5000 Years of Indian Art demystifies the story of Indian art spread over the millennia. This visually stunning book offers a panoramic view of Indian art from pre-historic times to the contemporary period. The absorbing narrative links predominant artistic genres (like prehistoric art, ancient Indian art of Vedic and Buddhist traditions, temple art, Mughal miniature painting, colonial art, modern Indian art, and contemporary art) that were prevalent in different eras, instead of following formally demarcated historical periods.

The illustrated tale encompasses the entire gamut from the earliest primitive markings on stones, caves, and frescoes to exquisite paintings, sculptures, modern photography,finely crafted artefacts, media-inspired work, popular installations, and other forms of contemporary art. The book displays around 200 select masterpieces of art from museums, galleries, and private collections around India and the world. The history of Indian art is as old as the civilisation itself and every major period of history has given it newer modes of expression. This book successfully captures all the myriad influences that have enriched Indian art over the years.

Features works from the following museums: American Museum of Natural History, New York, Archaeological Museum, Sarnath, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford British Museum, London, Brooklyn Museum, New York, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Gujral Art Museum, New Delhi, Harvard Art Museum/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, Kabul Museum, Kabul, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, Indian Museum, Kolkata, Islamabad Museum, Islamabad, Lahore Museum, Lahore, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Mathura Museum, Mathura, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Musée Guimet, Paris, Museum für Indische Kunst, Berlin, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi, National Museum, New Delhi, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, Patna Museum, Bihar, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Sarnath Site Museum, Uttar Pradesh, Seattle Art Museum, Washington, Staaliche Museum of Berlin: 91, V & A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London Trustees of the British Museum, London

As an ‘Englishman in New York’ since 1985, the artist Bill Jacklin has concentrated on painting ‘urban portraits’ of the city in all its guises – from large scale canvases of crowds in flux to intimate moments in Seurat-like etchings.  As a member of the Royal Academy in London, Jacklin’s paintings have been exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery in London and New York since the 1980s and he has participated in numerous one-man and group exhibitions around the world from the 1970s until today. This first full treatment of Jacklin’s New York paintings is a visual celebration of the artist’s fascination with his adopted New York City, its energy, its light, its movement, and its people. The Foreword is by Sting, an avid collector of Jacklin’s work as well as a fellow ‘Englishman in New York’, who writes on the artist and their relationship with the city. Well-known art historian Michael Peppiatt contributes an insightful interview with the artist, providing an overview of his body of work as shaped by New York. As the first monograph on Bill Jacklin for over 20 years, this stunning, fully illustrated book will be a significant contribution to the study of this internationally acclaimed artist, and serves as a lasting celebration of the magnificence of New York City. Bill Jacklin’s works are held in collections all over the world; They include the Metropolitan, The Museum of Modern Art, The Morgan Library, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and the Whitney, among many others: Arkansas Arts Centre, Little Rock, USA; Arts Council of Great Britain; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Bayley Art Museum, University of Virginia, VA; British Council, London; British Museum, London; Brooklyn Museum of Art, USA; City Art Gallery, Bradford; Contemporary Art Society, London; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Veranneman Foundation, Belgium Government Art Collection; Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library; Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow; Irish Art Council, Dublin; Isle of Man Arts Council; Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, NJ; The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; The Library of Congress, Washington DC; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary; useum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Neuberger Museum of Art, New York; The New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, New York; Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University; Portland Museum of Art, Oregon; The Queen’s Gallery, (RA Portfolio), London; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC; Tampa Museum of Art, Florida; Tate Gallery, London; Thyssen-Bornemisza, Lugano, Switzerland; University of Alberta, Canada; University of Leicester; University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada; University of Northumbria at Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut.

The Art Museum RIGA BOURSE is located in Riga, in the centre of the Old Town, in the former building of the Riga bourse, which was built in the form of a Venetian palazzo in 1850-1855 and symbolises plenitude with its richly decorated facade as well as the materials used for interior finishing. It is the largest building designed by Baltic-German architect Harald Julius von Bosse (1812-1894) in Riga. From 2007 to 2011 the building underwent renovation and adaptation to the needs of the museum. The Art Museum RIGA BOURSE has been open to the public in its new premises since 2011. In 2013 the museum received a special commendation from the European Museum Forum for rebranding.

ArtScience Museum is the cultural heart of Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and explores the intersection between art, science, technology and culture. Since its opening in February 2011, ArtScience Museum has staged large-scale exhibitions by some of the world’s most famous artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, M.C. Escher, Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol and Vincent van Gogh. Other significant exhibitions have explored aspects of science and technology – from particle physics and big data to robotics, palaeontology, marine biology and space science.

Auckland Museum, founded in 1852, just 12 years after New Zealand became a British colony, was the nation’s first public museum. From the outset the Museum was encyclopaedic in its collecting of ‘specimens illustrative of the Natural History of New Zealand – also, Weapons, Clothing, Implements of New Zealand, and the Islands of the Pacific’. Starting in a farm cottage, the Museum is now one of the most important in Oceania. Dominating the central Auckland landscape, its monumental Greek Revival building is one of the visual icons of the city. The building is also a memorial to the war dead of the Auckland province, hence the Museum’s full title, Auckland War Memorial Museum. Auckland Museum houses the world’s leading collection of Maori taonga (treasures) and, reflecting Auckland’s place as the world’s largest Polynesian city, multiple traditional and contemporary arts from throughout the Pacific region. The Museum’s director, David Gaimster, explores this extraordinary collection, each item with its own compelling backstory.

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.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is the world’s first museum solely dedicated to the evolution, celebration and future of human rights. It is Canada’s first national museum to be built in nearly half a century, and the first outside the National Capital Region. This Director’s Tour is the perfect companion to the immersive, interactive experience the Museum offers its visitors – Director John Young provides an engaging, personal guide to the structure, themes and philosophy of this unique institution.

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.

One of the most renowned and distinctive museum buildings in Poland, the National Museum in Szczecin is the largest cultural institution in Western Pomerania. It holds over 150,000 objects divided among its five branches, which include museums dedicated to contemporary art, Szczecin’s history and regional traditions. The National Museum itself holds Poland’s largest collection of artefacts from outside Europe, shedding light on the cultures of Africa, the Americas and Oceania. However, its main focus is on the history of the Pomeranian and Baltic regions and how this has in turn shaped their national identity. Published to mark the reopening of the permanent collection in 2020, in this book Director Lech Karwowski introduces readers to the art and artefacts, both ancient and modern, that constitute his highlights from the collection.

The Swiss National Museum is Switzerland’s most frequently visited museum of cultural history. At its three sites in Zurich, Prangins and Schwyz, it presents Swiss identities from prehistory to the twenty-first century. At its Collection Centre, it preserves over 870,000 items and works of art as well as several million photographs for future generations.
This new addition to Scala’s Director’s Choice series celebrates the museum’s 125th anniversary, showcasing stunning new photography of some of the museums’ finest objects, a selection that has been expertly compiled by Denise Tonella, the museum’s director.

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.

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. 

The Fryderyk Chopin Museum holds the world’s largest Chopin collection, featuring the composer’s last piano, many of his musical manuscripts, and letters, portraits and other objects that together provide a unique insight into his life, music and creative process. The history of the Chopin Museum dates back to 1934, and today it functions under the aegis of the Chopin Institute, set up by parliament in 2001 to safeguard and disseminate the Chopin heritage. The Institute organises concerts and piano competitions, including the International Chopin Competition, and pursues scholarly, educational, publishing and phonographic work. The selection of objects presented in this book is complemented by recordings of Chopin’s music, all made on period instruments. Although the objects relate to the composer’s biography in a fragmentary way, the selection is designed to enable readers to gain a fuller picture of his music and his character.

“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
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 Museum of Photography in Krakow was created over 30 years ago and is the only public institution of its kind in Poland. The collection covers almost the entire history of photography, from its invention to contemporary times. It comprises almost 70,000 items, from positive prints, negatives and examples of fine art photographic techniques and systems, to darkroom and cinematic equipment. Journalistic, studio, artistic, documentary, technical and amateur photography – all of these genres are represented within the museum’s diverse collection. Visitors can explore the work of celebrated photographers who have made great contributions to the development of Polish photography, as well as that of many lesser-known craft photographers and anonymous artists who used photography either as a means of individual expression, a work tool, or a method of documenting their personal history. Published to coincide with the completion of an ambitious renovation project, this book presents a selection of highlights drawn from the museum’s diverse collection.

Founded in 1937, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts is the largest cultural institution of its kind in the region, offering a unique blend of visual and performing arts experiences. This richly illustrated book celebrates the opening of the museum’s new landmark building, introducing the museum’s collection for the first time within its stunning architecture, designed by Studio Gang, and landscape, designed by SCAPE.
AMFA’s international collection spans seven centuries, with strengths in works on paper and contemporary craft, and includes notable holdings by artists from Arkansas, the Mid-South region, and across the United States and Europe. Located in Little Rock’s oldest urban green space, MacArthur Park, AMFA’s landmark building and grounds are realized in collaboration with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects.
This celebratory volume will be essential to all visitors, and anyone interested in the art and architecture of the American South.

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.

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.

The Frans Hals Museum has attracted interest since it opened in 1913. Its collection of Haarlem Old Masters of the Golden Age, including the world’s largest collection of paintings by Frans Hals, is unique. The collection reflects the radical changes that painting underwent in the early seventeenth century, with Haarlem providing fertile soil for a new expression of art to flourish. In the same way De Hallen Haarlem provides a platform for innovations in modern and contemporary art, positioning itself unequivocally as the champion of a living culture. In early 2018 the Frans Hals Museum and De Hallen Haarlem, which already operate as a single organisation behind the scenes, will become one museum under the name Frans Hals Museum. Each location will offer a new and distinctive programme of exhibitions in which traditional and contemporary art are shown side by side. The latest title in Scala’s Director’s Choice series celebrates the coming together of these two art institutions, with a selection of works which speak personally to the Director and reflect the synergy between the two collections.

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.

Manchester Museum, part of the University of Manchester, has completed its most ambitious transformation in a generation. 

This beautiful guidebook is a tour and souvenir of the new museum, featuring spectacular objects and stories that inspire curiosity, learning and imagination. It also explores how the museum works to build understanding, empathy and compassion for our world and each other. 

It is a perfect keepsake for visitors and those wishing to understand more about the museum’s extraordinary collections and mission. 

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.

The Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum in Warsaw is a cultural institution of the City of Warsaw co-organised by the Polish Chemical Society. The institution implements educational and cultural projects related to the scientist and her family.

The museum is housed in the 18th-century tenement house at 16 Freta Street, where Maria’s mother ran a girls’ school. It is the only biographical museum in the world devoted to the Nobel laureate. The permanent exhibition consists of a collection of notes and letters by Maria Skłodowska-Curie, as well as photographs, documents and personal items of the scientist and her family.

This very special edition of Director’s Choice draws from the museum’s exhibits, including sculptures by famous Polish artists; a reconstruction of the Curies’ laboratory in Paris, where measuring instruments designed by Pierre Curie are presented; and a commemoration of Nobel Prize winners on stamps, medals and banknotes.