Over 200 years ago, the Mauritshuis hosted not one, but two museums. On the upper floor was the Royal Cabinet of Paintings, while on the ground floor, thousands of objects of all kinds were on display in the Royal Cabinet of Rarities. This rarities cabinet closed in 1875 and the objects were distributed to various Dutch institutions. The temporary exhibition The Vanished Museum about this Royal Cabinet of Rarities is accompanied by a publication with essays by 30 experts, including curators of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Wereldmuseum in Leiden. In relatively short texts, the reader is taken through the rich and often complex history of the institution. The diverse topics and perspectives suit the motley nature of the collection. From a text about an unusual ivory Chinese puzzle ball, to a reflection on the formation of cultural stereotypes; from a kayak on the ceiling, to a hat that turns out not to belong to Willem van Oranje after all.
In MOOD/MODE, leading international photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn presents images from his extensive body of work in which he explores the crossover between photography and the world of fashion – in the broadest sense of the word.
Corbijn’s portraits of figures such as Alexander McQueen, Tom Waits and Naomi Campbell have now achieved iconic status. As visual director behind Depeche Mode and through his decades-long collaboration with U2 and others, he has made his mark on the way we look at an important aspect of contemporary culture.
With MOOD/MODE, Anton Corbijn shows that fashion is everywhere. The book contains some 150 photographs, many of them published for the first time, and its world première will be in Knokke-Heist, summer 2020.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has been collecting Surrealist art since 1965. In something over half a century, what began with a single purchase has now grown into a world-class core collection with works by Dalí, Magritte, Man Ray, De Chirico, Ernst and many others. Surrealism, which started as a literary movement, is not a school, but rather a collective attitude or lifestyle in which automatism, chance and the subconscious are key. The museum’s collection includes paintings, sculptures, objects, drawings, prints and photographs – as well as a large number of Surrealist publications, magazines, manifestos and pamphlets. This dream collection has now been brought together in a catalogue raisonné for the first time.
The catalogue raisonné contains three introductory essays. Sandra Kisters, the current Head of the Collection and Research Department, provides an outline of the Surrealist movement. Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Saskia van Kampen-Prein, explains the acquisition history and establishment of the museum’s Surrealist art collection. Surrealism expert Laurens Vancrevel examines the museum’s unique, often neglected collection of Surrealist publications. The essays are followed by the catalogue, consisting of 108 short texts about the artworks. Most of the texts were written by Marijke Peyser, who was awarded her doctorate in 2008 with her dissertation on the Zodiaque, a circle of patrons around Salvador Dalí. The Duchamp texts are by Bert Jansen, who obtained his doctorate with his thesis on Marcel Duchamp in 2015.
In October 2021, David Chipperfield’s new extension of the Kunsthaus Zürich will open for the public. The new wing doubles the museum’s space for art display. Perhaps more importantly, it offers the opportunity to present larger parts of the museum’s permanent collection in a new light and in new groupings. The Chipperfield building is now home to the renowned Merzbacher, Hubert Looser, and Emil Bührle collections, all on permanent loan to the museum.
The formidable selection of French impressionist paintings in the Emil Bührle Collection combined with Kunsthaus Zürich’s own holdings of that period constitutes the largest display of impressionist art outside France. In addition, Surrealism, art from the post-war period, Pop Art, and contemporary art now have the prominent space they deserve.
This new book offers an introduction to the curatorial concept as well as concise essays on key aspects of Kunsthaus Zurich’s permanent collection. Lavishly illustrated with views of the new exhibits and individual art works, it is an attractive invitation to visit Switzerland’s largest art museum.
“Tashiding is one of the oldest and most venerated monasteries in the historic Himalyan Kingdom of Sikkim. Loosely translated, the word means ‘a very auspicious place.’ We appropriated the name for our auspicious place” – Douglas & Tsongie Hamilton
Tashiding: Beyond Earth and Sky presents a sumptuous portrait of a 100-acre rural landscape and stunning residence, in Maryland, USA, developed in connection with the land and the environment. Stunning photographs and the book’s elegant design take readers on an exquisite visual tour of the property and its development, including the origins and culture of its owners—Douglas Hamilton former president and chairman of The Walters Museum in Maryland and Tsognie Wangmo, the eldest child of the last king of Sikkim, shortly before the Himalayan royal kingdom was taken over by India. This is the poignant and inspirational story of the origins and creation of Tashiding, which was developed by Douglas and Tsognie without plans, a design on paper, or a professional landscape architect or garden designer, personify their intuitive sensibility and innate knowledge—approaches that every gardener can use, and every designer will appreciate.
Tashiding showcases the joining of two distinct cultures, and how their Western and Eastern backgrounds are manifest in the landscapes, garden themes, sculpture, ornament, and the house’s interiors. Everyone who has visited Tashiding is moved by the experiential sensation of the landscape’s different places. In developing Tashiding’s four-seasons gardens, Douglas and Tsognie envisioned an environment that invites a sense of harmony and well-being—part arboretum, part park, and part Xanadu. It is a garden for both walking and quiet contemplation, for feeling the thrill of the wind on a cool March day or for sitting in the tea house on a rainy afternoon, watching the wind form abstract ripples on the surface of the lake. Collecting and arranging the extraordinary quantity of rocks, boulders, trees and shrubs, they see their hands in all they did. Yet as the years have passed, each tree and plant grows in its own unique way, knitting together to form a new and perhaps more naturalistic landscape.
Following the major exhibition European Realities in Chemnitz, Museum More will present a focused selection of approximately 70 works from this international project, opening on 10 October 2025. The exhibition explores how artists across Europe responded to the turbulent interwar years through diverse Realist styles. Featuring renowned names like Otto Dix and Pablo Picasso alongside lesser-known artists from Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe, the show reflects themes such as the modern city, labour, gender roles, and rising political ideologies.
European Realities at Museum More sheds new light on a lesser-known chapter of European art history and highlights the shared yet varied responses to societal change during the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition is accompanied by this richly illustrated catalogue, offering insights into both Dutch and broader European perspectives on Realism.
This exhibition is a collaboration with Museum Gunzenhauser and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz.
Text in English and Dutch.
Artist Daphne Wright is fascinated with the collections of the Ashmolean Museum and the history of seeing they present. Her latest project grows out of a lifetime’s engagement with this theme. Much of Wright’s existing body of work is steeped in a deep understanding of the iconography and history of Western art, as represented in the Ashmolean’s extensive collection. This book establishes connections to the Ashmolean’s rich collection of 17th century Dutch Still Life paintings. These genre paintings portray a range of subjects from arrangements of flowers to fruit, fish and game. Sometimes the paintings include a symbolic reference to the transience of life, in the form of fruit that has begun to rot or flowers that are losing petals. In Fridge Still Life, the exposed body of a fridge, containing upon its shelves a raw chicken and bundle of asparagus, is topped with a vase of wilting tulips. This is a contemporary re-telling of a still life painting, with its various familiar elements, such as a brace of hanging pheasants, a bowl of fruit and a vase of blooms, with can connote status or vanitas. Wright has explored the transitory nature of life throughout her practice. In previous work, Wright has used plants and animals, with their shorter life spans, to stand in for the human. Wright’s work also resonates strongly with the Ashmolean’s extensive and celebrated cast collection. Prominent amongst the plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures are the gods and heroes of Homeric legend. These idealised images of men still form the basis of our ideas of masculinity today. With Sons on Couch Wright is seeking to capture the elusive moment of transition into manhood. The athletic figures in the cast court may have been updated to social media influencers, but the pressure young men face today to achieve a perceived ideal body type remain the same.
Mihai Olos (1940-2015) was one of the most prominent Romanian artists of the 1970s. Being interested in various media – painting, sculpture, happenings, Land Art, and even literature – he developed a coherent conceptual system of modular morphologic structures (knots), ultimately leading him to his utopian project, the “universal city” of Olospolis.
This monograph is published as a follow-up to the exhibition The Ephemerist. A Mihai Olos Retrospective, organised by the National Museum of Contemporary Art – MNAC Bucharest in 2016. The publication compiles a representative selection of artworks, photographs from the artist’s archive, which are being published for the first time, and essays on the oeuvre and life of Mihai Olos.
In October 2024 The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, in collaboration with the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Madrid, presented the exhibition Splendour in Venice. From Canaletto to Guardi, devoted to 18th century Venetian painting.
Painters such as Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Bernardo Bellotto, and Giambattista Tiepolo, authors of some of the most brilliant compositions of their time and undeniable highlights in the collections of both Iberian museums, are among the artists selected for this exhibition.
This publication, released on the occasion of the exhibition, is divided into two parts: the first dedicated to three essays, and the second comprising catalogue entries related to the works of art on display.
Mar Borobia, Chief Curator of Old Master Painting at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, opens the first part with an essay on the history of the collection of 18th century Venetian painting belonging to the Madrid museum. Next, Vera Mariz, curator at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, reflects on Gulbenkian’s admiration for the work of Francesco Guardi, which led him to purchase 19 paintings by the Italian master for his collection. Finally, Alberto Craievich, director of Ca’ Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, explores the artistic context of the city of Venice during the 18th century.
The second part consists of 34 catalogue entries written by Luísa Sampaio, the curator of the exhibition.
Alongside the written content, the publication is illustrated by a large number of images of the artworks on display, allowing readers to observe the exquisite details for which they are notable.
Mesmerising salt flats, ice caps and deserts: Dutch photographer Scarlett Hooft Graafland (1973) photographs magical landscapes in the most remote areas of the world. From Iceland to Madagascar and from Bolivia to Turkey she stages colourful and often mysterious performances and installations. Hooft Graafland stays in those places for long periods of time and always works closely with the local population. She chooses her subjects while she’s there, inspired by nature and the culture of the location. Her personal insights of life return in her work. She addresses topical issues like climate change, inequality and the position of women with humour and surprise. The tranquil images are surprising and enchanting, reality and illusion come together.
Text in English and Dutch.
Did you know that Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was the first public art institution in the Netherlands to acquire a painting by Vincent Van Gogh for its collection? And that 20,562 litres of water are needed for Olafur Eliasson’s installation Notion motion? Or that Gerard Reve once sent an admiring letter to the museum about Geertgen tot Sint Jans’s small panel The Glorification of the Virgin? These and many more fascinating facts can be found in a lavishly illustrated publication featuring more than 150 highlights from the collection.
For over 170 years, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has been building up a very varied collection of art and design from the Middle Ages to the present day. Best of Boijmans presents the collection as a unity in diversity. Detached from time, place and medium, surprising connections are made between the different areas of the collection. A sculpture of a human figure by the contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan bears an unexpected resemblance to a drawing of John the Baptist by Raphael; a 19th-century landscape by Barend Cornelis Koekkoek sits extraordinarily comfortably alongside a work by the Rotterdam artist Daan van Golden. This handy little book takes you on a thematic, visual journey through the collection.
“This beautiful book reminds me that I was one of many whom Leo Lionni took by the hand, leading me into the world of writing and illustrating picture books.” — Micha Archer, author and illustrator of Wonder Walkers, Daniel Finds a Poem, and the forthcoming What’s New, Daniel?
“He had amazing breadth and depth, all on display in this volume.” — Paula Scher, graphic designer and partner, Pentagram
“Throughout Leo Leonni’s varied and eclectic work one can see his wit as well as his mid-century design sensibility; formal and geometric, but softened by his warmth and playfulness…” — Marc Rosenthal, New York Times bestselling illustrator
“This first survey of Lionni’s legacy comes out in conjunction with a retrospective of his work at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass… Lionni had a rare ability to change shades — and retain his signature vibrancy — while moving, seemingly effortlessly, from one realm to another.” — New York Times
The first survey of Leo Lionni’s protean career as a graphic designer, children’s book creator, and fine artist.
Between Worlds: The Art and Design of Leo Lionni opens at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, on 18 November 2023. Leo Lionni (1910–1999) was a key figure of postwar visual culture, who believed that a smart, pithy design language could unite people across generations and cultural boundaries. He first achieved success in the field of graphic design, serving as the influential art director of Fortune magazine from 1948 to 1960 and personally executing such innovative designs as the catalogue for the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal photo exhibition The Family of Man. Then, in the 1960s, he embarked on an equally groundbreaking career in picture books, using torn-paper collages to illustrate modern animal fables such as Frederick and Swimmy, which are still beloved today. But even as his books won multiple Caldecott Honors, Lionni — who had begun as a painter — also maintained a fine art practice centered on his Parallel Botany, a richly imagined world of fanciful plants. This volume, the catalogue of a major exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum, is the first to present Lionni’s extraordinary career in the round. Written by leading scholars and with an introduction by the artist’s granddaughter, it is illustrated with abundant examples of his work, including many little-seen items from the Lionni family archives. Leo Lionni: Storyteller, Artist, Designer will be an important, and eye-opening, contribution to the history of art and design.
Carlos Luna, one of the foremost contemporary Cuban award-winning painters is part of a generation of Cuban artists who embrace their strong heritage and traditions but have reinvented themselves along the way. Thrumming with the spirit of Afro-Cuban tradition, Luna’s works range from jacquard tapestries, works on metal sheets, and Talavera ceramic plates to mixed media on wood and largescale oil paintings. This monograph illustrates Luna’s blend of influences from living and working in Cuba until 1991, then in Mexico for thirteen years, and now in Miami, since 2002. This book, lavishly illustrated, will take the reader through the artist’s amazing world of bright colours and will show, by a selection of plates and details, some unpublished works as well as his renowned masterpieces. Carlos makes visible the invisible, conveying messages and lessons from his past to offer to the present and future. His work is not on the surface, it is filled with subtle embedded messages. One must know the issues to decode. Often these messages are hidden in plain sight, lessons to be learned through reflection. His towering centerpiece, El Gran Mambo, a massive six-panel painting, which stood on display at the Museum of Latin American Art in 2008, serves as a focal point for 2015’s Green Machine: The Art of Carlos Luna at The Frost Art Museum in Carlos’s adopted home of Miami. Text in English and French.
“Bookended by a highly personal dialog between the two, we are treated with insights into collaboration, process, the rise of technology, and the joys of teaching.” — Fast Company
This autobiographical monograph presents a retrospective of the 40-year innovative graphic design practice of husband-and-wife team, Nancy Skolos and Thomas Wedell. The two have seamlessly merged the boundaries between graphic design, photography and typography, fusing two-and three-dimensional space through overlapping type and image. Long-time influential designers and educators, and 2017 AIGA medalists, Skolos-Wedell’s work has been widely exhibited and published in the US and internationally. The book has been written as a series of interviews between Skolos and Wedell, and beautifully designed by the artists themselves. The result is a work of total design that showcases their unique way of thinking and working.
Prototypes, iterations, and studio set-ups shed light on the process behind the finished work which unfolds in chronological order, subdivided in decades: ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, ’10s, ’20s, with each section beginning with a timeline of notable events. While a time-based taxonomy may seem unimaginative, it was critical for presenting the evolving working methods. To provide the most direct view of the studio’s collaborative design process, much of the text unfolds as a series of interviews with each other.
This multifaceted reader explores the cultural heritage of the pre-colonial Kingdom of Benin, in the territory of what today is Nigeria. Objects from Benin are held also in Swiss museums and, as in other countries of the Global North, have become the subject of controversial debate. The richly illustrated volume offers new findings on the historical and current significance of artefacts. Moreover, it highlights the current dialogue with partners from Nigeria and the diaspora, reflecting on the methods of cooperative research and the future of the objects currently kept in Swiss collections. Biographies of individual items and examples of mediation and exhibition practice provide an insight into interwoven histories, the international art trade, and post-colonial reconciliation work between Africa and Europe.
Mobilizing: Benin Heritage in Swiss Museums is published as part of the Benin Initiative Switzerland (2021–24), a project by eight Swiss museums focusing on provenance research on artefacts from colonial contexts. Texts and images invite reflection on art works and values, relationships, and views of history. The close collaboration with representatives from Nigeria and the diaspora enables new forms of knowledge production. This not only sets cultural heritage in motion, but also the museum as an institution itself.
Mihai Olos (1940-2015) was one of the most prominent Romanian artists of the 1970s. Being interested in various media – painting, sculpture, happenings, Land Art, and even literature – he developed a coherent conceptual system of modular morphologic structures (knots), ultimately leading him to his utopian project, the “universal city” of Olospolis.
This monograph is published as a follow-up to the exhibition The Ephemerist. A Mihai Olos Retrospective, organised by the National Museum of Contemporary Art – MNAC Bucharest in 2016. The publication compiles a representative selection of artworks, photographs from the artist’s archive, which are being published for the first time, and essays on the oeuvre and life of Mihai Olos.
This book is an edited record of the papers given at the two-day symposium ‘Italian Maiolica and Europe’ held in Oxford on 22 and 23 September 2017. It is, in effect, a celebration of his long service in the Ashmolean Museum as the Keeper of Western Art. Museum collections develop their great strengths in one of two ways: through gifts of private collections and through the knowledge and enthusiasm of curators. The Ashmolean’s renowned and important collection of Italian Maiolica owes its foundation to the former and the bequest of C.D.E. Fortnum. But it has grown and developed in remarkable ways over the last three decades thanks to the energy and expertise of Professor Timothy Wilson. During his 27 years as Keeper of Western Art, Tim was responsible for a truly extraordinary range and number of important acquisitions across the fine and decorative arts. As one of the world’s leading scholars of Italian Maiolica, it was only natural that he would continue to build on Fortnum’s legacy.
On the heels of his success with Humanitas, Fredric Roberts astonishes us yet again with his vibrant photography on virtually every page of Humanitas II, an in-depth and personal look at the face of the Gujurat.
In a brilliant follow-up to his critically acclaimed book, Humanitas, Fredric Roberts continues his journey in search of humanity with Humanitas II, chronicling stories of beauty and grace, work and family, spirituality and devotion, while redefining photographic documentation and representation. This time he takes us to Mumbai and throughout the state of the Gujarat in India. Roberts’ striking photographs explore India today and its links to the past. Here are day-to-day events as well as special ceremonies, giving us a firsthand view of these peoples that serves to the gap between “us” and “them.” The subject often looks directly at the photographer and at the reader, effortlessly prompting a cross-cultural dialogue. Arthur Ollman, Director of the Museum of Photographic Arts, returns in this volume with a foreword, and Deborah Willis contributes her introduction to place this stunning second installment of Humanitas in context.
The term “migration of form” describes a curatorial method that takes aim at the contradictions of the Western museum traditions and the ways exhibitions we have been conceived and designed. The method addresses transcultural entanglements in the past and present from which objects emerge, rather than working with distinctions such as art and non-art or cultural identities and concepts such as “Africa” or “Renaissance.” It proposes a new type of museum for global audiences that serves as a platform for discourses on urgent sociopolitical topics and as a space of experimentation with new ideas and forms of display.
This book explains and applies the “migration of form” by offering insights into the curatorial method Roger M. Buergel has experimented with at Zurich’s Johann Jacobs Museum and other venues in Europe and Asia. Descriptions of single exhibitions on global trade, raw materials, or artists such as Maya Deren and Allan Sekula are complemented by concise texts which illuminate the theoretical foundations of the curatorial process. Richly illustrated, the volume invites a timely and broadened view of art and cultural history.
Published on the occasion of an important international loan exhibition at The Azerbaijan National Museum in Baku, this multi-author book is much more than a mere catalogue. Containing previously unpublished research and a wealth of previously hidden material from museums and private collections around the world, and written by a team of international museum professionals and independent scholars, it is the first co-ordinated and detailed study of the West Caspian region’s characteristic silk embroideries. The book traces the history of embroidery in the Caucasus, the multi-cultural sources of domestic embroidery, iconography and designs in which the textile traditions of the Iranian and Turkic worlds meet, materials and needlework techniques, as well as the relationship between embroidery and the pile carpet weaving tradition in the region.
Contents:
1 Silk Treasures of Azerbaijan, Alberto Boralevi & Asli Samadova
2 Historical Azerbaijan, Murray L. Eiland III
3 Caucasian Embroideries in Context, Penny Oakley
4 Safavid-style Domestic Embroideries from Historical Azerbaijan, 1550-1800, Michael Franses
5 Silk Culture in the Caucasus, Irina Koshoridze
6 Azerbaijan Embroidery Techniques, Jennifer Wearden
7 What Went Before to Make It as It Was? Caucasian Embroidered Textiles from The Textile Museum Collection, Sumru Belger Krody
8 Busily Engaged on Embroidery : Collecting and Curatorship for the V&A, Moya Carey
9 An Early Museum Collection: Azerbaijan Embroideries in the V&A, Penny Oakley
10 A Shared Design Lexicon: Azerbaijan Embroideries and Rugs, Brian Morehouse
Superstar Pharaohs was the exhibition presented by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, in partnership with MUCEM (Marseille), in 2022, the year that marks the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter and the bicentenary of the deciphering of hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion.
The exhibition catalogue includes an introductory text written by the co-curator Frédéric Mougenot, in which he reveals the reflections that led him to create the exhibition.
The introduction is followed by six essays on different themes, ranging from antiquity to the present day: Fayza Haikal writes about the link between modern day Egyptians and the civilisation of the Pharaohs; Bernard Mathieu focuses on the Egyptians’ knowledge of their history; Michael Chaveau looks at the presence of the Pharaohs in Greco-Roman literature; Simon Connor explores the impact of images and their destruction in constructing the history of the Egyptian monarchy; Jean-Marcel Humbert discusses the phenomenon of Egyptomania; and João Carvalho Dias, co-curator of the exhibition and deputy director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, reveals the relationship that Calouste Gulbenkian developed with Howard Carter, which was fundamental in establishing the Egyptian art section of the Gulbenkian collection.
The rest of the publication is, like the exhibition, divided into three sections: the first, ‘Three Thousand Years of History and a Few Memorable Reigns’, seeks to outline the profile of the Pharaohs who were regarded, in their time, as worthy of being remembered for posterity. The second section, ‘What Remains of the Pharaohs? History and Legends’, looks at the way the memory of some of these figures was recovered, and at the same time transformed, by the literature of Greco-Roman antiquity, giving rise to myths that survived for centuries. The final section, ‘Return of the Pharaohs’, reveals how the birth of the discipline of Egyptology led to new scientific knowledge of Ancient Egypt, which also paved the way for the rediscovery of some Pharaohs, who were thus propelled into stardom.
As well as featuring abundant illustrations of the works on display throughout the texts, the publication also includes a section of chronological references related to Ancient Egypt and a list of all the Pharaohs in history.
Image credits: Panorama
This handsome volume of works from the renowned collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts – the best-known museum in the world dedicated to recognising the achievements of women artists – is a fascinating record of women’s diverse accomplishments from the Renaissance to the first decade of the 21st century. Prior to the establishment of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the work of great women artists had been ignored, forgotten, or denied; they had been largely left out of museums and histories of art.
Founded in 1987 by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of Women in the Arts boasts a growing membership that is among the top ten in the world. The museum’s multifaceted treasures include paintings, sculpture, photographs, prints, and crafts produced over the past five centuries by an international array of women artists.
Included here, in full colour, are works by Lavinia Fontana, Judith Leyster, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, Hester Bateman, Rosa Bonheur, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Camille Claudel, Berenice Abbott, Maria Montoya Martinez, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Lee Krasner, and many more.
A vibrant collection of images by an award-winning photographer, whose striking portraits taken on travels throughout Asia compel us to look humanity straight in the eye.
Humanitas is the result of a five-year photographic adventure.
During this time, Fredric Roberts traveled extensively throughout Asia, from India to Cambodia, Bhutan to Thailand, Myanmar to China, some areas that were recently in the news after being ravaged by the tsunami. While this collection of images preceded the disaster and was only coincidentally released in its wake, it became a timely tribute to these people. Cicero coined the term humanitas (literally, “human nature”) to describe the development of human virtue in all its forms, denoting fortitude, judgment, prudence, eloquence, and even love of honour—which contrasts with our contemporary connotation of humanity (understanding, benevolence, compassion, mercy). The Latin term is certainly a fitting title as we are struck not with pity for his subjects’ poverty, but with respect and awe for their individual fortitude and eloquence: each photograph tells us a compelling story.
From a touching portrait of a mother and child to isolated monks at prayer, Roberts’s fifty-five photographs introduce us to a wide array of fascinating individuals. With an introduction by Arthur Ollman, Director of the Museum of Photographic Arts, and an afterword by Dennis High, Executive Director/Curator, Center for Photographic Art, Humanitas captures the spirit and the beauty of each subject and will be a sheer delight to any lover of photography or travel.