The Curator's Handbook is the essential practical handbook for curators and curatorial students, mapping out every stage of the exhibition-making process from initial idea to final installation. In his introduction, Adrian George traces the history of curating back to its origins in the 17th century and outlines the multifarious roles of the curator today, including as custodian, interpreter, educator, facilitator and organizer. Twelve chapters then chart the various stages of the exhibition process in invaluable detail and clear, informative language - from initial concept to writing contracts and loan requests, putting together budgets and schedules, producing exhibition catalogues and interpretation materials, designing gallery spaces, working with artists, lenders and art handlers, organizing private views, and documenting and evaluating a show. A distinguished cast of international museum directors and curators offer advice and tips.

Mircea Malitza, a career diplomat from Romania, witnessed and participated in major events during the entire Cold War period. An engaging personality, he earned respect from world leaders in the United States, Western Europe and emerging post-colonial countries. This account is noteworthy for its rare insights into a duality not always apparent when seen through the Cold War lens of Western eyes. There is, on the one hand, the subservience of Romania, and the entire Soviet Bloc, to Russia's dogmas and imperial aspirations. On the other hand, Romania's leaders crafted their own national 'independent path, ' often in highly creative and potentially dangerous ways. This served Romania well in opening doors to favorable Western contact, culminating, during the mid-1960s, in a period of 'liberalization' of internal and foreign policies. In time, though, these achievements were undermined by Nicolae Ceausescu's increasingly dictatorial and cruel slide into a moral and economic abyss. In these memoirs, Ambassador Malitza's recollections of the Cuban Missile Crisis are illuminating: he provides unique eye witness testimony to both the public posturing and tense behind-the-scenes diplomacy as the world was taken to the brink of nuclear war - he is the sole surviving member of the UN Security Council of that time. Revealing, too, are Malitza's accounts of the dramatic day-by-day events and secret conspiracies of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968-and how Romania avoided a similar fate. The author reveals his encounters and professional friendships with world leaders. Private conversations with Averell Harriman - America's master diplomat with unique insights into Russia's policies - are unexpected. So, too, is the relationship with UN Secretary General U-Thant. A unique memoir written in a lively voice, and translated for this edition with great sensitivity to nuance and subtle humor, this book should please both the casual reader and the specialist.

A general framework has been developed to investigate dynamic stability of composite plates under dynamic and static compressive loads. A variationally consistent, higher-order shear deformation theory has been used to model the displacement field. The linear strain-displacement relationship corresponding to the small deformation assumption is used first. Both transverse shear and rotary inertia effects are taken into account. The mathematical model is implemented using the finite element approach. The impact of delamination on the natural frequencies, critical buckling load, and instability regions is investigated Parametric studies are conducted to investigate the influence of delamination placement and size, boundary conditions, plate thickness, static pre-stress, and stacking sequence on the instability regions. Finally, the importance of geometric nonlinearity is studied by introducing von Krmn nonlinearity. Natural frequency results are obtained for square isotropic and cross-ply laminates and compared with available analytical data. The effect of geometric nonlinearity on the principal instability region is also investigated for cross-ply laminates.