Cultural Cleansing and Mass Atrocities: Protecting Cultural Heritage in Armed Conflict Zones
Thomas G. Weiss and Nina Connelly
This paper, the first in the J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy, addresses the threats to cultural heritage in armed conflict zones and the connection between cultural heritage and cultural cleansing, mass atrocities, and the destruction of cultural heritage.
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Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World
Edited by Jeffrey Spier, Timothy Potts, and Sara E. Cole
The history of the ancient world is not simply the stories of Egypt, Greece, and Rome as separate cultures, but an interwoven narrative of aesthetic and technological exchange, hybridization, and collaboration. This milestone publication is the first to offer a comprehensive account of these vicissitudes of cultural exchange, covering over 2500 years with lively prose and gorgeous illustrations.
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Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography
Paul Martineau
The ripple of the hemline of a ball gown or an insouciant shoulder slipping off a coat—the aesthetic of fashion photography today seems a foregone conclusion. However, as much as clothing has changed over past century, so too has the way it has been captured on magazine pages and museum walls. This stunning exhibition catalogue explores fashion photography’s remarkable evolution and features artists such as Hiro, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts, Man Ray, Bruce Weber, and many more.
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Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India
Edited by Stephanie Schrader
This sumptuously illustrated volume examines the impact of Indian art and culture on Rembrandt in the late 1650s. Pairing twenty-two of Rembrandt’s drawings of Mughal courtiers with Mughal paintings of similar composition, this catalogue features essays by scholars of both Dutch and Indian art.
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Artists and Their Books / Books and Their Artists
Marcia Reed and Glenn Phillips
No medium is perhaps as variable as artists’ books—objects can be a single sheet of paper, a sculptural paperwork fashioned to work like a gemstone, or a book the size of several rooms. The defining quality of these pieces is the fact that they trouble the distinction between art and the book as object. This mesmerizing exhibition catalogue looks closely at eighty artists’ books in the Getty Research Institute collection to reveal their influence on Pop Art, Fluxus, Conceptualism, feminist art, and postmodernism.
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Plato in L.A.: Contemporary Artists' Visions
Donatien Grau
Over a millennium has passed since Plato wrote his dialogues, but the concepts he presented still hold powerful sway over the artists’ imaginations even to this day. This volume examines the work of more than ten artists, including Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Raymond Pettibon, and Adrian Piper, to illuminate how Platonic thought, from the Socratic Method to the realm of the forms, shapes art now.
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Guide to the Getty Villa: Revised Edition
Published at the same time as the end of a major reinstallation of the permanent collection at the Villa, this newly revised edition of the Guide addresses the changes in the layout, as well as several recent major acquisitions. With a new foreword and final chapter, this book is indispensable for any visitor.
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Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide
Written by Isabel Quintero
Illustrated by Zeke Peña
This young adult graphic biography follows the life of one of Mexico’s greatest living photographers, Graciela Iturbide, as she makes her way from Mexico City to the Sonora Desert, Los Angeles, India, and beyond. The kaleidoscopic narrative offers deep insight into the path of a young photographer from an early tragedy to great fame. Ages twelve and up.
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Maria Sibylla Merian: Artist, Scientist, Adventurer
Sarah B. Pomeroy and Jeyaraney Kathirithamby
Science and art combine in this captivating, lushly illustrated young adult biography of Maria Sibylla Merian, one of the world’s first entomologists, who was also a botanist, naturalist, and celebrated artist. Readers will follow her as she begins her study of moths as age thirteen at her home in the Netherlands through her journey around the world to study insects in South America.
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Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions
Edited by Glenn Phillips and Philipp Kaiser
With Doris Chon and Pietro Rigolo
The Swiss curator Harald Szeemann is arguably one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century art. Both at the Kunsthalle Bern and as a freelance curator, he championed influential artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Michael Heizer, and Andy Warhol. This exhibition catalogue provides new insight into Szeemann’s remarkable curatorial philosophy by drawing upon his archive.
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Harald Szeemann: Selected Writings
Harald Szeemann
Edited by Doris Chon, Glenn Phillips, and Pietro Rigolo
As a curator who helped herald in movements as disparate as Pop Art, Conceptualism, and Fluxus, Harald Szeemann is recognized as a tastemaker of twentieth-century art. He was also a prolific writer, and up until now his writings had not been collected in English. This thoughtfully assembled volume takes up that task and the result is a lively look inside the mind of the eccentric and respected Swiss curator.
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Paper Promises: Early American Photography
Mazie M. Harris
Filling in a gap in previous scholarship, Mazie M. Harris looks specifically at early American photographers who used paper negatives to create photographs on a variety of papers. This richly detailed catalogue provides a new window not only into photography practice in the mid-nineteenth century, but life in general.
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Reims on Fire: War and Reconciliation between France and Germany
Thomas W. Gaehtgens
This book explores the bombing of the Reims cathedral during World War I as a cataclysmic moment in the relationship between France and Germany, as well as the years it took to rebuild the social, scientific, artistic, and cultural ties that had existed between the countries previously.
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The Art of Curating: Paul J. Sachs and the Museum Course at Harvard
Sally Anne Duncan and Andrew McClellan
From 1921 through 1948, Paul J. Sachs offered a yearlong program in art museum training through Harvard University that produced dozens of directors, curators, assistants, and educators for North American institutions. This book is an in-depth look at the course itself and how it would shape American museums for years to come.
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Dialogue on the Errors and Abuses of Painters
Giovanni Andre Gilio
Edited by Michael Bury, Linda Byatt, and Carol M. Richardson
Gilio’s text remains a key primary source for the discussion of the reform of art as it unfolded at the time of the Council of Trent and the Catholic Reformation. This newly translated and unabridged version of the Dialogue reveals the nuanced and provisional debates happening during this crucial era.
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The Sistine Chapel: Paradise in Rome
Ulrich Pfisterer
This concise, informative account of the Sistine Chapel unpacks its complex history to reveal the remarkable unity of the images in relation to theology, politics, and the intentions of the artists themselves, who include Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
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Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary
Edited by Cristina Cuevas-Wolf and Isotta Poggi
In 1956, Hungarians led a short-lived rebellion against Soviet control, which survived for ten days before being crushed and the Soviet-aligned minister János Kádár assumed power. Focusing on the Kádár era (1956–89), this publication explores the political reforms and artistic experimentations under the regime’s authoritarian cultural policy by drawing on the writings and archives of contemporary artists and critics.
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Photography and Sculpture: The Art Object in Reproduction
Edited by Sarah Hamill and Megan R. Luke
What is the photograph’s place in writing the history of sculpture? How has it changed according to culture, generation, critical conviction, and changes in media? This erudite volume studies aspects of these questions from the perspectives of sixteen leading art historians, including essays on Conceptual art, Roman sculpture, and contemporary photography in India.
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The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture: The Birth of the French School, 1648–1793
Christian Michel
Translation by Chris Miller
The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (French Academy of Painting and Sculpture)--perhaps the single most influential art institution in history--governed the arts in France for more than 150 years, from its founding in 1648 until its abolition in 1793. Christian Michel's sweeping study presents an authoritative, in-depth analysis of the Académie’s history and legacy.
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The Conservation and Presentation of Mosaics: At What Cost?: Proceedings of the 12th Conference of the International Committee for the Conservation of Mosaics, Sardinia, October 27–31, 2014
Edited by Jeanne Marie Teutonico, Leslie Friedman, Aïcha Ben Abed, and Roberto Nardi
This handsome, abundantly illustrated volume provides a comprehensive record of the twelfth triennial meeting of the International Committee for the Conservation of Mosaics, held in Sardinia in October 2014, focused on the theme of cost, broadly considered, relating specifically to the preservation and presentation of the world’s mosaic heritage.
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Keep It Moving? Conserving Kinetic Art
Edited by Rachel Rivenc and Reinhard Bek
Kinetic art not only includes movement but often depends on it to produce an intended effect and therefore fully realize its nature as art. It can take a multiplicity of forms and include a wide range of motion, from motorized movement to motion as the result of wind or other sources of energy. This volume considers issues of technology, as well as looking at how professionals are rethinking concepts like authenticity.
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