A selection of 85 Flemish drawings gives an astonishing and representative overview of the art of drawing in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The publication focusses on the drawings subjects and compositions but also on how and why they were created and why an artist chose specific materials, techniques, formats and even sizes. It provides a framework to allow to see drawings in the functional context for which they were created.

Renowned specialists in Flemish drawing discuss rare artworks by famous draughtsmen as Frans Floris, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Jacques Jordaens, Otto van Veen, Jan Fijt but also hidden treasures such as the 10 metres long Panorama of Zeeland by Antoon van den Wijngaerde, a sketchbook of the 12-year-old Rubens, recently discovered drawings by Hans Vredeman de Vries, the extremely rare Italy-sketchbooks by the sculptor Pieter Verbruggen and a newly discovered book-illustration design by Rubens for the Plantin Press.

Beautifully produced facsimile of a watercolour artist’s book recording many of the most fascinating birds and animals of the Galápagos Islands. Profits to go to the Galápagos Trust.

Pio Abad’s artistic practice is concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work, encompassing drawing, painting, textiles, installation and text, mines alternative or repressed historical events and offers counternarratives that draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people. Deeply informed by unfolding events in the Philippines, where the artist was born and raised, his work emanates from a family narrative woven into the nation’s story. Abad’s parents were at the forefront of the anti-dictatorship struggle in the Philippines during the 1970s and 80s and it is the need to remember this history that has shaped the foundations of his work. 

This beautifully designed book accompanies the Ashmolean Museum’s second exhibition of its new Ashmolean NOW series, featuring the work of Pio Abad. Abad’s artistic practice is concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work, which includes drawing, painting, installation, textiles and text, mines alternative or repressed historical events, offering counternarratives. Abad’s new works link narratives found in the Museum’s collections and Oxford with his personal life in the UK and Philippines, where the artist was born and raised. The book features a new text by Abad and contributions by art historical experts including Dan Hicks.

Munch’s Missing! Find the artist hidden in 12 vibrant illustrated scenes which are inspired by the artist’s life, and the themes in his art. Spot him on the hill where he famously heard that resounding scream; find him hidden on stage amongst actors performing an Ibsen play, and search him out in the forest near his home in Ekely. Every scene is jammed with artists and creatives who have been influenced by Munch.

While the magical illustrations by Celyn Brazier offer a playful introduction to the artist, they are a unique piece of art in themselves. Accompanying text opens up the stories behind the illustrations, and explores further Munch’s life and art, and the influence he had. 

This raucous art journey celebrates the startling relevance of Munch who brought us the selfie and liberated us to scream out!

Kindred Spirits showcases the remarkable flowering of Chinese style ceramics that took place in Japan after the mid-19th century. For over a thousand years, Chinese ceramics have been admired and emulated in Japan. This book discusses for the first time how this artistic relationship evolved during the Meiji, Taishō, and early Shōwa eras. A selection of 100 works from the acclaimed Shen Zhai Collection demonstrates the range and quality of these ceramics, from elegant celadons to sophisticated underglaze blue porcelains. Detailed descriptions, makers’ marks, and box inscriptions make this a valuable reference resource for collectors and art historians.

This major retrospective catalogue accompanies the first institutional exhibition focusing on the visual works of art by Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke. The majority of the paintings, drawings and digital works were specifically made for Yorke’s internationally celebrated band Radiohead, formed in Oxford in 1985. The book is beautifully designed in the same size as a record cover and features iconic artworks from the 1980s until today, relating to Radiohead albums, their covers and promotional band images, as well as sketchbooks and rare materials from their archives that have never before been published. It offers fresh views on the art of album covers, exploring the complex relationship between visual art and music.

Radiohead was formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The collaboration with the artist Stanley Donwood began in 1994 when the band was developing their second album, The Bends, which was released on 13th March, 1995. 2025 is therefore the 40-year anniversary of the band and the 30-year anniversary of the release of The Bends. The catalogue’s focus is upon the art produced by both Stanley Donwood and the band’s lead vocalist, Thom Yorke presented chronologically. Radiohead’s popularity has never waned and they have a strong core following and new fans (many of who are the children of ‘original’ fans).

The high-quality reproductions are complemented by exclusive interviews with the artists, and essays by Alex Farquharson, Nico Kos Earle, Benjamin Myers, James Putnam and Jennifer Ramkalawon.

A major retrospective is held at the Ashmolean Museum from August 2025 to January 2026.

In this compelling photographic journey Arthur Becker captures the intensity and power of the ceiling frescoes of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Vividly presented here in all of their diversity and splendour, these illusionistic ceilings, mainly located in the churches and palaces of 16th to early 18th century Italy but also found in Austria, Germany, and Spain, are revealed as dazzling examples of Italian artistic imagination by some of the major figures of the period, including Mantegna, Melozzo da Forlì, Michelangelo, Correggio, Tintoretto, the Carracci, Caravaggio, Guercino, Guido Reni, Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Andrea Pozzo, Sebastiano Ricci, and the Tiepolo dynasty.

These images, many of which represent turning-points in the history of art, are accompanied by an in-depth introductory essay placing them in context by the art and architectural historian Daniel Sherer, who teaches at the Princeton University School of Architecture, concise descriptions by Brian Kish, a well-known expert on Italian art and design, and a postface by Martin Kemp, the renowned scholar of Renaissance and Baroque art and science of Oxford University. Bringing together in one place these remarkable frescoes for the first time, this book will be indispensable for art historians, connoisseurs of photography, and all those interested in Renaissance and Baroque art.

“Dafydd Jones’s photographs capture the future establishment at their most unguarded.”— FT How To Spend It
Cambridge Balls is the sensational new book by bestselling social photographer Dafydd Jones. The Cambridge University colleges are renowned for many great alumni and important achievements… and also a series of marathon all-night parties, known as the May Balls, held annually to celebrate the end of the academic year. Dafydd Jones, who according to The New York Times, ‘goes about his business with cheery zest and a wicked eye’, has been granted unique access to this hidden world of revelry since 1981, during which the author of England: The Last Hurrah and Hollywood Confidential has captured an extraordinary tableau of antics and shenanigans now beautifully reproduced on these pages. From former British Prime Minister David Cameron in his Bullingdon coat to victorious rowing teams celebrating into the night, from gate crashers punting across the river to the more international student groups of modern times toasting their successes, this is a fascinating portrait of jubilation among the young, the wealthy and the academic elites of one of the world’s most famous universities.

Praise for England: The Last Hurrah…
“Wonderfully ironic, every point in the picture ignites and knows how to entertain very well.” — Lovely Books
“Dafydd catches those moments of genuine exhilaration, wealth and youth.” — The Hollywood Reporter
Praise for Hollywood Confidential…
“With his new collection of photographs, Dafydd Jones offers a sensational dive into the excitement of the awards season in the 1990s.” — Vanity Fair France

Praise for New York: High Life / Low Life…
“The New York book is an evocative historical document, brimming with nostalgia and menace.” –– Hannah Marriott, The Guardian
Praise for Dafydd Jones…

“Modest though he is, Dafydd’s photographs will endure for having perfectly captured a society on the brink of decline.” –– Country & Townhouse podcast
“Sublime vintage photographs…” –– Hermione Eyre, The Telegraph
“Some carefully tended public images are punctured with such rapier precision that one can hear the hiss as they deflate.” –– Mitchell Owens, The World of Interiors

Geneva-born artist Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789) was one of the great portraitists of his time. Held in high regard by Empress Maria Theresa, he created numerous portraits of members of the Austrian imperial family, among them Archduchess Maria-Antonia (1755–1793), later Marie-Antoinette Queen-consort of France, and Emperor Franz I Stephan. A group of 11 portrait drawings showing members of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine are held today in the collection of Geneva’s Musée d’art et d’histoire (MAH).

Liotard & Marie-Antoinette is published to coincide with an exhibition at the MAH. It is based on a unique interdisciplinary research project that combined conventional archival research with state-of-the art facial recognition technology and forensics, comparing historic paintings and drawings as well as modern digital images to identify with precision the individuals portrayed by Liotard.

The volume makes the findings of this fascinating dialogue between art historians, scholars of 18th-century history, and researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence and forensics accessible to a broader audience. It offers an unusually multifaceted view of Liotard’s masterful drawings and an approach to the stories hidden within them that is equally exciting and novel.

Geneva-born artist Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789) was one of the great portraitists of his time. Held in high regard by Empress Maria Theresa, he created numerous portraits of members of the Austrian imperial family, among them Archduchess Maria-Antonia (1755–1793), later Marie-Antoinette Queen-consort of France, and Emperor Franz I Stephan. A group of 11 portrait drawings showing members of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine are held today in the collection of Geneva’s Musée d’art et d’histoire (MAH).

Liotard & Marie-Antoinette is published to coincide with an exhibition at the MAH. It is based on a unique interdisciplinary research project that combined conventional archival research with state-of-the art facial recognition technology and forensics, comparing historic paintings and drawings as well as modern digital images to identify with precision the individuals portrayed by Liotard.

The volume makes the findings of this fascinating dialogue between art historians, scholars of 18th-century history, and researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence and forensics accessible to a broader audience. It offers an unusually multifaceted view of Liotard’s masterful drawings and an approach to the stories hidden within them that is equally exciting and novel.

Text in French. 

Weimin He’s 324 ink drawings, pen sketches and woodblock prints comprise an intimate record of the progress of construction in the newly designed Ashmolean Museum that opened late last year. An unusual approach to documentation in the age of digital photography, the catalogue provides a delightful art experience for readers who will never set foot in the Ashmolean, which is the museum for the University of Oxford.

Weimin has drawn workers lifting roof beams, welding metal rods and pouring cement into the mixer. He gives us behind-the-scenes portraits of museum personnel, making each individual come alive, for example, an objects conservator at her work and a researcher in the prints room at his. An artist-in-residence at the museum and an art scholar, Weimin employed Chinese drawing and woodblock printmaking methods. His portraits were drawn on pi, xuan papers or album leaves, with Chinese brushes and inks that have been used for over a millennium. Seven of the prints and the catalogue were presented to Queen Elizabeth for the museum’s opening.

History Today carried a feature in 2015, describing The Origin of Museums as “a cult book [that] spawned a new discipline in the history of collecting”. Indeed, the first publication of this book in 1985 undoubtedly marked a propitious moment in the development of interest, in what has since grown to be a dynamic subject-area in its own right. That an appetite for such matters was already there is confirmed by the fact that the first impression sold out within a few months, a second impression a year or two later, and the third in 1989. There was to be no further printing by the original publishers, Oxford University Press. However in 2001 a new edition appeared with a new publisher. Demand again proved buoyant, but within a few months the company failed; having operated on a print-on-demand basis, it left behind it no unsold stock. The Origins of Museums reverted to a scarce (though much sought-after) volume. With original copies now selling for hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, the Ashmolean is proud to make this important volume readily available again.

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

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

The Wellby Bequest, received by the Ashmolean Museum in 2013, consists of some 500 precious and exotic objects, mainly from Continental Europe, from the late medieval to the rococo, and is the most remarkable accession of this kind of material to any museum in the UK since the bequest of Ferdinand de Rothschild to the British Museum in 1898 (the Waddesdon Bequest). The collection was assembled by three generations of the Wellby family with an intention that it should reflect the great princely treasure chambers (Kunstkammer) preserved in Dresden, Vienna, Innsbruck, and elsewhere. Many of these objects have never been previously published. This beautiful and accessible book introduces over sixty of the prime pieces from this astonishing addition to the Ashmolean, presenting material of the type incomparably superior to anything in other UK museums outside London. Both authors are specialists in European decorative arts of the Renaissance and later periods.

Published to coincide with the opening of the new Wellby Bequest Gallery in the Ashmolean Museum September 2015

Contents: Preface and Acknowledgements; Introduction to the Michael Wellby Bequest (by Timothy Wilson); Introductory essay on the Kunstkammer tradition (by Matthew Winterbottom); 50 catalogue entries on highlights of the Wellby Collection; Glossary, Bibliography; Index

Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture is an exciting advance in the field of architecture offering multiple indigenous perspectives on architecture and design theory and practice. Indigenous authors from Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and the USA explore the making and keeping of places and spaces which are informed by indigenous values and identities. The lack of publications to date offering an indigenous lens on the field of architecture belies the rich expertise found in indigenous communities in all four countries. This expertise is made richer by the fact that this indigenous expertise combines both architecture and design professional practice, that for the most part is informed by Western thought and practice, with a frame of reference that roots this architecture in the indigenous places in which it sits.

We the Forest aims to ‘rewild the imagination’ by opening children’s eyes afresh to the wonder of forests through a meld of science and contemporary artwork. New scientific discoveries show that the interconnectedness of the forest runs deeper than we ever imagined. This title explores how all life in the forest is linked and our own human connection to and dependence on the forest.

Engaging text evokes the magic of forests – from how trees communicate to their superpowers of regeneration and protection of the planet – accompanied by commissioned illustrations. Interspersed throughout are arresting artworks inspired by forests from a wide variety of contemporary artists: learn to speak in ‘tree’ with Katie Holten’s tree alphabet, peer through Levon Biss’s lens to see what a giant beetle would look like, or witness the terrible beauty of forest fires in Jeff Frost’s photos. Interactive elements encourage the reader in their own creative projects.

As soon as Bill Wyman was given a camera as a young boy, he quickly developed a passion for photography. After joining what would become the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band, Wyman continued his hobby. When he didn’t have his bass, he had his camera. The result is an arresting, insightful and often poignant collection of photographs, showing his exclusive inside view of the band. From travelling to relaxing, backstage and on, Stones From the Inside is a unique view captured by a man who was there, every step of the way. Along with the images of the band at work and play, Wyman includes remarkable images of those along for the ride, from John Lennon, Eric Clapton, David Bowie and Iggy Pop to John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. To accompany his photographs, Wyman offers up wonderful insights, anecdotes and behind-the-photo stories, giving all us a front-row seat and backstage pass to what it was like to be there, as music history was made as a member of The Rolling Stones. Limited to just 300 copies, this slipcased edition is accompanied by a print.

This catalogue describes what is probably the most encyclopaedic collection of early coloured Worcester porcelain in existence. Henry Marshall assembled the collection between the two World Wars. In the years that followed, he sought to represent as comprehensive a range of patterns as possible, with minimal duplication, so that his collection would become a true reference work in itself. Every piece was acquired for specific purpose, many of them either to further his knowledge or because they were so rare. He was one of a small group of ceramic collectors who sought to document sources and influences, creating comprehensive hypotheses for the objects’ histories.

In this case specifically, Marshall’s records reveal the Far Eastern influence on Worcester porcelain, alongside the many other prototypes used by decorators of these fine ceramics. This catalogue, like the collection itself, seeks to present early Worcester porcelain to collectors and a wider public in a systematic way. It describes, classifies, and reproduces every item in the Marshall Collection. It does not seek to present detailed new research, but to record the state of knowledge about the subject at the time of writing.

This book of photographs by Swedish photographer Christer Löfgren explores the diverse and multifaceted world in which we live, from north to south. In comparing photographs of various cultures, diversity is more noticeable: the colours, clothes, and food point to the identity of each place. The further north or south of the equator you travel, colours are paler, and the food is milder and less spicy. The more extreme nature is, the more difficult the lifestyle. These vibrant photographs ask us to broaden our vision and grasp the complexity and beauty of the world as a global whole. This deluxe edition consists of three hardcover books in a slipcase.

Around 1900, a small group of influential patrons, critics, writers, and artists turned Weimar into a utopian centre of modern art and thought. Several artists and writers sought to create a ‘New Weimar’ and position Friedrich Nietzsche at its head, as the radical prophet of modernity.

In 1902, two years after the philosopher’s death, Max Klinger was commissioned to carve Nietzsche’s portrait where his cult was organised. Starting from a heavily reworked death mask, Klinger executed the famous marble herm that still today adorns the reception room of the Nietzsche Archive. Only three monumental bronze versions were cast, one of which is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. With this sculpture in focus, accompanied by a series of paintings, drawings, plaster casts, and small bronzes, Radical Modernism will show how Klinger and his patrons invented the ‘official’ Nietzsche, transforming a highly expressionist portrait into an idealised classical cult image. The exhibition and this catalogue will also include a comprehensive series of early editions of Nietzsche’s most influential books and will bring together work by the other protagonists of the ‘New Weimar’, in order to shed light on this extraordinary artistic and cultural constellation of modernism for the first time in North America.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa – 18 April – 25 August 2019.