They call Yorkshire God’s own country. This is because England’s biggest county is also England’s most epic and most historically exciting. It has everything: unimaginably beautiful countryside, derelict castles, cliff-hugging coastlines, brutally bleak moors, quirkily quaint villages, wondrously winding waterways and industrial monsters of cities. Many of the most interesting episodes in English history have happened here: the Wars of the Roses, the English Civil War, the birth of the industrial revolution, the rise of the Labour movement.

But when people think of Yorkshire they also think of the unusual and the unsung: Bettys delightful tea rooms, cricket at Scarborough, the windswept steps of Whitby Abbey, the steam railway of the Railway Children, Mother Shipton’s Cave, and racing at Doncaster and York.

Yorkshire has also given birth to some of the greatest and most talented figures in English history: Brian Clough, Harold Wilson, John Wycliffe, William Wilberforce, the Brontë Sisters, David Hockney and Barbara Hepworth.

Still known as Wool City, Bradford has evolved from its industrial past and diversified into a powerhouse of artistic creativity and diverse attractions. Striking architecture and unique locations helped the city become the first Unesco City of Film, with many places instantly recognisable from film and TV programmes. Saltaire village is a World Heritage Site, dominated by the imposing Salts Mill, and is home to an impressive array of independent shops, galleries, cafés and bars. Haworth is more rural, picture perfect, and was the home of the Brontës, surrounded by miles of rugged moorland immortalised in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

With a history of encouraging people from around the world to live and work here, its diverse heritage forms a major part of Bradford’s rich tapestry of arts and culture, and ensures a friendly welcome for all. Parks, formal gardens and water features breathe life into the city, jostling with galleries, theatres and an array of bars, cafés and restaurants. From Hockney originals to urban street sculpture, world class theatre to the world’s longest running folk club, yorkshire puddings to chicken biryani, this vibrant city will surprise you in the best possible way. 

One sole truth about Edvard Munch’s art does not exist. The answers depend on the questions we pose. Twenty-two Munch experts have written 150 texts about well-known and lesser-known works from Munchmuseet’s collection. Through these multiple ways of seeing, Munch’s lifework emerges as infinite. And this book, as an exercise in the art of seeing. The book invites the reader to explore the world of Edvard Munch — his ideas, processes, and the profoundly human topics that occupied him and that still affect us today. Through a wide selection from the museum’s collection, you can experience the richness of Munch’s artistic career and his unrelenting drive to experiment and innovate.

The Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp is a house full of art. The museum today is internationally renowned as the home of the famous Dulle Griet (‘Mad Meg’) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. For the locals living in Antwerp, the museum is above all a well-kept secret. At the same time, there is always amazement that so much beauty could be brought together in one place. Who built this collection?

The museum is housed in an historic building that recalls two individuals, Henriëtte van den Bergh (1838-1920) and Fritz Mayer van den Bergh (1858-1901). The entire collection was assembled by Fritz, a man with a keen interest in the Medieval Renaissance periods. Following Fritz’s early and unexpected death on 4 May 1901, it was his mother, Henriëtte van den Bergh, who had the museum built to house his art collection. By doing so, she preserved this exceptional collection and at the same time succeeded in keeping alive a memorial to her son. The museum opened its doors in 1904.

This book offers an insight into the history of the museum and its founders. It is based on in-depth research carried out in the archive of Museum Mayer van den Bergh, which among other things contains the rich correspondence between Fritz and Henriëtte as well as an extensive photo collection. Over four chapters, the book explores the personalities behind the collection, their social background and networks, their interests and their modus operandi. More than anything else, this is the story of Henriëtte van den Bergh, the founder of the museum, who died 100 years ago. With her visionary projects, she proved herself not only to be a forceful personality, but also someone with a forward-looking organisational talent and an entrepreneur with an exceptional mission – and all in a period when the involvement of women in public life was anything but the norm.

In December 2020, spirits were low. The first tentative visitors had only just made it back through the doors of the Ashmolean after months of isolation, only for another lockdown to come crashing into view. The galleries went dark for a second time in a year. There’s something uncanny about standing in the Museum when it’s empty of visitors. You can sense a million human stories all around you, clamouring to be told to… no-one. So, we had to change tack. If we couldn’t get people into the building, we could get the stories out. I started calling around curators, asking for their most uplifting tales in the collections. From bedrooms and garden sheds and kitchen tables, the Ashmolean team started recording themselves, sharing stories of joy and resilience to help keep us all going through the dark winter months of quarantine. The result was a podcast, Museum Secrets, which you can find on the Ashmolean’s website. This book contains the highlights. These are stories you won’t find on the labels. These are stories of the human experiences hidden in the Museum’s cases and frames. They are stories that cheered us up when we needed it most, and I hope will continue to do so. 

Kifwebe masks are ceremonial objects used by the Songye and Luba societies (Democratic Republic of Congo), where they are worn with costumes consisting of a long robe and a long beard made of plant fibres. As in other central African cultures, the same mask can be used in either magical and religious or festive ceremonies. In order to understand Kifwebe masks, it is essential to consider them within the cosmogony of the python rainbow, metalworking in the forge, and other plant and animal signs. Among the Songye, benevolent female masks reveal what is hidden and balance white and red energy associated with two subsequent initiations, the bukishi. Aggressive male masks were originally involved in social control and had a kind of policing role, carried out in accordance with the instructions of village elders. These two male and female forces acted in a balanced way to reinforce harmony within the village. Among the Luba, the masked figures are also benevolent and appear at the new moon, their role being to enhance fertility. Although the male and female masks fulfil functions that do not wholly overlap, they do have features in common: a frontal crest, round and excessively protruding eyes, flaring nostrils, a cube-shaped mouth and lips, stripes, and colours. Art historians and anthropologists have taken increasing interest in Kifwebe masks in recent years.

Zhu Pei’s Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum recalls a time of glory of the once “Millenium Porcelain Capital” city, Jingdezhen, and extends these memories to the present. Inspired by the perception of Jingdezhen’s specific regional culture (porcelain) and the survival wisdom of the locals, the museum is a symbol of the past and future. The contemporary architecture magnificently resonates the ages: the building form is reminiscent of ancient traditional brick kilns, and its landscape — with mirror pools, bamboo groves, kiln ruins, and courtyards — recreates an impression of Jingdezhen’s vibrant porcelain past. As an “Architecture of Nature,” that evokes both contemporaneity and ancient vibes, the museum subverts typical perceptions of modern-day museums. Coloured photos, drawings, essays, and interviews provide detailed insights on the conception of the museum — from design concept to environmental strategies, to construction techniques and construction materials — as well as the architect’s personal perspectives on the overall concept and intention of the museum. The pages also feature commentaries on the museum by well-known architects, including Fan Di’an, Kenneth Frampton, Steven Holl, Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas, Thomas Krens, Mohsen Mostafavi, Wang Mingxian.

“Now Aftel has created this beautiful book, illustrated with treasures from her museum’s collection, so that readers at home can immerse themselves in the world of scent.” — 7 x 7
“Aftel, … explores the natural and cultural history of scent in her newest book, The Museum of Scent.”— Veranda
“A beautiful book about beautiful things, with a fascinating narrative told by an author who loves her subject.”— Kirkus Reviews
“It is so rich in story, information, and images, you don’t just read it, you fall into it and don’t want it to end!” — Ivy Ross, co-author of New York Times bestseller Your Brain on Art and VP of Hardware Design at Google

“…just leafing through Aftel’s stunning compilation of olfactory magic is like being gifted a book of secrets.” — Smithsonian
Breathe in the natural and cultural history of scent with this richly illustrated book inspired by the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents.

“This work . . . is a true original ― a rarest of rare legacy volume. This book was created by a beautiful elder who is a polymath: meaning, a highly unique person of multiple modern and old ways of knowing. . . . Mandy Aftel’s dons and talents are now resting in your hands in this magical tome that, I deeply sense and hope, will bless you time and again.” ― From the foreword by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Reyés, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves and the forthcoming La Curandera, Walking in Two Worlds

Mandy Aftel is one of the world’s preeminent natural perfumers, with a clientele ranging from the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen to Ivy Ross, head of hardware design at Google. Eschewing the synthetic molecules that dominate commercial perfumes, Aftel creates her complex and subtle fragrances using only natural essences. For her, each of these essences is a gateway to a lost world of scent, stretching back to the beginnings of human civilization and intertwined with the history of medicine, cuisine, adornment, sexuality, and spirituality. In 2017, Aftel opened a one-room museum ― the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents ― in her backyard in Berkeley, California, to help a modern audience rediscover the enchantment of this lost world. Her museum has attracted thousands of enthusiastic visitors and has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Goop, O: The Oprah Magazine, and numerous other media outlets.

Now Aftel has created this beautiful book, illustrated with treasures from her museum’s collection, so that readers at home can immerse themselves in the world of scent. She guides us through the different families of botanical fragrances (including flowers, woods, leaves and grasses, and resins), depicting each plant with a hand-colored antique woodcut and revealing its olfactory notes and lore. Special chapters are devoted to the most rare and precious fragrances ― such as ambergris, formed of a rare secretion of the sperm whale ― and to antique essential oil bottles, handwritten recipe books, and other evocative artifacts. The Museum of Scent, which includes a bookmark subtly scented with a natural essence, invites us on a sensuous, imaginative journey.

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) has undergone an 11-year renovation period resulting in a total makeover. The museum as it stands today is in all respects new: there is an entirely new museum volume, the monumental museum building has been restored to its historic magnificence, the exterior has been conserved and the garden newly landscaped.

KMSKA – The Finest Museum showcases this enormous renovation and also highlights a second innovation of equally massive scale: the entire operation of the museum has been brought up to date. In this book you can find the answers to questions such as, how did the collection reach its current incarnation? And, how does the KMSKA make its decisions about what to display? How do you appeal to as diverse an audience as possible? How does the museum present itself to the world? What expectations are museums faced with in our 21st century?

Discover the vibrant history of this modern and perpetually evolving museum. With images by photographer Karin Borghouts.

This publication is issued on the occasion of the reopening of the KMSKA in September 2022.

Horses are very rare in Africa. The few to be found west of Sudan, from the lands of the Sahara and Sahel down to the fringes of the tropical forests, belong to the king, the chief warrior and to notable persons. Due to the dense humidity of the tropical rainforest and the deadly tsetse fly, only restricted numbers of horses survive. And yet rider and mount sculptures are common among the Dogon, Djenne, Bamana, Senufo and the Yoruba people. The Akan-Asante people of Ghana and the Kotoko of Chad produced a good deal of small casting brass and bronze sculptures. Some of the artists could barely even have caught a glimpse of a horse. This visually stunning book presents a wealth of African art depicting the horse and its rider in a variety of guises, from Epa masks and Yoruba divination cups to Dogon sculptures and Senufo carvings. In Mali, the Bamana, Boso and Somono ethnic groups still celebrate the festivals of the puppet masquerade. The final chapter of this book is dedicated to the art and cult of these festivals, which are still alive and well. It is not the habit of the African artist to provide intellectual statements for his work, yet his unique creative dynamic and far-searching vision does not conflict with that of his Western counterpart. It is fair to state that the African, who though not educated in Western art history, contributed his fair share to the shaping of modern art. Features works from museums in both Africa and Europe, including the Musée Royal de L’Afrique Central, Tervuren in Belgium; Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, Netherlands; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Museum Rietberg, Zurich; The British Museum, London; Museu National de Antologia, Lisbon and National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria.

The Museum of Drawers is the world’s smallest museum of twentieth-century art. This unique piece has been conceived and put together by the Swiss-born artist Herbert Distel in 1970-77. It consists of an old cabinet made to hold reels of sewing silk whose twenty drawers each contain twenty-five compartments. Each of the 500 compartments houses an original miniature work of art, many of which were made especially for the Museum of Drawers. The list of artists represented includes such influential pioneers as Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, Meret Oppenheim, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol. Following a first presentation as a work-in-progress at the documenta 5 in Kassel (Germany) in 1972, the Museum of Drawers caused sensation internationally. It has been shown several times in New York, including a presentation at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1999, and at many museums around the world. After its restoration it is now part of the permanent collection of the Kunsthaus, Zürich. This new book is a comprehensive documentation of this extraordinary object. It shows all twenty drawers with their content as well as each of the 500 miniature art works individually and in true size. Essays on the history and importance of the entire work and concept complement the images. The exhibition at Arnolfini Art Center, Bristol, will run from 24 September to 20 November, marking AAC’s 50th anniversary.

With its aesthetically powerful interior architecture, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna on Maria-Theresien-Platz is completely unique in terms of architecture and interior design. Showcasing the museum in all its glory, this luxurious volume is the definitive reference to the museum and a sumptuous showcase of the permanent collection. The book creates a fascinating dialogue between the greatest artists and their works from antiquity to the 19th century.

This book tells the story of the building and the interior splendour and presents the museums most seminal works, including the Bruegel collection and the outstanding masterpieces by Velázquez, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Eyck, and many others. An indispensable resource for anyone who loves art history, this is a richly illustrated record of one of the world’s greatest collections of European art.

Over the centuries, until quite recently, the work of great women artists had been ignored, forgotten, or denied; they had been largely left out of museums and histories of art. Along came Wilhelmina Cole Holliday, who boldly decided it was time to rectify this oversight by founding a museum in 1987 in a landmark building near the White House. A critic for the Washington Postwrote, “Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, the museum’s founding president, has accomplished something radical. No player in the art scene here has a deeper understanding of power and money and of how our system works. Despite her white-glove graciousness, hard-working Billie Holladay is a warrior and a winner…”

This thrilling story of the birth and early years of the NMWA is a lively, anecdotal, behind-the-scenes, eyewitness glimpse of the efforts of dedicated individuals who shared Mrs. Holladay’s vision and, under her leadership, helped her expand the permanent collection, organise outstanding exhibitions, renovate the Museum, and fund a robust endowment. Moreover, NMWA now boasts a growing membership—among the top ten museums in the world—with active, vocal committees all across the nation and in many countries. Illustrating the text are 130 colour pictures, which include works from the collection and from exhibitions, as well as 40 archival photographs of landmark events that led to the Museum’s impressive growth.

From the opening of The Louvre to the launch of Tate Modern and beyond, this accessible and succinct publication traces the development of the museum concept – encompassing curatorial, scholarly, political and cultural spheres – and its evolving role within society.

In the first section, Schubert looks at the complex history of the museum in specific cities at critical moments, for instance New York between 1930 and 1950 as the Metropolitan Museum of Art expanded and the Museum of Modern Art was founded. The second section focuses on the success and unprecedented development of the museum in the 1980s and 1990s in Europe and the United States, highlighting the need for cities and institutions to revise their programmes in response to a surge of interest in the arts.

The final section looks at the museum’s predicament nearly a decade after The Curator’s Egg was originally published in 2000, exploring the museum’s evolution in a post-9/11 environment.

Chintz explores the historic importance of Indian printed and painted cotton textiles, drawing on the Karun Thakar Collection. Assembled over thirty years, the collection comprises over two hundred examples, many of which have featured in significant museum exhibitions. With contributions from leading scholars and curators, including from the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this book examines the historical significance of Indian printed cottons and their influence on global trade from the 14th century onward, and includes examples found in Sri Lanka, Japan and throughout Europe. The book provides insights into the artistry of Indian designers and the enduring legacy of this textile tradition, making it a valuable resource for those with an interest in art history, textile design and global cultural exchange.

The New Design Museum maps a new landscape of institutional practices across different geographical locations. It reveals how spaces of culture dedicated to design have been transforming—their missions, programs and outreach platforms—to respond to an ever-expanding outlook on design as a field that is moving beyond its traditional presentation as an object-based practice. The case studies encompass visions and practical examples from leading international institutions as well as independent initiatives and platforms, such as The World Around (Brooklyn, NY), Serpentine Gallery (London), Future Observatory at the Design Museum (London), Cultures of Assembly (Luxembourg), Loudreaders, and Non-Extractive Architecture. They are united in their search to revisit methods and canons of conventional museological traditions. They explore a composite thematic spectrum covering from global design practices invested in decolonising and queering agency, computational, ecological and indigenous knowledge, and present alternative educational and collaborative frameworks of institutional development.

The book integrates 15 interviews with directors and programmers, such as Carson Chan (MoMA, New York), Ikko Yokoyama (M+ Museum, Hong Kong), Aric Chen (Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam), Giovanna Borasi (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal), and Lucia Pietroiusti (Serpentine Gallery, London), with a selection of 31 projects and initiatives by independent practitioners and entities beyond the traditional museum, including festivals, websites, podcasts, public programs, and off-spaces. Many of them emerged over the past decade and more intently since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic in 2020. They are evidence of the changing paradigms of public and professional engagement with the discipline of design.

Published on the occasion of the first presentation of the future Art Mill Museum, due to open in 2030 in Doha, Qatar.

This box comprises nine booklets, including one booklet with essays introducing the future museum. One booklet on the architecture, one on the landscape, a poster reproducing the models from the Art Mill Museum International Design Competition, and booklets on the museum’s first artist commissions by Yasmina Benabderrahmane, François-Xavier Gbré, Ali Kazma, Amal Al Muftah and Shaima Al-Tamimi.

This book uses the busts on the Chantrey Wall in the Ashmolean Museum to give an introduction to the remarkable career of Francis Chantrey (1781-1841), and the collection in the Ashmolean. The book charts the progress of the busts from Chantrey’s workshop to a Victorian national treasure: the first monographic collection of British sculpture to become a part of a permanent museum collection. It follows the return of the busts from basement storage to their conservation and triumphant redisplay in the new building.

The book begins and ends with the Chantrey Wall, one of the most photographed displays of recent years providing non-specialist readers an introduction to one of the giants of British sculpture, and one of the most important sculpture collections in the country.

Established by an act of Congress in 1989, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is dedicated to the preservation, study, and exhibition of the life, languages, literature, history, and the arts of Native Americans. The museum’s collections span more than 10,000 years and – as this lavishly illustrated miniature volume demonstrates – include a multitude of fascinating objects, from ancient clay figurines to contemporary Indian paintings, from all over the Americas.

The National Holocaust Museum tells the story of the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews of the Netherlands. Before the Second World War, Jews and non-Jews lived side by side. They had the same rights. But during the war, the Nazis and their collaborators killed around six million Jews in Europe. That was the Holocaust or Shoah. This is the first and only museum to relate the history of the persecution of the Jews of the entire Netherlands. Including the day-to-day life of Jews on the eve of the Second World War, the liberation as Jews experienced it, and how the Holocaust has been treated in our national culture of remembrance: all this is examined in the museum and this book.

Text in English and Dutch.

In 2019, it will be 450 years since the death of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/28-1569). To mark this anniversary, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is organising the first ever retrospective of Bruegel’s work, while The World of Bruegel will be shown in the Bokrijk Open-Air Museum. The two institutions are joining forces to bring Bruegel’s masterpiece The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559) to life. An important key in this respect are the numerous everyday objects that are depicted in the painting. In collaboration with the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam) and the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), the props that Bruegel depicted have been examined and interpreted from a contemporary perspective. The authors allow the objects to speak for themselves, preceded by an introductory essay by curator Sabine Pénot of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Just as Bruegel’s paintings were ‘conversation pieces’ in their day, intended to trigger a discussion between guests during dinners, this book presents a three-way conversation about The Fight Between Carnival and Lent through Bruegel realia, in which art history (Katrien Lichtert), historical design (Alexandra van Dongen and Lucinda Timmermans) and literature (Abdelkader Benali) enter into a dialogue. In A Conversation Piece, the authors reveal the humour, symbolism, imagery and hidden stories behind the everyday objects in the painting. The exhibition Pieter Bruegel the Elder will run from 2 October 2018 to 13 January 2019 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and the exhibition The World of Bruegel will be on display in the Bokrijk Open-Air Museum from 6 April to 20 October 2019.

These essays by Hahn and West will deal respectively with the formation of the collection and the figure of Bent Juel-Jensen, the seminal Aksumite coin collector in Oxford (as well as a medical doctor, academic, and traveller). They will also discuss recent problems that have emerged regarding the study of this coinage. In its entirety, this publication will make a fundamental contribution to this area of research and be an indispensable acquisition for many institutions and individuals.

The collections of twentieth-century paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, have developed largely through the generosity of individuals. Notable among these in the early decades of the century were Frank Hindley Smith and Mrs W F R Weldon, while since the Second World War the Museum’s collections have been enriched through gifts and requests from Thomas Balston, R A P Bevan, Molly Freeman, Christopher Hewett and others. This book gives the reader a taste of the wide range of the collection, with its representative group of Camden Town and Euston Road School pictures, and important early works by Bonnard, Picasso and Matisse.