Modern Asian Design provides a comprehensive introduction to the development of Asian design in the modern period, both tracing historical threads and offering a theoretical framework within which to chart the history of design in Asia. Rather than a singular "Asian history", this book presents a series of studies centred on trade routes, colonial relationships, regional networks and cross-cultural exchanges. Modern Asian Design builds on existing resources beyond design history in an effort to map the field, focusing particularly on relations between Asia and the West and also across Asian design cultures. Opening with a brief overview of trade and exchange networks in the 17th and 18th centuries, the bulk of this study comprises analysis of the development of modern design in Asia during the later 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of rapid modernisation. The book's final two chapters bring these central ideas into a contemporary and highly relevant context.

The acclaimed Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture, the second oldest academy in France, was abolished in 1793. Whilst a number of studies have explored the drama of its dissolution, often associated with a speech by former member Jacques-Louis David, this outcome can only be fully understood in the context of the evolving governance of the institution. In this groundbreaking work, Reed Benhamou provides the first comprehensive examination of the codes and practices of the Academie, from its inception in 1648 to its abolition in 1793. As well as exploring why certain rules were adopted, how they facilitated the development of institutional power bases, and the part they played in the Academie's growing factionalism, the author uncovers changing attitudes to the guild, women, associate academicians and unaffiliated artists. This astute and comprehensive analysis is followed by nine annotated appendices of both registered and proposed statutes and of other related documents, many of which are made readily accessible for the first time. Offering new insights into the tensions between art and state throughout the ancien regime and beyond, Regulating the Academie is an invaluable reference not only for art historians, but also for those working in cultural or legal history.