to create the Greco-Pompeian music room for his home. This beautiful publication documents and examines the celebrated design, which included an elaborately decorated Steinway grand piano, a large suite of matching furniture, and an embroidery scheme for the upholstery and coordinated curtains. Alma-Tadema secured Frederic Leighton to create a major painting for the room’s ceiling and Sir Edward Poynter to paint the piano’s fallboard. One of Alma-Tadema’s most famous paintings, A Reading from Homer, was painted for this room. For the first time since Marquand’s death in 1902, the contents of this exceptional room have been brought together and considered in light of Marquand’s patronage, Alma-Tadema’s career, the firm that manufactured the furniture, and the social function of the music room.   Distributed for the Clark Art InstituteExhibition Schedule:Clark Art Institute(06/04/17–09/04/17)

A striking collection of French tapestries, from the 1940s to today, from the collection of the Mobilier nationale, Paris  Beginning in the 1930s, artists, government officials, art dealers, and entrepreneurs sought ways to modernize the ancient tradition of tapestry-making in France to reassert its role as an independent art form available to contemporary artists. What followed was several decades of intense production that brought international attention to a renewed tradition of French tapestry, as well as new opportunities for the historic manufactories of Gobelins and Beauvais, now overseen by the Mobilier national of France. Drawing from the celebrated collection of the Mobilier national from the 1940s to present day, this book explores the works of such artists as Joan Miró, Jean Lurçat, Henri Matisse, and Le Corbusier, who were central to the rapid resurgence of tapestry production.  Distributed for the Clark Art Institute  Exhibition Schedule:  Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA(December 14, 2024–March 9, 2025)