An exciting, unexpected, and beautiful encounter with one collector’s deeply personal assemblage of works. Since the 1980s, Mickey Cartin has assembled a remarkable collection of objects and art—Renaissance and modernist paintings, master prints, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, and more. Exploring the theory behind collecting art and how Cartin’s approach to collecting diverges from common practices, this publication offers a unique perspective on an intimate practice. Unconcerned with hewing to specific categories, time periods, or media, Cartin’s collection—which includes the likes of Josef Albers, Sol Lewitt, and Forrest Bess—creates active combinations and disrupts homogeneity, privileging the drive of curiosity. A documentation of the celebrated exhibition Seen in the Mirror: Things from the Cartin Collection at David Zwirner, New York, in 202, this catalogue includes additional artworks from Cartin’s trove along with views of his home, conveying how he lives with these various types of work. Cartin selected each work in the exhibition and catalogue as a reflection of his deep connections with the many artists represented therein. The conversation between Cartin and David Leiber illuminates the tensions between study and instinct, reading versus experiencing, as well as the influences and figures that inform his personal, curatorial practice. With an introduction by the curator of the Cartin Collection, Steven Holmes, and a text from the art historian Luke Syson, this inspiring volume is a spirited investigation of a very different method of and approach to collecting.

What is a family? And how is family experienced? These questions, explored through artists’ eyes, are at the heart of the exhibition, Real Families: Stories of Change, a collaboration between the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University of Cambridge Centre for Family Research. The book provides a catalogue of the exhibition in four sections, containing twelve illuminating essays that discuss the concept of the family. Real Families: Stories of Change focuses on art produced in the past 50 years, a period of significant change in how families are created and structured, with historical works woven into the exhibition to examine what is genuinely new, and what has remained the same, about the family. The catalogue includes reproductions of paintings, photography and sculpture. In the first section, ‘What is a Family?’, artists portray new forms of family, including families formed by assisted reproduction and families with LGBTQ+ parents, as well as families affected by divorce, adoption and infertility. The works prompt viewers to consider stereotyped beliefs about what makes a family and society’s prejudice against childlessness. Second, ‘Family Transitions’ starts with artists’ representations of motherhood, followed by an examination of the positive role that fathers play. Works on siblings speak to the dynamic and intense relationships that exist between siblings, and those on grandparents and grandchildren highlight the benefit of having each other in their lives. Artists also convey their complex feelings about their ageing parents. ‘Family Dynamics’ explores positive and negative relationships between couples, parents and children, and extended family, with works that foreground affection and rejection, comfort and conflict, enmeshment, estrangement and not fitting in. The works also examine the wider social, cultural and political influences on family relationships. Finally, ‘Family Legacies’ highlights the importance to many people of a sense of connection and belonging. This section explores the transmission of family from one generation to the next through genetic inheritance, social and cultural practices, language and objects, which can forge emotional connections and give rise to family memories.

Nick Hornby (b. 1980, London) is one of the leading sculptors of his generation in Britain today, creating works on both intimate and monumental scales, and at the intersection of art history and contemporary technology. Hornby’s practice uses software that allows him to extract, alter and hybridise sculptures from art history into new works made from marble, steel, bronze, resin, wood and composite materials. It could be said that Hornby has opened up a new sculptural language for the twenty-first century. This, his first major monograph, features approximately 175 images, many of which are reproduced here for the first time or have been commissioned for the publication. Alongside documentation of works presented in galleries and outdoor spaces are production images taken in the studio and fabrication workshops. Hornby’s practice is here divided into four categories: Intersections, Extrusions, Hydrographics and Collaborations. A foreword by Luke Syson, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, offers insight into Hornby’s internal and external relationship with sculpture, considering the links between two and three dimensions, abstraction and representation, the ‘real’ and the digital. Editor Matt Price’s introduction takes readers on a whistlestop tour of the artist’s oeuvre, from his early family life and studies at Chelsea and The Slade in London, to his latest major exhibitions and commissions. Price covers a range of significant aspects such as the importance of music and sound, which were key elements of Hornby’s early work, to sculptures made in collaboration with others, and recent pieces combining art history with technology in their design and fabrication. An essay by Dr Hannah Higham, Senior Curator of Collections and Research at the Henry Moore Foundation, provides the most substantial piece of critical writing on Hornby’s work to date, drawing out specific touchstones in the history of art and discussing the relationship between the work and time. Higham further explores the ways that the motion and position of the viewer alter the experience of the sculptures, with new angles revealing fresh artistic inspirations from Hans Arp or Elizabeth Frink to ideas from communities Hornby has worked with and other contemporary artists with whom he has collaborated. An interview with Dr Helen Pheby, Associate Director, Programme, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, probes the artist further about his cultural and theoretical inspirations, methods, materials and ideologies, including his views on collaboration, the public nature of art and its accessibility. Their conversation provides an insight into the thinking of the artist at a crucial stage in his career. The monograph brings together works spanning Hornby’s career for the first time. It follows Hornby’s first institutional solo exhibition at MOSTYN, Wales, and his first permanent outdoor sculptural commission for Harlow Science Park in Essex. The publication is edited by Matt Price, designed by Herman Lelie, printed by EBS, Verona, and published by Anomie, London. Nick Hornby, born in 1980, is a British artist living and working in London. Hornby studied at The Slade School of Art and Chelsea College of Art where he was awarded the UAL Sculpture Prize. In the UK he has exhibited at Tate Britain, Southbank Centre, Leighton House (all London), Cass Sculpture Foundation, Sussex, MOSTYN, Wales, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. International exhibitions have been held at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York and Poznan Biennale, Poland, along with residencies with Outset, Israel, and Eyebeam, New York. In 2014 Hornby was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors.

The brightly colored tin-enameled earthenware called maiolica was among the major accomplishments of decorative arts in 16th-century Italy. This in-depth look at the history of maiolica, told through 140 exemplary pieces from the world-class collection at the Metropolitan Museum, offers a new perspective on a major aspect of Italian Renaissance art. Most of the works have never been published and all are newly photographed. The ceramics are featured alongside detailed descriptions of production techniques and a consideration of the social and cultural context, making this an invaluable resource for scholars and collectors. The imaginatively decorated works include an eight-figure group of the Lamentation, the largest and most ambitious piece of sculpture produced in a Renaissance maiolica workshop; pharmacy jars; bella donna plates; and more. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (08/29/16-02/26/17)

Explores how artists from the European Renaissance to the global present have used sculpture and color to evoke the presence of the living body Since the earliest myths of the sculptor Pygmalion bringing a statue to life through desire, artists have explored the boundaries between sculpture and the physical materiality of the body. This groundbreaking volume examines key sculptural works from 13th-century Europe to the global present, revealing new insights into the strategies artists deploy to blur the distinction between art and life. Sculpture, which has historically taken the human figure as its subject, is presented here in myriad manifestations created by artists ranging from Donatello and Degas to Picasso, Kiki Smith, and Jeff Koons. Featuring works created in traditional media such as wood and marble as well as the unexpected such as wax, metal, and blood, Like Life presents sculpture both conventional and shocking, including effigies, dolls, mannequins, automata, waxworks, and anatomical models. Containing texts by art and cultural historians as well as interviews with contemporary artists, this is a provocative exploration of three-dimensional representations of the human body.

The reputation of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) as an inventor and scientist, and his complex personality, have sometimes almost overshadowed the importance of his aims and techniques as a painter. This exquisite book focuses on a crucial period in the 1480s and 90s when, as a salaried court artist to Duke Ludovico Sforza in the city-state of Milan--freed from the pressures of making a living in the commercially minded Florentine republic--Leonardo produced some of the most celebrated and influential works of his career. "The Last Supper," his two versions of "The Virgin of the Rocks," and "The Lady with an Ermine" (a beautiful portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, Ludovico's mistress) were paintings that set a new standard for his Milanese contemporaries. Leonardo's style was magnified, through collaboration and imitation, to become the visual language of the regime, and by the time he returned to Florence in 1500, his status had been utterly transformed.

This new examination of Leonardo's painting career and his lasting impact on Italian Renaissance style features works from U.S., British, and European collections. Collectively, they represent the diverse range of his artistic output, from drawings in chalk, ink, and metalpoint to full-scale oil paintings. Together with the authors' meticulous research and detailed analysis, they demonstrate Leonardo's consummate skill and extraordinary ambition as a painter.

The Metropolitan Museum Journal, issued annually by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, published original research on works in the Museum's collections and the areas of investigation they represent. Volume 48 includes essays on the retribution of the early south Italian "New York Goose Vase," the coat of arms in Fra Filippo Lippi's Portrait of a Woman and a Man at a Casement, drawings of the pantheon in the Metropolitan Museum's Goldschmidt scrapbook, sin and redemption in the Hours of Francois I (1539-40) by the Master of Francois de Rohan, and Houdon's Bather in a Drawing by Pierre Antoine Mongin.