The cathedrals of England and Wales are remarkable buildings. From the centuries leading up to the Norman Conquest to the tumults of the Reformation to the devastating wars of the 20th century, they carry traces of our nations' darkest moments and most brilliant endeavours. This beautifully illustrated new volume tells the stories behind 50 remarkable artefacts - one for each cathedral - that have been preserved by the cathedrals of the Church of England and the Church in Wales. Featuring the Magna Carta of Salisbury Cathedral as well as the oldest book of English literature in the world, an Anglo-Saxon portable sundial, and Pre-Raphaelite glass, painting and embroidery, these local and national treasures are a vital part of our heritage, testifying to the powerful and enduring links between cathedrals and the wider communities of which they are part.

Representing four centuries of collecting and 1,000 years of Jewish history, this book brings together extraordinary Hebrew manuscripts and rare books from the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges. Highlights of the collections include a fragment of Maimonides' autograph draft of the 'Mishneh Torah'; the earliest dated fragment of the Talmud, exquisitely illuminated manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible; stunning festival prayerbooks and one of the oldest surviving Jewish seals in England. Lavishly illustrated essays by experts in the field bring to life the outstanding works contained in the collections, as well as the personalities and diverse motivations of their original collectors, who include Archbishop William Laud, John Selden, Edward Pococke, Robert Huntington, Matteo Canonici, Benjamin Kennicott and Rabbi David Oppenheim. Saved for posterity by religious scholarship, intellectual rivalry and political ambition, these extraordinary collections also bear witness to the consumption and circulation of knowledge across the centuries, forming a social and cultural history of objects moved across borders, from person to person. Together, they offer a fascinating journey through Jewish intellectual and social history from the tenth century onwards.

This book presents a new and spectacular work by the most innovative of America's contemporary artists: Bruce Nauman's installation "One Hundred Fish Fountain." Ninety-seven bronze fish are attached to a steel frame and connected by numerous hoses to pumps, so that the fish suck in and spew out water.

French historian, Serge Guilbaut, explores the aesthetic quarrels between Paris and New York of the 40s and 50s, analysing the art that became cultural and commercial icons, with works by Picasso, de Kooning, Dubuffet, Gorky, Kandinsky, Matisse, Newman, Pollock, Rothko, as well as forgotten artists like Barbeau, Bearden and Capogrossi. He also studies the reasons why the popular icons of one culture were not recognised by the other at that time. Faced with the imposing presence of the victorious movement of abstract expressionism, the French art scene, seemed incapable of projecting a single voice or direction for the future, as Paris had done in the past.To study the history of French and American art after the Second World War is a considerable challenge because the consensus among investigators has been shaped by the success of American art. The French art of that period has been regarded as irrelevant although it displayed the same debates about realism, geometrical abstraction and forms of abstract expressionism. The specific aspect of the French scene was the extreme politicisation of artistic expression at a time of strong tensions arising from the divisions of the Cold War.

The Walters Art Museum is among America's most distinctive museums, forging connections between people and art from cultures around the world and spanning seven millennia. The museum features a stunning array of objects, from richly illuminated Qur'ans and images of the Buddha, to captivating narrative paintings and artfully crafted ceramics and metalworks. Official publication in March 2023 celebrates the reopening of the Museum's Arts of Asia and Islam collections in the renovated and reinstalled 4th floor of the Centre Street Building. Arts Across Asia and Islam will be the first volume in a series of titles which break away from the traditional academic approach. It is built around themes that transcend period, form, locale and medium, and forms part of the Museum's wider initiative to focus resources on developing new ways of interpreting its collections.

"Chanel fans rejoice. . . . As glamorous and chic as you'd expect."--The Observer (on the first edition) A comprehensive and captivating overview of all of Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel collections, showcasing his creations through original catwalk photography This fully revised edition of the first overview of Karl Lagerfeld's (1933-2019) Chanel creations maintains every exceptional detail of the first edition. Images of key looks and short informative texts bring to life each season--now with 22 new collections, including Lagerfeld's final show for the house and the work of his successor, Virginie Viard. Beautifully produced, this book will stand as the ultimate reference on Lagerfeld's iconic Chanel looks and serve as a lasting tribute to one of the most talented and influential fashion designers in history. Opening with an introductory essay about Lagerfeld and his vision for Chanel, the book explores the collections chronologically, revealing the designer's inspired reinvention of classic Chanel style elements from season to season. Each collection is illustrated with a curated selection of catwalk images (filled with photos of top fashion models, including Cara Delevingne, Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss, and Claudia Schiffer), showcasing hundreds of spectacular clothes, from luxurious haute couture to trendsetting ready-to-wear, accessories, beauty looks, and set designs.

Capturing the highlights of the major Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, this stunning souvenir celebrates the House of Dior from its foundation in 1947 to the present day. Haute-couture gowns by Christian Dior and the illustrious creative directors who followed him -Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferre, John Galliano, Bill Gaytten, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri-are showcased here, each described by Oriole Cullen and atmospherically photographed by Laziz Hamani.

As an underground art star, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was the antidote to the prevalent abstract expressionist style of 1950s America. He introduced popular everyday subjects into his practice and openly acknowledged the wide-ranging influences on his work. Throughout his career, his forays into advertising, fashion, film, TV and music videos, marked a fascination with mainstream popular culture. This book will position Warhol at the vanguard of artistic experimentation. Looking at his background as an immigrant, ideas of death and religion, and his queer perspective, it will explore his limitless ambition to push the traditional boundaries of painting, sculpture, film and music, and reveal Warhol as an artist who both succeeded and failed in equal measure; an artist who embraced the establishment while cavorting with the underground. It will further highlight Warhol's knowing flirtation with the commercial world of celebrity alongside his socially engaged collaborations and advocacy of alternative lifestyles. Including his iconic depictions alongide lesser-known works, as well as an installation of his Silver Clouds, this fascinating book returns Warhol to his conceptual ambition and positions him within the shifting creative and political landscape in which he worked, permitting a broad view of how Warhol, and his work, marked a period of cultural transformation.

Based on two international conferences held at Cornell University and the Freie Universitat of Berlin in 2010 and 2015, this volume is the first ever to explicitly address the destruction of plaster cast collections of ancient Mediterranean and Western sculpture. Focusing on Europe, the Americas, and Japan, art historians, archaeologists and a literary scholar discuss how different museum and academic traditions - national as well as disciplinary -, notions of value and authenticity, or colonialism impacted the fate of collections. The texts offer detailed documentation of degrees of destruction by spectacular acts of defacement, demolition, discarding, or neglect. They also shed light on the accompanying discourses regarding aesthetic ideals, political ideologies, educational and scholarly practices, or race. With destruction being understood as a critical part of reception, the histories of cast collections defy the traditional, homogenous narrative of rise and decline. Their diverse histories provide critical evidence for rethinking the use and display of plaster cast collections in the contemporary moment.

From camisoles to corsets, basques to boudoir caps and girdles to garters, Underwear: Fashion in Detail gets up close to some of the most intimate items in the V&A. The book traces the evolution of underwear, from rare examples dating from the sixteenth century and the exaggerated shapes of eighteenth-century courtly undergarments, to Dior's curvaceous 'New Look' girdles to contemporary lingerie by Agent Provocateur and Rigby and Peller. Meticulous colour photography shows these fascinating garments in close detail, while intricate line drawings reveal their construction. The book also highlights the work of designers such as Vionnet and Westwood, who have taken influence from underwear for their own outerwear creations.

By 1862, just a decade after its launch as a study collection for art and design, the Victoria and Albert Museum had become a reference resource for collectors, scholars and art-market experts. Enriching the V&A, the final volume in a trilogy of books on the museum's 19th-century history, describes how the young museum's rapid growth in the following decades was driven more by collectors, agents and dealers, through loans, gifts and bequests, than by the combined expertise, acquisitions policies and buying power of its directors and curators. The V&A soon became a collection of collections, embodying a new age of collecting that benefitted from the break-up of historic institutions and ancestral collections across Europe, and imperial expeditions in Asia and Africa. The industrial revolution had created a new social class with the resources to buy from the expanding art market, especially in the decorative arts. Many were touched by a new moral imperative to collect for the home, however humble, and to share their specialist knowledge and enthusiasm by lending to the new public museums. Enriching the V&A explores the formative influence on the museum, and on pioneering fields of scholarship, of the V&A's leading Victorian and Edwardian benefactors. It also shares uncomfortable truths about the sources of some objects from the age of empires and shows how the meanings of things can change through the transformation of private property into public museum collections.

A critical reconsideration of the history of photography that explores how commerce and conflict fueled its practice in nineteenth-century China Photography's development as a new form of art and technology coincided with profound changes in the way China engaged with the world in the nineteenth century. The medium evolved in response to war, trade, travel, and a desire for knowledge about an unfamiliar place. Power and Perspective provides a rich account of the exchanges among photographers, artists, patrons, and subjects in the treaty port cities that connected China and the West. Drawing primarily from the Peabody Essex Museum's historic and largely unpublished collection of photographs, this generously illustrated volume examines the confrontations and collaborations that shaped the adoption and practice of photography in China. Offering an original reassessment of the colonial legacy of the medium, Power and Perspective addresses photography's representations of racial hierarchy and its entanglement with histories of European imperialism in nineteenth-century China. Distributed for the Peabody Essex Museum Exhibition Schedule: Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (September 24, 2022-April 2, 2023)