Show Time initially awakens thoughts of glittering entertainment, shiny surfaces, and fancy stunts — a world that does not really belong in a museum. But here the title is associated with something more literal: time being shown to us.
In Sabine Groß’s (*1961) exhibition at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte Saarbrücken, archaeological finds meet contemporary art for the first time. As a professor of sculpture, Groß has specialised for many years in this type of confrontation, practising a kind of “archaeology of the future” in which she presents recent significant works of art as potential archaeological objects.
Published to accompany an exhibition Sabine Groß. Show Time – Eine Archäologie der Zukunft, which runs from 11 December 2020-7 November 2021 at Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Text in English and German.
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.
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.
The book will coincide with the first Ashmolean NOW exhibition in Gallery 8, opening in July 2023. The Ashmolean NOW Program features exciting works by prominent early to mid-career artists based in the UK, seeking to attract new audiences interested in contemporary art. Artists who have established international reputations and emerging artists whose international status is anticipated with a strong degree of confidence are approached pro-actively. In addition to exhibiting their existing works, all artists are invited to create at least one new work as a response to the museum and/or its collections. This first exhibition presents two linked solo shows: paintings/drawings by Flora Yukhnovich, and paintings/drawings by Daniel Crews-Chubb. The double-sided style of the book will mirror the exhibition concept, while presenting itself as a unique, well designed object that has a life beyond the exhibition.
“…his stories are always interesting, lively and well written, giving an insight to the art world as he experienced it.” — Literary Review
“If you read one book on art this year, it must be this brilliant critique of art today seen through the lens of retired museum curator Julian Spalding.” — International Property & Travel
Julian Spalding’s career as a curator and creator of museums was amongst the most controversial and effective of his time. In this collection of essays and memoirs he revisits some of the important events and battles of the last 40 years, when he spearheaded resistance to the cult of conceptual art being promoted from the centre. Witty, illuminating, coruscating and blazingly intelligent, this book is a vital guide to the ways in which we consume art today, for good or ill.
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.
The third brilliant volume in the Humanitas series captures the vibrant lives of the Burmese people.
Following the success of Humanitas and Humanitas II: The People of Gujarat, photographer Fredric Roberts now turns his lens to the captivating and controversial country of Burma. The result of eight years of travel throughout the region, the approximately 120 photographs in Humanitas III focus on the spiritually rich lives of the Burmese people. Featuring temples, portraits, scenes of everyday life, and incredible landscape, Humanitas III offers a rare view of a country that has been closed to —or avoided by— many photographers due to its social isolation and reputation for political repression.
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 book title as we are struck with respect and awe for Roberts’s subjects’ individual fortitude and eloquence rather than pity for their plight: each photograph tells us a compelling story.
Curated by Britt Salvesen, the department head and curator of the photography department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, many of the images present subjects looking directly at the photographer and at the reader, effortlessly prompting a cross-cultural dialogue. Essays by Teri Edelstein and Emma Larkin, an expert journalist/author covering Burma, provide context for Roberts’s photographs by describing the lives of the Burmese peoples.
“In conclusion, I have nothing but praise for this book. The production values are top-notch and I am so pleased that Milner both took his time to write this book, and was able to see it through to completion together with Matternes.” — The Inquisitive Biologist
The first career-spanning volume on Jay Matternes (b. 1933), whose scientific rigor and artistic skill set a new standard in natural history illustration.
Millions have grown up inspired by Jay Matternes’ murals of extinct mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History. Others have savoured his depictions of human origins in such prestigious publications as Science, National Geographic, Scientific American, and Natural History. Matternes’ art has also graced popular books by such trailblazing wildlife scientists as Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Louis Leakey.
Now, for the first time, the entire scope of Matternes’ achievement is revealed in this full-colour retrospective, prepared with the artist’s full cooperation and featuring many works never before published. Here are his depictions of living species, whose anatomical accuracy and vivid detail owe much to Matternes’ lifelong devotion to painting from nature: the wildlife of Africa, the birds of America, chimpanzees and gorillas, and more. Here, too, is his paleoart, meticulously reconstructed from the fossil evidence and ranging from dinosaurs, through the rise of mammals, to our hominid ancestors — including Matternes’ groundbreaking reconstruction of the 4.4-million-year-old hominin Ardipithecus, on which he laboured in secrecy for more than a decade. The highly readable text includes, among other special features, selections from the artist’s 20-year correspondence with the late Dian Fossey.
Jay Matternes: Paleoartist and Wildlife Painter will be an essential volume not only for aspiring illustrators and paleoartists, but for anyone with an interest in the natural world and how we visualise it.
This book looks at bronze through the remarkable collections of European bronze sculptures in the Ashmolean Museum of the University of Oxford. Largely thanks to the generosity of Charles Drury Edward Fortnum (1820–1899), the Ashmolean houses one of the world’s great collections of Renaissance and Baroque small bronzes.
The book provides a survey of the collection and an overview of the development of small bronze sculpture during a period of six centuries running from c.1200 to around 1800, although most of the works illustrated here were made within the shorter time frame of c.1450–1650. Any such survey is inevitably shaped by the strengths of the collection, which is conditioned by Fortnum’s taste, notwithstanding later acquisitions that have broadened its scope. He especially loved earlier Italian bronzes and so-called utensils — objects such as inkstands, candlesticks, salt-cellars, mirrors and seals — that are functional as well as beautiful. Fortnum was less interested in sculpture from the later 1500s onwards although, as this selection shows, he acquired some very interesting bronzes from the 17th and 18th centuries that deserve to be better known.
British Conceptual artist John Stezaker (b. 1949) is known for his distinctive, often deceptively simple, collages. He has been making art since the 1970s, but achieved prominence relatively recently.
In 2011, he had a retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and, in 2012, he won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, even though he does not take photographs.
Stezaker says collage is about ‘stuff that has lost its immediate relationship with the world’ and involves ‘a yearning for a lost world’. A collector, he works from an archive of out-of-date images — mostly old film stills, vintage actor head shots, and antique postcards. These images come in standard sizes and are highly conventionalised — all variations on themes.
Art critic David Campany says, Stezaker ‘is drawn to that very slim space between convention and idiosyncrasy.’
In addition to collages, Lost World includes poignant found-object-sculptures: a selection of antique mannequin hands, offering a repertoire of gestures. There’s also a film, Crowd, presenting hundreds of film stills of crowd scenes, each for one frame only, in a bewildering blur.
During the German occupation, a Jewish Dutch couple had to sell a painting to go into hiding. Their daughters were placed in a children’s home, but were rounded up in early 1944 and deported to Auschwitz, where they died. The parents survived the war and did not discover their children’s fate until 1946. The search for the painting also remained fruitless for a long time, until Origins Unknown Agency discovered that it had ended up in a German museum. The museum had previously tried unsuccessfully to trace its provenance. Thanks to the Origins Unknown Agency, the heirs of the original owner were found. The German museum and the heirs agreed that the painting, an 1882 work by Camille Pissarro, would remain at the museum. As part of the compensation, the painting will be kept on display from November 2024 to February 2025 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
“The pleasure and insight here is that it refocuses our attention and makes the world we move through larger and more complicated, more detailed, and full of identity, which is a joy.” — Hyperallergic
Manhattan Project is a collection of photographs that capture the evolving landscape of Manhattan’s West Side over the past decade. Exploiting the revelatory power of photography, these images explore a city’s architectural transformation.
While Jan Staller’s earlier work focused on industrial decay, these new photographs explore the rise of high-rise construction. By isolating and zooming in on building materials, Staller elevates the ordinary to the extraordinary. The resulting images, reminiscent of drawings or abstract paintings, reveal the hidden beauty and formal qualities of these often-overlooked elements.
This project reimagines the city not as a monolithic entity, but as a composition of intricate details. It celebrates the interplay of light, form and texture, inviting viewers to rethink the familiar and discover the artistic potential of the urban environment.
Text in English and French.
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.
“…it should be noted that the outstanding quality of Wautier’s paintings is well served not only by the exhibition itself but also by the design of the catalogue, in particular the superb quality of its numerous colour illustrations and the many well-chosen details.” — Burlington Magazine
Michaelina Wautier (1604–1689) is a name unfamiliar even to connoisseurs of Old Master painting. This handsome book seeks to correct that, by exploring the surviving portraits, history paintings, genre scenes and still-lifes that can be identified as hers. Born at Mons, Wautier pursued a successful career in Brussels, which was then ruled by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, whose collection ended up at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. This handsome book, produced by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in collaboration with the Royal Academy, brings together all the latest scholarship on the artist, alongside several exciting new attributions.
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
The luminous work of Bill Armstrong has long stretched the boundaries and expectations of contemporary photography. In his explorations and subversion of the ostensible objectivity and precision that have distinguished photography among the visual arts, Armstrong foregrounds the medium’s qualities that photographers had been attempting to exploit since the beginning of the twentieth century: colour and focus.
All a Blur showcases Mr. Armstrong’s Infinity series, an ongoing project he has been working on for over 25 years. The book presents 21 different portfolios, all made by using his unique process of photographing a collage of found or appropriated images extremely out of focus or distorted by handheld time exposures. The variety of subjects and results he achieves with this process is so broad it has been said that he has developed a medium of his own invention that lies at the intersection of photography, painting and collage.
With mysterious and poetic images that reflect on history, philosophy, identity and spirituality, Armstrong conjures a unique alternate reality that might exist in dreams, in memory, or, perhaps, in a parallel universe. At the same time, the subject of the work is colour. By taking away focus and the usual expectations of photography, Armstrong is able to investigate the qualities and effects of pure colour in a profound way, freed from the limits of representation.
Flowers and plants are a staple of British life. Nearly 40% of our population considers themselves to be gardeners, making this and associated activities a national pursuit. And yet, while we hold endless discussions over how to seed, grow, and disseminate our cherished plants, we still known relatively little about how they were collected, exchanged, circulated, identified, and modified, and how much art has shaped our understanding and appreciation of them. This publication, designed to accompany the homonymous exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, explores some of these plant stories through highlights from Oxford’s collections. Bringing together historical and scientific expertise, art and material culture, traditional and contemporary artworks, this book ultimately reflects on the long-lasting impact of flora on our society – and of us on it.
Since the 1960s, Berlin-born artist Dieter Appelt (b. 1935) has traced the losses of modern society through his camera lens. The trained musician and opera singer discovered photography as a means of reconnecting with nature, mythology, and mortality. In countless activities that he documented with his camera, Appelt incorporates his own body into the images with a poetic approach, exploring its fragility and relationship with nature. Time and again, he circles around existential questions of life and death, memory and recurrence.
The Lindenau Museum in Altenburg is honouring Dieter Appelt with the 2025 Gerhard Altenbourg Prize for his life’s work and has dedicated an exhibition to him. This publication provides an extensive and profound insight into Appelt’s artistic development and, in addition to important projects and large-scale series of photographs, also documents drawings, objects, and films from the artist’s oeuvre.
Text in English and German.
In 2023 Soma Surovi Jannat (b.1990), one of the most exciting emerging artists working in South Asia, became the Ashmolean’s first artist-in-residence from Bangladesh. Jannat’s art practice arises from a profound connection with nature. Inspired by the Ashmolean collection, her recent works weave together motifs to create new imaginary worlds of forests, bodies of water, animal and human forms. The exhibition will capture the ways in which Jannat explores the climate crisis, natural disasters, and the disproportionate impact on marginalised communities and ecosystems. An artist of exceptional talent and versatility, this would be Jannat’s first solo exhibition in the UK focusing on her engagement with the Ashmolean collections and the works created between 2023 and 2026. The exhibition and book provide the Museum an opportunity to engage wider diverse audiences, while also presenting the works of a contemporary multidisciplinary artist who reflects and draws strength from our collections.
This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Art & Fashion in the Calouste Gulbenkian museum, and highlights the inseparable relationship between art and fashion: art finds a constant source of inspiration in fashion, while fashion finds permanence and memory in art. Both disciplines engage in a dialogue around beauty, both ephemeral and eternal, as an invisible thread between past and present.
The extraordinary Gulbenkian Collection, with pieces from Ancient Egypt to the 20th century, allows for a unique encounter between masterpieces of painting and decorative arts and iconic haute couture creations. It is not a question of comparison, but of establishing visual and symbolic conversations: contemporary silhouettes alongside Renaissance folds, exquisite embroidery juxtaposed with modernist flashes, ancient iconography reinterpreted.
The book captures that moment when the museum is transformed into a living space where art and fashion face each other, reminding us that beauty knows no boundaries, only the passage of time.
You can’t design for the future without understanding the past. This idea underpins the new collection presentation at the Design Museum Gent. Founded in 1903, the museum has undergone a 4.5-year renovation and has now reopened, showcasing nearly 500 objects. To mark the occasion, two catalogues have been released: one extensive and in-depth, and a smaller volume highlighting 50 key pieces from the new collection presentation. Both are structured around five themes: imitation/copy, comfort, migration, folding/bending, and connections. In Models from the Past for the Future ISBN 9789059968158, these themes are explored through essays by experts such as British design historian and curator Cat Rossi and Vienna based art historian and curator Sebastian Hackenschmidt, alongside a range of shorter visual contributions. In 50 Highlights the same themes provide the framework for a curated selection of the most significant objects in the collection presentation. Both catalogues are available separately, but also as a beautifully designed combo ISBN 9789059969308.
You can’t design for the future without understanding the past. This idea underpins the new collection presentation at the Design Museum Gent. Founded in 1903, the museum has undergone a 4.5-year renovation and has now reopened, showcasing nearly 500 objects. To mark the occasion, two catalogues have been released: one extensive and in-depth, and a smaller volume highlighting 50 key pieces from the new collection presentation. Both are structured around five themes: imitation/copy, comfort, migration, folding/bending, and connections. In Models from the Past for the Future, these themes are explored through essays by experts such as British design historian and curator Cat Rossi and Vienna based art historian and curator Sebastian Hackenschmidt, alongside a range of shorter visual contributions. In 50 Highlights ISBN 9789059968189 the same themes provide the framework for a curated selection of the most significant objects in the collection presentation. Both catalogues are available separately, but also as a beautifully designed combo ISBN 9789059969308.
You can’t design for the future without understanding the past. This idea underpins the new collection presentation at the Design Museum Gent. Founded in 1903, the museum has undergone a 4.5-year renovation and has now reopened, showcasing nearly 500 objects. To mark the occasion, two catalogues have been released: one extensive and in-depth, and a smaller volume highlighting 50 key pieces from the new collection presentation. Both are structured around five themes: imitation/copy, comfort, migration, folding/bending, and connections. In Models from the Past for the Future ISBN 9789059968158, these themes are explored through essays by experts such as British design historian and curator Cat Rossi and Vienna based art historian and curator Sebastian Hackenschmidt, alongside a range of shorter visual contributions. In 50 Highlights ISBN 9789059968189 the same themes provide the framework for a curated selection of the most significant objects in the collection presentation. Both catalogues are available separately, but also in this beautifully designed combo.