The completion of David Chipperfield’s distinctive new building for Kunsthaus Zürich in December 2020 has nearly doubled the museum’s overall space. In combination with the preceding refurbishments of the earlier buildings, this has made it fit to meet the demands of an art museum in the 21st century.

A sequel to The Architectural History of the Kunsthaus Zürich 1910-2020, this book comprehensively introduces the new Kunsthaus Zürich, demonstrating how the task of building an art museum in the 21st century can be fulfilled. Concise texts, statements by protagonists and by future users and visitors as well as numerous illustrations trace the project’s evolution and the construction process and look at the completed building from various perspectives. The book also highlights what features contemporary museum infrastructure has to offer and the architectural and urban design qualities it requires, and what financial and organisational challenges the entire undertaking implied. A conversation between experts exploring the expanded museum’s impact on its immediate neighbourhood and Zurich’s urban fabric as a whole rounds out the volume.

Text in French.

This exhibition catalogue for a show at the Neue Sammlung (Design Museum) in Munich documents the first solo show by Swiss jewellery artist Therese Hilbert, former student of Max Fröhlich in Zurich and Hermann Jünger in Munich. It features 250 works, going back 50 years and beginning with her earliest, unknown pieces through to her newest work created in 2020. One of her life-long passions is volcanoes: she has climbed many of them and has used them as a theme in her jewellery design for many years. The sense of heat below the surface of her minimalist designs underlines her passion for the subject. Her work is in the collections of the Design Museum (Munich), the National Gallery of Victoria, the Dallas Museum of Art, and Museum of Arts and Design (New York).

Features texts by Heike Endter, Otto Künzli, Ellen Maurer-Zilioli, Pravu Mazumdar, Angelika Nollert, Warwick Freeman and Petra Hölscher.

Text in English and German.

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.

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.

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.

Before they became two of America’s most iconic pop artists, Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana were young aspiring creatives, living in New York. There, they met and befriended William John Kennedy, who would take some of the first photographs of these artists in their career. Many photographers worked with Andy Warhol, but few so early on in his career or in a such a uniquely collaborative fashion. After establishing a friendship with Robert Indiana and taking some of the first, important close-up images of him in his studio, Kennedy went on to work in a similarly creative way with Warhol.

These striking images of the young Warhol and Indiana were lost for nearly 50 years before being rediscovered. They were immediately recognised as important documents by the Warhol Museum and by Robert Indiana, and presented in the Before they were Famous exhibition, which travelled to London and New York. The story of the re-discovery of these photographs was made into an acclaimed documentary in 2010 – Full Circle: Before They Were Famous, Documentary on William John Kennedy.

William John Kennedy: The Lost Archive: Photographs of Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana will be the first of William John Kennedy’s books devoted solely to the time he spent with Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana. The book features pictures of both artists as well as images of Taylor Mead, UltraViolet and other members of Warhol’s circle.

Farmer: Photographic Portraits by Pang Xiaowei represents a curated selection from more than 1000 portraits taken by Pang Xiaowei during a mammoth mission to photograph farmers from every province in China. It is a monument to China’s agricultural workforce that affords them the recognition they deserve and celebrates their dedication to their country.

The farmers of the Chinese mainland help feed 1.39 billion people. This powerful series of portraits captures the souls of these men and women: their hardiness, their work ethic, their dedication to the land.

Portraiture is one of the strongest visual methods of communication. As Pang Xiaowei says, “Portraits have a language; they can tell us so much. Portraits have force, and that force is directed towards our hearts.” Looking into the eyes of the farmers featured in this book, that connection is evident. These portraits forge a link between the observer and the subject, building on the ancient Chinese tradition of ‘spirit resonance in portraiture’ (chuan shen xie zhao). This aspect of Xiaowei’s photography is explored in an accompanying essay by the celebrated Chinese artist, Chen Lvsheng. 

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.

Built in 1913 for a local politician and engineer and beautifully situated on the shore of Lake Zurich, this handsome villa today is home to the Jacobs Foundation and the Johann Jacobs Museum. It was acquired in the 1980s by the Jacobs family, who had been in the coffee, tea, and cocoa trade in Bremen since 1895 but eventually sold the business to an international conglomerate in the 1990s. The Johann Jacobs Museum focuses on the history and present of global trade routes. Its exhibitions and educational program revolves around cultural hybrids that develop sometimes intentionally, sometimes incidentally along the main routes and byways of trade.

This new book tells the story of the Jacobs House and offers an introduction to the goals of the Jacobs Foundation and the museum. It also documents the building’s extensive reconstruction by Basel-based architects Miller & Maranta, who have made major changes to its structure with equal measures of radicalism and sensitivity while entirely preserving its character and style.

Text in English and German.

More than any other civilisation, China is renowned for its long tradition of ceramic production, from its terracotta and stoneware works in ancient times to the imperial porcelain manufactured at Jingdezhen from the end of the fourteenth century. These works have been admired and collected over centuries for their outstanding quality and refinement. Now two hundred masterpieces from prominent private collections around the world have been brought together for the first time in a new book. The Baur Collections in Geneva, formed between 1928 and 1951, and the Zhuyuetang Collection (the Bamboo and Moon Pavilion in Hong Kong), which has been building since the late 1980s, reveal the elegance and variety of imperial monochrome porcelain wares produced during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, which followed on from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) periods. These restrained pieces – both profane and sacred – exemplify the values of simplicity and modesty espoused by classical Chinese texts. With chapters devoted to the historical, cultural and technical contexts in which these pieces were made, this book will be a key reference on Chinese monochrome ceramics for all lovers of the subject, as well as students, researchers and connoisseurs.

Text in English and French with Chinese summaries.

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

Located in the heart of Brussels, the Art et Margins Museum, an outsider art museum, questions art and its borders. Its collection has been built up since the mid-1980s with self-taught artists, art workshops for psychiatric patients and for those with learning difficulties. Its temporary exhibitions, at the rate of three per year, bring together artists from both sides of the margin, questioning the boundaries of art and its very definition. The museum’s anniversary year is an opportunity to propose a book richly illustrated with visuals, specially produced by a team of professionals, and to take stock of its rich collections of works by outsider artists built up over time.

Text in English, French, and Dutch.

Markus Raetz is one of the most renowned contemporary artists in Switzerland. Initially educated and working as a primary school teacher, he became an artist in his early twenties. Since the 1970s, his work, including solo exhibitions, has been on the international stage. Raetz works with a variety of materials and media. The phenomenon of perception is his main focus, rather than how something is represented. Prints form a major part of his work. Markus Raetz.The Prints 1951-2013 covers his complete body of work in this genre.; the Catalogue Raisonné is complemented by a separate volume, with essays on his work and artistic development. Exhibitions: Museum of Fine Arts Bern, early 2014 (date TBC). Markus Raetz is represented with works also in the permanent collections of museums such as: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (Main); San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla CA; Tate Gallery, London; MoMA, New York; Musée national d art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Schaulager, Münchenstein near Basel; Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Text in English, German and French.

“Flicking through the book… you’ll discover all manner of vintage cigarette holders, ranging from cheap promotional items given away by New York nightclubs to extravagant versions crafted by the likes of Tiffany, Fabergé, Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels.” South China Morning Post The book offers an unprecedented look at cigarette holders through a selection of approximately 125 pieces from the collection of Carolyn Hsu-Balcer. Its introductory essay is both a social history of that world-changing leaf, tobacco, and a design history of its accoutrements. It examines the history of smoking from its pre-Columbian roots in the Americas through to the present-day worldwide e-cigarette craze, taking the reader on a journey from tobacco smoking as a sacred ritual, through the controversies of its worldwide spread, and the machine-rolled cigarette’s role in the world wars and as a tool for European and American women’s equality. Following the illustrated essay is a luxurious catalogue of newly commissioned photography that makes these diminutive objects pop off the pages with brilliant colour and form. The collection includes cigarette holders in their simplest incarnations – the disposable promotional holders given away at trendy New York nightclubs – to their most exquisite – the work of Fabergé, Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels and other renowned jewellers of the late nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. Contents: Foreword by Carolyn Hsu-Balcer; Introduction; Chapter 1: Tobacco’s Journey from the New World to the Old: Medicine and Pleasure; Chapter 2: The Rise of Cigarette Culture: The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries; Chapter 3: Smoking, Sociability, and a New Modern Era: From the First World War to the Second; Chapter 4: The Cigarette Holder’s Peak and Fall: A New Culture of Smoking; Catalog; Appendix: Materials Used in Cigarette Holders; Acknowledgments; Photo Credits.

Lee Mullican (1919-98) was best known for his inimitable West Coast-inspired explorations in abstraction, infused with mysticism and the transcendent. First exhibited as part of the pivotal exhibition of the Dynaton Group, which Mullican co-founded with fellow artists Gordon Onslow Ford and Wolfgang Paalen, his works are today widely collected and held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others. The first book in more than a decade to focus on this important figure in twentieth-century American art, Cosmic Theatre: The Art of Lee Mullican surveys a key theme running through the artist’s career, framing his unusual hybridisation of symbolic figuration, abstracted landscapes, and abstract space with his long-time fascination with the sky and the galaxy beyond. The book explores the development of the Mullican’s work in the context of his time and his biography, looking also at the implications of Jungian philosophy in relation to his admiration of pre-Columbian and Native American cultures. Michael Auping’s essay is complemented by fifty full-colour illustrations, featuring major rare paintings and drawings by Mullican from the 1940s to the 1970s.

From her early depictions of individual objects to her later works featuring complex interiors, American artist Lynn Shaler’s works are distinctive, characterised by a colourful aquatint technique combined with carefully etched lines. Over a forty-year career, she has created more than two hundred aquatint etchings and has been included in major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Lynn Shaler: Fine Prints, 1972-2017 is the first catalogue to spotlight this important American artist’s entire body of work. Many of the etchings have been inspired by locations in Paris, where Shaler has lived for three decades. The book reproduces nearly all of her works, alongside accompanying essays which examine recurring themes and motifs in Shaler’s work, such as architectural details or intimate interior views opening onto an exterior scene.

The Bradley Collection comprises the core of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s holdings of modern art. With nearly 400 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, it features works by groundbreaking artists across the 20th century, including Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Helen Frankenthaler, Barbara Hepworth, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Gabriele Münter, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko.

This book tells the story of how Peg Bradley built the collection—and then how she gave it away, transforming her hometown museum and community. The first comprehensive catalogue of the collection, it brings together new research and insights by international scholars to shed light on works that have been long admired but little studied. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with highlighted works and an illustrated checklist, allowing readers to visualise every work in the collection. In addition to focusing on this extraordinary gift, the essays will appeal to anyone interested in the larger arc of modern art. 

In the decade before his death in 2011, John Hoyland began to reckon with mortality. Confronting his own demise, he painted elegies to departed artist friends and tributes to illustrious artistic forebears. Imagery of the void looms large, but it is a void faced with defiance and vitality, less a rumination on the end than a celebration of life. This publication explores the paintings Hoyland made in this decade, including his final series, the Mysteries.

Essays by Natalie Adamson, David Anfam, Matthew Collings and Mel Gooding offer a rich and multifaceted account of a complex body of work. Hoyland’s veneration of Vincent van Gogh, his connections to J.M.W. Turner, the use of black as a colour, his deployment of risk and attempts to subvert his own taste, and his development of the cosmic visual language of the Abstract Expressionists are all discussed. Richly illustrated, the book extends our understanding of Hoyland’s late work within the story of modern painting as a whole.

This beautifully designed book is a celebration of one of the world’s most creative, dynamic and fascinating cities: Tokyo. It spans 400 years, with highlights including Kano school paintings; the iconic woodblock prints of Hiroshige; Tokyo Pop Art posters; the photography of Moriyama Daido and Ninagawa Mika; manga; film; and contemporary art by Murakami Takashi and Aida Makoto. Visually bold and richly detailed, this publication looks at a city which has undergone constant destruction and renewal and it tells the stories of the people who have made Tokyo so famous with their insatiable appetite for the new and innovative – from the samurai to avantgarde artists today. Co-edited by Japanese art specialists and curators Lena Fritsch and Clare Pollard from Oxford University, this accessible volume features 28 texts by international experts of Japanese culture, as well as original statements by influential artists.

A portrait of an eminent jewellery artist and her unique creations!

Inspired by the Arte Povera movement, the Italian jewellery artist Annamaria Zanella (b. 1966) uses base materials, which only gain meaning through their context. Corroded metal or found objects convey statements that can be both political and personal in nature. Zanella wants to bring the soul of the material to light through the work of her own hands.

The colour used is intended to evoke feelings and reactions. To this end Zanella studied the history of colours and their production, especially that of her unmistakable blue. She produced a blue pigment according to a recipe from the fourteenth century, invoking in its modern use pioneering artists such as Giotto, Wassily Kandinsky and Yves Klein.

Annamaria Zanella is represented in numerous museums, including Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (FR); Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (DE); Die Neue Sammlung The Design Museum, Munich (DE); Museum of Arts and Design, New York (US); Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim (DE); Museo degli Argenti, Florence (IT); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (GB); Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (IT); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (US); Swiss National Museum, Zurich (CH).

Text in English and Italian.

From the mid-1740s on, imaginative depictions of mining scenes increasingly adorned vessels from the Meissen Royal Porcelain Manufactory. Prior to this, sculptural depictions of mining folk can even be found on Böttger stoneware and Böttger porcelain—with artists George Fritzsche Sr (probably 1697–1756) and Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706–1775) later each dedicating a series to them. The unique combination of mining and porcelain also informed and inspired other manufactories in the German-speaking realm, for example in Berlin, Fürstenberg and Vienna.
Achim and Beate Middelschulte have assembled what is probably the world’s most extensive collection of porcelain featuring the subject of mining. A significant selection of this has been transferred to a foundation and incorporated as a permanent loan into the collection at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (German Mining Museum in Bochum). An in-depth presentation of these pieces is now available in this publication.

Text in German.

Beth Moon’s fourteen-year quest to photograph ancient trees has taken her across the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some of her subjects grow in isolation, on remote mountainsides, private estates, or nature preserves; others maintain a proud, though often precarious, existence in the midst of civilization. All, however, share a mysterious beauty perfected by age and the power to connect us to a sense of time and nature much greater than ourselves. It is this beauty, and this power, that Moon captures in her remarkable photographs.

This handsome volume presents nearly seventy of Moon’s finest tree portraits as full-page duotone plates. The pictured trees include the tangled, hollow-trunked yews – some more than a thousand years old – that grow in English churchyards; the baobabs of Madagascar, called ‘upside-down trees’ because of the curious disproportion of their giant trunks and modest branches; and the fantastical dragon’s-blood trees, red-sapped and umbrella-shaped, that grow only on the island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa.

Moon’s narrative captions describe the natural and cultural history of each individual tree, while Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at The New York Botanical Garden, provides a concise introduction to the biology and preservation of ancient trees. An essay by the critic Steven Brown defines Moon’s unique place in a tradition of tree photography extending from William Henry Fox Talbot to Sally Mann, and explores the challenges and potential of the tree as a subject for art.