The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums possesses over 2500 of the world¿s rarest pigments. Visually and anthropologically excavating the extraordinary collection,Atelier Editions¿ monograph examines the contained artefacts¿ providence, composition, symbology and application. Whilst simultaneously exploringthe larger field of chromatics, utilising a variety of theoretical frameworks to interpret the collection anew. An introduction to the monograph is authored by Straus Center Director, Dr. Narayan Khandekar.
Museum Matters tells the story of Mexico's national collections through the trajectories of its objects. The essays in this book show the many ways in which things matter and affect how Mexico imagines its past, present, and future.
Museum and Gallery Publishing examines the theory and practice of general and scholarly publishing associated with museum and art gallery collections. Focusing on the production and reception of these texts, the book explains the relevance of publishing to the cultural, commercial and social contexts of collections and their institutions. Combining theory with case studies from around the world, Sarah Anne Hughes explores how, why and to what effect museums and galleries publish books. Covering a broad range of publishing formats and organisations, including heritage sites, libraries and temporary exhibitions, the book argues that the production and consumption of printed media within the context of collecting institutions occupies a unique and privileged role in the creation and communication of knowledge. Acknowledging that books offer functions beyond communication, Hughes argues that this places books published by museums in a unique relationship to institutions, with staff acting as producers and visitors as consumers.The logistical and ethical dimensions of museum and gallery publishing are also examined in depth, including consideration of issues such as production, the impact of digital technologies, funding and sponsorship, marketing, co-publishing, rights, and curators’ and artists’ agency. Focusing on an important but hitherto neglected topic, Museum and Gallery Publishing is key reading for researchers in the fields of museum, heritage, art and publishing studies. It will also be of interest to curators and other practitioners working in museums, heritage and science centres and art galleries.
Visitor participation is a hot topic in the contemporary world of museums, art galleries, science centers, libraries and cultural organizations. How can your institution do it and do it well? The Participatory Museum is a practical guide to working with community members and visitors to make cultural institutions more dynamic, relevant, essential places. Museum consultant and exhibit designer Nina Simon weaves together innovative design techniques and case studies to make a powerful case for participatory practice. "Nina Simon's new book is essential for museum directors interested in experimenting with audience participation on the one hand and cautious about upending the tradition museum model on the other. In concentrating on the practical, this book makes implementation possible in most museums. More importantly, in describing the philosophy and rationale behind participatory activity, it makes clear that action does not always require new technology or machinery. Museums need to change, are changing, and will change further in the future. This book is a helpful and thoughtful road map for speeding such transformation." -Elaine Heumann Gurian, international museum consultant and author of Civilizing the Museum "This book is an extraordinary resource. Nina has assembled the collective wisdom of the field, and has given it her own brilliant spin. She shows us all how to walk the talk. Her book will make you want to go right out and start experimenting with participatory projects." -Kathleen McLean, participatory museum designer and author of Planning for People in Museum Exhibitions "I predict that in the future this book will be a classic work of museology." --Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums
Essays, conversations, and artist portfolios confront questions at the intersection of race, institutional life, and representation. Controversies involving race and the art world are often discussed in terms of diversity and representation—as if having the right representative from a group or a larger plurality of embodied difference would absolve art institutions from historic forms of exclusion. This book offers another approach, taking into account not only questions of racial representation but also issues of structural change and the redistribution of resources. In essays, conversations, discussions, and artist portfolios, contributors confront in new ways questions at the intersection of art, race, and representation. The book uses saturation as an organizing concept, in part to suggest that current paradigms cannot encompass the complex realities of race. Saturation provides avenues to situate race as it relates to perception, science, aesthetics, the corporeal, and the sonic. In color theory, saturation is understood in terms of the degree to which a color differs from whiteness. In science, saturation points describe not only the moment in which race exceeds legibility, but also how diversity operates for institutions. Contributors consider how racialization, globalization, and the production and consumption of art converge in the art market, engaging such topics as racial capitalism, the aesthetics of colonialism, and disability cultures. They examine methods for theorizing race and representation, including “aboutness,” which interprets artworks by racialized subjects as being “about” race; modes of unruly, decolonized, and queer visual practices that resist disciplinary boundaries; and a model by which to think with and alongside blackness and indigeneity. Copublished with the New Museum
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} On July 20, 1969, half a billion viewers around the world watched as the first television footage of American astronauts on the moon was beamed back to earth—a thrilling turning point in the history of images, satisfying an age-old curiosity about our planet’s only natural satellite. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, this captivating volume surveys the role photography has played in the scientific study and artistic interpretation of the moon from the dawn of the medium to the present, highlighting not only stunning photographic works but also related prints, drawings, paintings, and astronomical instruments. Apollo’s Muse traces the history of lunar photography, from newly discovered daguerreotypes of the 1840s to contemporary film and video works. Along the way, it explores nineteenth century efforts to map the lunar surface, whimsical fantasies of life on the moon, the visual language of the Cold War space race, and work created in response to the moon landing by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Nancy Graves, and Aleksandra Mir. A delightful introduction by Tom Hanks, star of the award winning 1995 film Apollo 13, delves into the universal fascination with representations of the cosmos and the ways in which space travel has radically expanded the limits of human vision.
A compelling examination of the art museum from a renowned director, this sweeping book explores how architecture, vision, and funding have transformed art museums around the world over the past eighty years. How have art museums changed in the past century? Where are they headed in the future? Charles Saumarez Smith is uniquely qualified to answer these questions, having been at the helm of three major institutions over the course of his distinguished career. For The Art Museum in Modern Times, Saumarez Smith has undertaken an odyssey, visiting art museums across the globe and examining how the experience of art is shaped by the buildings that house it. His story starts with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of the first museums to focus squarely on the art of the present rather than the past. When it opened in 1939, MoMA’s boldly modernist building represented a stark riposte to the neoclassicism of most earlier art museums. From there, Saumarez Smith investigates dozens of other museums, including the Tate Modern in London, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the West Bund Museum in Shanghai, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He explores our shifting reasons for visiting museums, changes to the way exhibits are organized and displayed, and the spectacular new architectural landmarks that have become destinations in their own right. Global in scope yet full of personal insight, this fully illustrated celebration of the modern art museum will appeal to art lovers, museum professionals, and museum goers alike.
Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objectsare all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of brass plaques and carved ivory tusks depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of BeninCity, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museums, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.
Introduction to Trace Mayer's Museum Bees: Including an overview of his work, the history, methodology, and variety of pieces created as well as interior design installations in clients homes.
