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Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters is an exciting volume featuring the work of four New York based artists, each presenting a single new work in conversation with celebrated paintings in The Frick Collection, with particular emphasis on issues of gender and queer identity typically excluded from narratives of early modern European art. The idea of commissioning four works to display at Frick Madison emerged when four masterpieces by Vermeer, Holbein, and Rembrandt were loaned to exhibitions. Works by Jenna Gribbon, Doron Langberg, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Salman Toor were commissioned to replace them, alongside other works by these artists. This book is the result of the four New York artists' responses to the Frick's collection, and the conversations their work engendered. Written contributions are provided by Jonathan Anderson, Jessica Bell Brown, Christopher Lew, Jason Reynolds, Legacy Russell, and Russell Tovey. SELLING POINTS: . Queer art for the Old Masters . Ties in with a series of ongoing installations of works by contemporary LGBTQ+ artists produced in response to selected works at the Frick . Contributions by artists, writers and curators bring a diverse and rich perspective . Featured artists Jenna Gribbon, Doron Langberg, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Salman Toor allow us to see long-familiar works in the Frick's collection in new ways . Doron Langberg's Lover is paired with Hans Holbein's Sir Thomas More;; Jenna Gribbon's What Am I Doing Here? I Should Ask You the Same with Holbein's Thomas Cromwell Salman Toor's Museum Boys with Johannes Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl and Toyin Ojih Odutola's The Listener with Rembrandt's Self-Portrait 45 colour illustrations

Grace Hartigan:The Gift of Attentionexplores the significant impact mid-century American poets and poetry had onpainter Grace Hartigan's early career during the 1950s and 1960s. Through acompelling introduction and three illuminating essays, the authors explore howkey literary figures-supporters that included Daisy Aldan, Barbara Guest, JamesMerrill, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler-sparked Hartigan's creativity,providing a fuller examination of the art she created during this time. Thisbook not only spotlights Hartigan within the renowned circle of New York Schoolpainters and poets but also highlights the influence of several queer writerswhose daring work and lifestyles profoundly shaped Hartigan's outlook on artand life.

This beautiful book presents valuable new information and context about how tarot has developed, evolved, and been reimagined by artists, mystics, and writers over the centuries, from its origins as a fifteenth-century card game in Renaissance Italy to its profound transformations into tools for divination, artistic creation, and storytelling. This new volume fills a very real - and timely - gap in the currently available published material on the history and artistic development of tarot, its symbolism, and its source of inspiration for contemporary artists.An illustrated introduction plus six other richly illustrated essays explore the extensive history of tarot, the origins of the cards, their iconography, the idea of individual engagement in fortune and divination, as well as the highly personal aspects in much of the imagery. A main plates section features twenty-two spreads of tarot cards, comparing the same character or virtue cards across three Renaissance decks as well as the extraordinary range of imaginative tarot imagery.

One of the greatest Netherlandish painters of the sixteenth century, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525 1569) is best known for his landscapes and peasant scenes. One of only three signed works by Bruegel in the United States, The Three Soldiers was once in the celebrated collection of Charles I of England. The small panel in grisaille (shades of grey) represents a trio of Landsknechte, the mercenary foot soldiers whose flamboyant costumes and poses were a popular subject for printmakers of the period. This volume considers the artistic and political environment of the time and investigates how a colourful subject is transformed by its translation into monochrome.

Claude Monet’s Vétheuil in Winter (1878-79), painted during the artist’s first winter in the village, depicts his new home on the Seine, seen from the opposite bank of the river. Monet’s two and a half years in Vétheuil, a small farming community northwest of Paris, saw two severe winters, the inspiration for this impressionist masterpiece, which is the subject of this ninth volume in the Frick Diptych series.Susan Grace Galassi has written an insightful and engaging essay about Monet’s difficult but productive time in Vétheuil, which saw the death of his wife Camille. The Frick's Monet painting, the only work by the artist in the collection is the basis for other significant canvases made during his stay in the village in both winter and summer. Galassi's essay is accompanied by a text and intriguing new work—Colour experiment no. 109—by the artist Olafur Eliasson, created in response to the Monet painting. Eliasson’s work will be shown at the Frick next to the painting that inspired it.

This pastel belongs to a small number of works of art at the Frick by a female artist. Rosalba Carriera (Italian, 1673 1757) spent most of her life in Venice, then a popular destination for young aristocrats from all over Europe undertaking the Grand Tour-a tour of the continent that served as an educational rite of passage into adulthood. Many of these travelers would go to Rosalba's studio to have a portrait painted, and Rosalba, who began her career as a miniaturist painter in Venice, became internationally acclaimed. Rosalba's pastels are technically innovative, remarkable for their soft edges and sumptuous effects. By binding colored chalk into sticks, she obtained a much wider range of prepared colors, which ultimately expanded the visual possibilities of this medium. Little is known about this portrait, painted about 1730. Despite the fragility of the medium-pastel-it is in pristine condition. The portrayal of the man as a pilgrim, with a black cape and holding a staff, may indicate that he was a member of the Pellegrini family-pellegrini being the Italian word for pilgrims-or that he is someone who traveled on a pilgrimage. More likely, however, his attire is simply a costume related to the Venetian Carnival. Designed to foster critical engagement and interest specialist and non-specialist alike, each book in the Frick Diptych series illuminates a single work in the Frick's rich collection with an essay by a Frick curator paired with a contribution from a contemporary artist or writer. AUTHORS: Born in Lausanne in 1980, Nicolas Party is a figurative painter who has achieved critical admiration for his familiar yet unsettling landscapes, portraits, and still lifes that simultaneously celebrate and challenge conventions of representational painting. His works are primarily created in soft pastel, an idiosyncratic choice of medium in the 21st-century, and one that allows for exceptional degrees of intensity and fluidity in his depictions of objects both natural and manmade. Xavier F. Salomon is deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, The Frick Collection, New York. SELLING POINTS: . New volume in the best selling Frick Diptych series that began with Holbein's Sir Thomas More by Hilary Mantel . Volume 13 focuses on an exquisite eighteenth-century Italian portrait 45 colour illustrations

Hans Holbein's famous portrayal of Sir Thomas More is one of the artist's greatest and most popular portraits. In the opening piece of this appealing new volume, "A Letter to Thomas More, Knight", award-winning author Hilary Mantel vividly imagines the background to the creation of this extraordinary portrait, giving it both historical perspective and immediacy. An insightful, concise, scholarly essay by Xavier Salomon grounds it in the art-historical world.Hans Holbein (1497/98-1543) painted Sir Thomas More in 1527, having been a guest in More's house when he first arrived in England. He brilliantly renders his sitter's rich fabrics and unshaven face with sympathy and perception.Frick Diptychs, a new series of small books to be co-published by GILES with The Frick Collection, New York, pairs masterworks from the Frick with critical and literary essays. The novelist Hilary Mantel will be followed by the filmmaker James Ivory on Vermeer's "Mistress and Maid" and the artist and author Edmund de Waal on a pair of porcelain and bronze candlesticks by the 18th-century French metalworker Pierre Gouthiere.

The first major study of Nancy Rexroth (b. 1946), Secrets of My Power furnishes a missing account of her life, work and career as she established her artistic voice in the experimental 1970s and challenged prevailing approaches to photographic image-making. This book locates Rexroth’s practice in a period often associated with those of Diane Arbus, Francesca Woodman and the early work of Sally Mann. Tracing Rexroth’s career from her first photographs to her discovery of the Diana camera and through her exploration of digital tools in the early 2000s, Secrets of My Power presents numerous works which have never previously been made public. These include experimental stills on film, a 53-image carousel slide show and a corpus of self-portraiture. Together with rigorous analysis of her previously known work, these new discoveries help to distinguish and connect Rexroth to key artistic formations of the American photography world in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, including contested social and creative terrain around feminism and gender, technical experimentation, engagement with language, artistic networks and photography’s emergence in universities, museums and the art market.

An essay by Xavier F. Salomon paired with a contribution by award-winning novelist Alan Hollinghurst bring to life Jean-Honore Fragonard's (1732-1806) Progress of Love, a series of fourteen paintings considered by many to be the artist's masterpiece. The first four paintings were commissioned in 1771 for the comtesse du Barry, to be installed in 1772 in Louveciennes, the pavilion outside Paris built for her by her lover, Louis XV. By 1773 the canvases, The Pursuit, The Meeting, The Lover Crowned and Love Letters, had been rejected by Du Barry and returned to the artist. In 1790 Fragonard moved the canvases to his cousin's house, the Villa Maubert, in Grasse, and over the course of the year painted ten additional panels: two large-scale works, Love Triumphant and Reverie; four narrow "strips" depicting hollyhocks, and four overdoors of putti. Sold by the Maubert estate to the dealer Agnew's in 1898, the works were purchased in February 1915 by the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. By May 1916 the panels were installed at Frick's new mansion in New York in the present-day Fragonard Room in The Frick Collection.

Various identities for the richly dressed, contemplative young man in this portrait have been proposed but none with any certainty. The mood of the subject and the diffused, gentle play of light over the broadly painted surfaces are strongly reminiscent of Titian’s Venetian contemporary Giorgione. In many ways, the Frick portrait epitomizes a new tendency in Italian Renaissance portraiture in which the depiction is intended less as a description of the sitter than as an encounter with them. A rich contribution by artist Elizabeth Peyton accompanies an illuminating essay by Giulio Dalvit which addresses the many questions of provenance, chronology, attribution and of who this mysterious young man might be.

In keeping with the artist's eclectic style, this lavishly illustrated catalogue features a mix of poetic, narrative, and scholarly perspectives on Nick Cave's Mammoth. Accompanying a landmark exhibition, this publication is a creative excavation of shared and personal memory. Contributions from Sarah Newman, Cherise Smith, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, and J. Drew Lanham engage themes of identity, environmental crisis, and institutional critique. The catalogue also features a sketchbook-style exploration of Cave's studio and mind, including in-process photography, artist sketches, and handwritten notes. This wide-ranging book represents a significant contribution to scholarship on the artist, and will be a lasting resource for artists, art historians, and general readers. Accompanies the exhibition Nick Cave: Mammoth at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, February 13, 2026 January 3, 2027. AUTHORS: Sarah Newman is James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Cherise Smith is professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Art History at the University of Texas, Austin. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is associate professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. J. Drew Lanham is professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, and 2022 MacArthur Fellow. SELLING POINTS: . Nick Cave-born 1959 in Fulton, Missouri, and now active in Chicago, Illinois-is an artist who defies categorization. Working between sculpture, installation, performance, video and fashion, and best known for his exuberant Soundsuits, Cave has long been interested in the intersections of history and identity. . Cave's bronze sculptures, beaded wall hangings, video and found-object assemblages, tell stories of identity, environmental crisis, societal inequality, and institutional history. . Cave's art can be found nationally. Some examples are MOMA, NYC; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Times Square-42nd Street and 42nd Street-Bryant Park stations, New York City; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C; MFA, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Detroit Institute of Arts; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, MO; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 250 colour illustrations

The third volume in The Walters Art Museum Collection FocusSeries is a jewel-box of a book that explores the world of miniaturemasterpieces, luxury objects worn and used in Europe and Americas betweenaround 1700 and 1900. Despite their small size, they are enduring testaments tothe largest of human preoccupations: love, death, and pleasure.Highlights include a snuffbox decorated with portraits ofLouis XV’s grandchildren; a watch studded with pearls and diamonds made forNapoleon Bonaparte’s mother that allowed her totell the time by touch alone; a mourning ring containing the hair of two youngsisters buried thousands of miles apart; two exquisite Fabergé eggs made asroyal Easter gifts: the GatchinaPalace Egg and RoseTrellis Egg; and a tiny charm depicting a single eye gifted by asecret lover.Often books on these kinds of objects look at one categoryof thing—mourning jewellery, portrait or eye miniatures—this book takes abroader approach and is written for a general audience. It will appealspecifically to those with an interest in social history, biography, andantiques.

“It is truly extraordinary to me that so much beauty has sprung from such dark times in Romania, and that is what this book wishes to capture. Art speaks its own language.”—From the PrefaceDespite Ceaușescu focuses on 91 works, by 13 artists—Horia Bernea, Ştefan Câlţia, Marin Gherasim, Vasile Gorduz, Marcel Guguianu, Sorin Ilfoveanu, Georgeta Năpăruş, Florin Niculiu, Ion Pacea, Corneliu Petrescu, Silvia Radu, Gheorghe Şaru and Icon workshop—drawn from the 900-work Tyler Collection of Romanian Art at the University of Tasmania. The paintings, sculpture, and ceramics were created by artists during the 1970s and 1980s. Fully illustrated throughout in color—with catalogue plates and a checklist—each work of art features an entry with specifications, artist biographical information, stylistic influences, significance and social context, as well as notes. The photographs are by Lee Ewing, sculpture photographer at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Out of the Real World: Robert Rauschenberg at USF Graphicstudio is the first comprehensive and scholarly publication to explore the significance of Robert Rauschenberg’s work at Graphicstudio, University of South Florida’s renowned atelier. Contributors detail Rauschenberg’s collaborative projects at Graphicstudio that pushed boundaries and redefined our understanding of printmaking. The legacy of the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) project, operationally headquartered at USF Graphicstudio and overseen by Saff as artistic director, is examined and reconsidered both geopolitically and through the lens of its resonance with host countries.

After the 1871 Paris Commune, Montmartre played asignificant artistic role; its unique geographical, political and socialsituation attracted independent artists, writers and musicians and allowed themfully to develop their bohemian and revolutionary spirit. Its cabarets, cafes,circus, dancehalls and theatres made Montmartre a popular cultural centre.Drawing on important artworks from the Weisman & Michel Collection and theMusee de Montmartre, Paris, as well as a wealth of archival photography, mapsand prints to illustrate its narrative text, this volume presents up to 180stunning colour illustrations. It includes works by Auguste Renoir, PabloPicasso, Suzanne Valadon, Henri Matisse and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, andsheds light on central figures that were forgotten by history such as LouisAnquetin and Henri-Gabriel Ibels.A timeline of key moments and events in Montmartrefrom 1870-1910, a map of Montmartre showing the locations of studio spaces,residences and cabarets, and a selected bibliography provide important sourcesof new information for scholars. This book is an invitation to readers to enterthat world and begin to explore the intensity and enduring expression of thecreative energies of its personalities, who contributed so significantly to thebeginnings of modern art.

Usually housed at the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, Victorious Cupid (1601-02) by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) is the centrepiece in a new focus exhibition at The Wallace Collection. Caravaggio's painting, also known as Amor Vincit Omnia, shows Cupid, the Roman god of desire, as a young boy, in an animated pose while wearing dark eagle wings and holding two arrows. It was the last allegorical work Caravaggio painted in Rome. This richly illustrated softcover print publication features an introduction by the director of The Wallace Collection, Xavier Bray, followed by five illustrated chapters by the volume's principal author, Helen Langdon. A description of the painting and summary of Caravaggio's early life, present Victorious Cupid against the background of his artistic development and the intellectual interests of his patrons, and within the broader context of the theme of "love conquers all". Langdon examines the meaning of the painting, and considers how Caravaggio brings the subject to earth, from the heavens to the bedroom, mocking the idealisations of renaissance art.

Lines of Discovery: Four Centuries of American Drawing presents a major new thematic and chronological catalogue survey of the Columbus Museum's most significant holdings of drawings and works on paper, including examples in graphite, charcoal, monotype and pastel. At the heart of the Columbus Museum's collection, and of this volume, is the work of a remarkable individual, Dr. Phillip L. Brewer, who has amassed a truly significant collection of American works on paper – both in terms of its depth and breadth. For the first time this volume presents nearly 200 of these master drawings, 120 of the most important of which are grouped into six chapters, illustrated in full colour, and accompanied by extended catalogue entries written by leading experts. A further 79 works are presented as colour and mono thumbnails interspersed amongst the images of the key works. Included are images by Copley, West and Cole that date from the earliest years of American nationhood; works by Oscar Bluemner, Arthur Dove and Morton Schamberg which herald the advent of modernism; while others by Hans Hoffmann, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Blanche Lazzell and Rico Lebrun confirm its continued presence through such varied expressions as social realism, surrealism and abstraction. While artists like Milton Avery, Jack Beal, Paul Cadmus, Philip Evergood, Nancy Grossman, and Louise Nevelson explore the strength and beauty of the human form, James Valerio and Andrew Wyeth document the changing faces of the natural world. Together these works, and Lines of Discovery, offer a comprehensive survey of the history of American art. AUTHOR: Stephen C.Wicks is curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Columbus Museum. Charles T. Butler is director of the Columbus Museum. Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. is John Moors Cabot Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 155 colour & 80 b/w illustrations

'Jews in America' documents the remarkable story of the Jewish presence in the New World, from the time of Columbus to the 1920s, when the Jewish community in the United States was four million strong and an essential part of American society and culture. Drawing on a mix of contemporary books, manuscripts, globes, maps and engravings from the world-renowned collections of the New York Public Library, Jews in America is a vivid document of everyday Jewish-American life, worship, law, and commerce. It tells the fascinating story of the first Jewish immigrants' arrival in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1654 (later New York City), Jewish interaction with the four colonial powers in the Western Hemisphere (Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and England), and on the ideas and beliefs that they influenced. The final chapter looks at the evolving cultural role of Jews in late 19th and early 20th century New York, especially the rise of the Yiddish theatre.

The study of Byzantine coins is essentially the study of communications and movement of people and ideas, within and outside Byzantium. This highly illustrated and accessible volume focuses on over 50 coins to explore the empire's political and socio-economic development and cultural relations with its neighbours. It looks variously at city markets and the exchange of goods between different parts of the Byzantine Empire; at Byzantines travelling to the West; including trade between the Svear and the Romans and trade with Britain; Byzantines travelling to the East, including Armenia, Anatolia and China; the Byzantine legacy in the Islamic world, including the cult of Alexander the Great; and Western merchants in the East, particularly Venetians. The study concludes with the story of the late Byzantine emperors travelling to the West, and the impact their journeys had on western European art. AUTHOR: Eurydice S. Georganteli is curator of the Barber Institute Coin Collection and Lecturer in Numismatics at the University of Birmingham. Eurydice Georganteli studied archaeology and history of art at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Oxford. Between 1992 and 1998 she worked for the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, as well as special research assistant in the Department of Coins and Medals, British Museum. She has been a Byzantine Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Centre,Washington D.C. and a Robinson Scholar at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, before her current appointment at the University of Birmingham as curator of the Barber Institute coin collection and university lecturer in numismatics. Her publications focus on studies of coin finds, monetary circulation and medieval art. Barrie Cook is curator of Medieval and early modern coinage in the Department of Coins and Medals at The British Museum. He has published extensively on medieval coinage. 80 colour illustrations

Discovering American History in England presents twelve chapters which look variously at Colonial Settlers in the New World, the birth of American Independence, military connections, politicians, American ladies in England, artists, musicians, poets and writers. Each section contains illustrated entries for key people, how they relate to American history and why they are important, together with a list of places connected to the person that can be visited. These places are listed in the Gazetteer which follows. Colour maps and special highlighted spreads also feature information on major biuildings and cities with notable conections to America, such as St Paul's Cathedral in London, Bristol, Cambridge and Plymouth. AUTHOR: Catherine Leitch has led an itinerant life. Born in the US, she has lived for five ears in Germany and fourteen in England. Always interested in studying the past and its connections with the present, she earned a Masters degree in history and taught in the US. An interest in exploring the communities in which she lived and a sense of adventure led to trips around England where surprising connections with American history appeared in many unexpected places. 250 colour illusterations

The American Art Forum, a small group of collectors from across the United States, was begun twenty years ago by Charles C Eldredge while he was director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. By founding this group, he put the museum in touch with many of the finest collectors of American art. The Forum plays a vital role in introducing far-flung collectors to each other and to the rich variety of public museums across the United States. It is an informal conference for the exchange of news and ideas, held in the far-ranging and ever-fascinating regions of a vast country. The Forum has visited all the biggest cities in the United States and explored public and private collections from all points of the compass. Now, as part of the Forum's twentieth anniversary celebrations, the Smithsonian American Art Museum is proud to offer Variations on America, an exhibition and accompanying volume of seventy-two treasured artworks collected by members of the Forum and selected for the exhibition by the Museum's curators. Chief curator Eleanor Jones Harvey, deputy chief curator George Gurney, senior curators Virginia M Mecklenburg and Joann Moser, former Luce Foundation Centre curator George Speer, and curatorial assistant Elaine Yau present significant and lively contributions about these works. 91 4 colour illustrations. AUTHOR: Eleanor Jones Harvey, chief curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum; George Gurney, deputy chief curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator, painting and sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum; , senior curator, graphic arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum;George Speer, former Luce Foundation Center curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Elaine Yau, curatorial assistant Smithsonian American Art Museum. Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. SELLING POINTS: Presents colour plates and details of over 70 paintings by the leading names in 19th-century and 20th-century American art, collected by members of the American Art Forum Includes works by Sanford Robinson Gifford, Mary Cassatt, Louis Comfort Tiffany, George Bellows, Willem de Kooning, Georgia O'Keefe, James Earl Fraser, John Marin, Andrew Wyeth and David Hockney Publication accompanies an exhibition opening at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Spring 2007, as part of the Forum's twentieth anniversary celebrations Features major canvasses reflecting the growing interest in the art of the American West, including Georgia O'Keefe, Black Cross with Red Sky (1929), John Marin's Taos Canyon, New Mexico (1929), and James Earl Fraser's moving bronze sculpture, End of the Trail (1918) 91 colour illustrations

130 colour and 12 mono illustrations 32,000 words, including Foreword, Chronology, To Live Forever: Egyptian Funerary Beliefs and Practices by Edward Bleiberg, How Much did a Coffin Cost? The Social and Economic Aspects of Egyptian Funerary Arts by Kathlyn M. Cooney, Further Reading, Index Students of ancient and classical history, all those with an interest in Egyptology and archaeology, Egyptian social and art history Publication accompanies a major national touring exhibition beginning July 2008 through 2011. Venues include Indianapolis Museum of Art (July- September 2008), the John and Mable Ringling Museum, Sarasota,Florida, the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, the Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee, with dates and additional venues to be announced. Presents over 120 colour photographs of beautiful objects from the Brooklyn Museum's world-renowned Egyptian collection, including the famous Bird Lady-one of the oldest preserved statues from all Egyptian history. Offers a new look at a perennially fascinating topic by considering all economic and social ranks of Egyptian society Life after death was a primary cultural belief through thousands of years of Egyptian history. The ancient Egyptians regarded death as an enemy that could be defeated through proper preparation. This brand new book, and its accompanying travelling exhibition, To Live Forever, draws on important ancientEgyptian monuments from the superb collection of the Brooklyn Museum to illustrate Egyptian strategies for defeating death and living forever. The book answers the questions at the core of the public's fascination with ancient Egypt, and explains the Egyptians' beliefs about death and the afterlife, the process of mummification, the conduct of a funeral, and the different types of tombs. At the same time, curator Edward Bleiberg offers a fresh take on the subject by addressing the practical, economic considerations an ancient Egyptian faced when preparing for the next life. Dr. Bleiberg deals with the afterlife preparations not only of kings and nobles, but also of the middle class and the poor. Not all ranks of society had access to the elaborate funeral preparations made for a king. Poorer people could use painted wood or clay coffins as substitutes for the hard stone and gold sarcophagi of kings. Expensive granite vessels, the property of the rich, could be cheaply reproduced in clay and painted to imitate stone for someone of more modest means. In keeping with the book's special focus on the practicalities of afterlife preparation, Kathlyn M. Cooney breaks new ground in her essay, entitled How Much Did a Coffin Cost?, by addressing such pragmatic questions as the price of a coffin in relation to average salaries, and how the costs of different colours of paint affected decisions about coffin decoration. Drawing on original research using documents from the artist settlement at Deir el-Medina, Dr. Cooney discusses how Egyptians chose the objects for their tombs, how much the items cost, how they were paid for, and how the high-priced burial-goods market affected Egyptian society. She shows the ancient Egyptians as ordinary people with problems and desires often similar to those of people today. To Live Forever presents over 120 colour photographs of beautiful objects from the Brooklyn Museum's world-renowned Egyptian collection. Among the works are acknowledged masterpieces of the stone sculptor's art, along with the renowned Bird Lady-one of the oldest preserved statues from all Egyptian history. With its illuminating visual comparisons across different economic levels, this book adds a new dimension to our experience of ancient Egypt. Edward Bleiberg has been a curator of Egyptian art at the Brooklyn Museum since 1998. He was formerly the Director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the University of Memphis from 1989 to 1998. He has curated the exhibitions Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt: A Family Archive from the Nile Valley; Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire; and Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses. He is the author of The Official Gift in Ancient Egypt (1996), Ancient Egypt, 2615-332 B.C.E. (2001), Arts and Humanities through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2004), and the catalogues accompanying Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt, and Tree of Paradise. Kathlyn Cooney is Research Associate at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She has taught at Stanford, UCLA, and Howard University. She was co-curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs in 2005. In 2002, she was Kress fellow at the National Gallery of Art, where she was involved with the installation of the Cairo Museum exhibition Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt. Her first book, The Cost of Death: The Social and Economic Value of Ancient Egyptian Funerary Art in the Ramesside Period, was published in 2007.

The volume and accompanying exhibition discuss the creation of sacred space in the 21st century, examining 28 works by Tobi Kahn including his recent commission for Congregation Emau-El B'ne Jeshrun in Milwaukee. Each work is accompanied by a Meditation by novelist and poet Nessa Rapoport. From large canvasses with biomorphic forms to three-dimensional pieces such as the art nouveau-influenced thrones, Kahn's work has a presence that is immediately striking, and his reputation has grown steadily since his inclusion in the Guggenheim's New Horizons in American Art show in 1985. Much of Kahn's art, especially his landscapes, is ambiguously abstract, inviting the viewer to project onto it their own ideas, feelings and desires. Acting as aids to contemplation, they can be seen as building on the work of Romantic artists who sought to capture the majesty of nature and imbue it with divine resonance.

"Perspectives on Medieval Art: Learning through Looking" examines medieval culture from a number of different viewpoints to reveal how the art of the Middle Ages can provide a unique insight into the wider issues of medieval politics and culture. The essays also address the teaching of medieval art and architecture as well as examining society's longing for ecclesiastical drama. Contributions from leading theologians and historians variously study life and art in the Middle Ages, why the medieval period matters today and how medieval art speaks to a 21st-century audience. Scholars from different disciplines, including Thomas Cahill and Kathryn Kueny, consider individual works of art simultaneously and examine how medieval art is taught in divinity schools, university and college classrooms and museums.

Making American Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy is a landmark publication focusing on American narrative art from 1825 to 1870. A significant contribution to our understanding of taste and collecting during this period, it reasseses themes including the rural and the domestic, as well as a broad range of historical, literary and religious subject matter. American art at this time was dominated by powerful arguments about what constituted true art: should it be for the many, or the educated few, and should specifically American art forms and styles be favoured over more traditional, academic, European traditions. Making American Taste looks at these issues through the work of both well-known artists, like Benjamin West, Asher B. Durand and Eastman Johnson, and less familiar names such as Daniel Huntington, Henry Peters Gray and Louis Lang.

'Passion in Venice: Crivelli to Tintoretto and Veronese: The Man of Sorrows in Venetian Art' features works by some of the greatest names in Venetian painting including Veronese, Tintoretto, Crivelli, Giambono and the Bassano family. It creates a new and illuminating context for the artistic scene in Venice, examining the rich visual tradition of Christ as the Man of Sorrows which flourished over three centuries across all artistic media, outstripping other western European schools in terms of output and the number of artists committed to the subject. Authors Catherine Puglisi and William Barcham explore the origins of the image of Christ as Man of Sorrows and its emergence as a distinct and central devotional image in the religious life of Venice from about 1300. Xavier Seubert focuses on the appeal of the Man of Sorrows as an image expressing pity and anguish, but also offering hope for deliverance and redemption.

Herbert Katzman's lyrical representations of contemporary New York are a stunning tribute to the artist's fascination with the skyline of his adopted city. 'Glorious Sky: Herbert Katzman's New York' highlights a selection of his paintings and drawings produced over half a century, during which he worked largely outside the abstract art movement that dominated the mid-20th century. Included in the 1952 'Fifteen Americans' exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Katzman went on to become an influential teacher at New York's School of Visual Arts and continued to work and exhibit until his death in 2004. This vibrant new volume traces his career from his arrival in New York in 1950 through the more abstract "New York School" paintings of the early sixties, to his later work which, with its emphasis on mood and muted colour, shows the influence of Turner, Whistler and the Hudson River School.

'Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow' traces the artist's career from 'Pond's Edge' (1986) to 'The Reef' (2009), with its timely reminder of the perils of off-shore oil drilling. Superficially easy viewing, Rockman's paintings subvert the optimism of the American dream with their mix of scientific precision and environmental degradation. This vividly illustrated volume highlights the attention to detail and striking use of colour which give Rockman's work an almost cinematic impact that is seldom seen in contemporary art. His compelling mix of intensely coloured realism, scientific detail and strong polemic, result in art that is both a demand for action and an elegy over what has been lost. Author Joanna Marsh worked closely with Rockman on the painting selection and convincingly links the various themes of the artist's work over three decades with the history of America's environmental movement. Highlights include 'Evolution' (1992), his first mural-sized painting, and 'Manifest Destiny' (2003-04), an ambitious large-scale work commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Rockman's ability to cross the boundary between fact and fiction appeals to both scientists and art critics.

'Discovering the Civil War' peels back 150 years of accumulated analysis, interpretation, and opinion to reveal a Civil War that is little-known. Featuring over 250 letters, diaries, photos, maps, petitions, receipts, patents, amendments and proclamations from the incomparable holdings of the National Archives, it takes a fresh look at the Civil War through little-known stories, seldom-seen documents, and unusual perspectives. Grouped into themes such as "Spies and Conspiracies," "Prisoners and Casualties," "Global War," and "Raising Armies," this new book looks beyond the battlefield to the experiences of ordinary people - be they the names of men listed in the "substitute book" who were paid to replace draftees, or firsthand accounts of the Battle of Gettysburg at the Gettysburg veterans 75th anniversary reunion in 1938. Famous documents, such as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, are juxtaposed with innovative wartime patents, including a multipurpose device that could serve as a tent, knapsack, or blanket, and a message in Chinese script asking for Confederate ships to be barred from Chinese ports - proving that the Civil War became a truly international struggle.