Maria Lai (Ulassai, September 27, 1919 – Cardedu, April 16, 2013) is without doubt one of the leading figures in the history of contemporary Italian art. Not only on account of the content of her works, but also thanks to the diversity of her artistic approach, ranging as it does across many media – public art, embroidery, weaving, sculpture, drawing, and writing: all are grist for her poetics. The book is published to coincide with the exhibition at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, which is presenting to the general public over one hundred works by the Sardinian artist, from the early 1960s to her very last works, and explores the various themes dear to the artist with the contributions of experts in their fields: the locations, the creation, and publication of art books, her public art events and her relationship with the written word and her own writing. Her entire oeuvre is distinguished by its powerful visual impact, revealing a ‘way of doing art’ that is nothing other than an instrument of thought. The book’s structure reflects the exhibition’s own sections, arranged by theme, whose titles are paradigmatic of Lai’s oeuvre as a whole: Essere è tessere. Cucire e ricucire; L’arte è il gioco degli adulti. Giocare e raccontare; Disseminare e condividere; Il viaggiatore astrale. Immaginare l’altrove; L’arte ci prende per mano. Incontrare e partecipare.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the MAXXI Museum, Rome, 19 June 2019-12 January 2020.

Text in English and Italian.

Darwishi Ur-atum Msamaki Minkabh Ishaq Eboni, the son of an Egyptian pharaoh, is only nine years old when he dies. He is mummified and laid to rest in a tomb, with the powerful Golden Scarab of Mukatagara hanging around his neck. Thousands of years later, during a transport of three precious sarcophaguses, there is a terrible storm. Lightning strikes, the lorry plunges from a flyover and the sarcophaguses are hurled through the air. During all this, a little white shape escapes the wreckage unnoticed…

Angus Gust is ten and has a perfectly normal life. Then one night a little mummy appears in his room! Life changes completely. Angus and Dummie (short for his real name) become best friends. One dreadful day, Dummie’s scarab goes missing. Without the scarab Dummie falls terribly ill. Angus must now do everything he can to find the scarab, so Dummie doesn’t have to face death again. Can Dummie be saved in time?

In this second book in the Dummie the Mummy series, Dummie, Angus and Nick travel to Egypt. It’s Dummie’s great wish to return to his country to visit the grave of his father, Pharaoh Akhnetut. Unfortunately, Egypt has completely changed in four thousand years and Akhnetut’s grave seems untraceable. To make matters even worse, Nick falls ill and Angus and Dummie set off without him. Then something terrible happens – Dummie has to give everything he’s got to save his best friend. Yet he is also determined to find his father’s grave. Fortunately, he remembers more and more about his life long ago and this proves to be very handy!

In The Power of the Avant-Garde, contemporary artists from different art disciplines enter into dialogue with their colleagues from the historical avant-garde movement. Luc Tuymans talks about ‘Le Grand Cheval’ of Raymond Duchamp-Villon; Marlène Dumas describes her passion for Edvard Munch; John Baldessari discusses the genius Marcel Broodthaers,… This book makes surprising links, shedding new light on the power and influence of art before, during and after World War I. Text in English, French, and Dutch.

Scotland has produced an astonishingly high number of men and women whose lives have inspired and changed the world. This book, illustrating just over forty portraits, represents only a few of them, but with Robert Burns and Walter Scott, Eric Liddell and Alex Ferguson, Bonnie Prince Charlie and Queen Victoria, it represents the flavour of the collection at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

The Darnley jewel, a masterpiece of the goldsmith’s art on display at Edinburgh’s Holyrood Palace, has been deemed a love token, but has also been labelled an emblem of political ambition. Taking the shape of a heart, the jewel was produced at a moment (1565-75) when such objects worn by courtiers were a primary means of asserting status and proclaiming allegiances. With a deep medieval history – originally the fleshly power centre of the human body, the seat of the soul, and place of memory and emotion – the heart has many aspects to offer. This book shows how the understanding of the heart changed during the Middle Ages, from spiritual locus of the body, to source of devotion to country, and finally, to the font of love and sentimentality.

“Seldom does a collection of art history essays leave readers yearning for a second volume…”—Barbara Wisch, Renaissance Quarterly
Roman church interiors throughout the Early Modern age were endowed with rich historical and visual significance. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in anticipation of and following the Council of Trent, and in response to the expansion of the Roman Curia, the chapel became a singular arena in which wealthy and powerful Roman families, as well as middle-class citizens, had the opportunity to demonstrate their status and role in Roman society. In most cases the chapels were conceived not as isolated spaces, but as part of a more complex system, which involved the nave and the other chapels within the church, in a dialogue among the arts and the patrons of those other spaces. This volume explores this historical and artistic phenomenon through a number of examples involving the patronage of prominent Roman families such as the Chigis, Spadas, Caetanis, Cybos and important artists and architects such as Federico Zuccari, Giacomo della Porta, Carlo Maderno, Alessandro Algardi, Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Maratta.

For his entire professional life, British architect Cedric Price (1934-2003) reflected on the mechanisation of society and its effect on people’s lives. In the 1960s and 1970s Price searched for a new language in modern architecture. His multifaceted, interdisciplinary approach and his sense of humour and self-irony, also with regard to his own profession, lead him into the fields of art and of social and natural sciences.

Tanja Herdt’s new book on the work and life of Cedric Price for the first time offers a comprehensive demonstration of his architectural concepts and social visions. Herdt focuses on his view of the city as a socio-technical system, the influence of product and everyday culture on architecture, and the role of science and technology in architectural design. Based on extensive research and drawing from rich and largely unpublished material, she features some of Price’s well-known projects, such as Fun Palace (1961) or Potteries Thinkbelt (1964), in context with her new findings. Herdt’s thorough analysis of his lesser-known works from the 1970s, including McAppy (1973-1975) and The Generator (1976), also questions the common perception of Cedric Price as an “anti-architect”.

“Mesmerizing and unputdownable – a virtuoso translation of what must surely be one of the best Thai novels to make it into English.” – Lawrence Osborne, author of Hunters in the Dark and Only to Sleep

”At its core, this novel from Veeraporn Nitiprapha has a simple dynamic: the tension between two sisters, and the young man whose life interweaves with each of theirs. What makes this novel unique is its attention to the granular, whether it’s the music that several of its characters obsess over or its author’s tendency to fill in the history or future of a specific character at a moment’s notice.” – Words Without Borders, February 2019

Watchlist On the day Chareeya is born, her mother discovers her father has been having an affair with a traditional Thai dancer. From that moment, Chareeya’s life is fated to carry the weight of her parents disappointment. With her sister, Chalika, she grows up in an insular world, until joined by the laconic orphan, Pran, and together they navigate the labyrinth of their own making, each trying to escape their fate.

The Vatican Museums is one of the most important museum complexes in the world, housing incredible masterpieces from the Egyptian Age to the late Renaissance.

The Vatican Museums hold a treasure trove of art and history, as well as an inestimable patrimony of our culture and our civilisation. This volume focuses on the paintings to be found in the collection – including The Sistine Chapel.

Text in English and Italian.

How do our minds work when we design? How do we organise and assimilate information, create and evaluate options, and make decisions? These questions have fascinated and absorbed architect and sculptor Richard Bertman (FAIA) since his graduate school days. Now, after a 40-year career, Bertman has used the design of a vacation house as an experiment to explore these questions. The result, documented in The Design Process and the Art of the Single Family Home, is a fascinating and revealing insight into the creative process. With detailed notes and sketches, Bertman charts each stage of the design process, questioning and examining why certain decisions are made, how problems are solved, and generally exploring the processes involved in creative thinking.

The opening of celebrated British architect David Chipperfield’s extension building of Kunsthaus Zürich in the fall of 2021 will make this renowned institution Switzerland’s largest art museum. In the run-up to this milestone in the museum’s development, this new book looks back at its architectural history. It tells a lively story that starts in 1847 with the Zurich Artists’ Society’s initial gallery building and had its first culmination in 1910, when distinguished Swiss architect Karl Moser’s Kunsthaus was opened. Over the past century, three major additions were carried out in 1925, 1959, and 1976, and many attempts for a visionary large-scale extension were made. Illustrated with historic images, reproductions of plans and drawings as well as newly drawn floor and site plans, the book documents all stages of constructing Kunsthaus Zürich.

“…a significant contribution to the study of Chinese photography.” – The Art Newspaper

From political leaders to celebrities, photographic portraits exert considerable influence over our reaction to public figures. As the first academic publication focused on the Taikang photography collection, this book explores both the mechanics of portraiture and its psychological effects.

Taikang Space is one of the most important non-profit art institutions in China. Based in Beijing, they focus on contemporary art and photography. The Chinese Portrait: 1860 to the Present is based on the framework of the eponymous exhibition, which ran at Taikang Space from March 2017. This book introduces the curator and researchers involved with the exhibition, as well as researchers such as Shi Zhimin, Jin Yongquan, Liu Jianping, Liu Zhangbolong, who deliver their own unique angles on the topic of portrait photography. The Chinese Portrait: 1860 to the Present also features the curator’s interviews with Qia Sijie, Chen Shilin and Zhang Zuo – respectively the personal photographer, standard portrait re-toucher and darkroom technician of Chairman Mao.

In this beautifully illustrated story with a timeless message, a feared and cruel king learns of a wise magician in his kingdom who is rumored to be even more powerful than himself. The magician can predict the future, and even worse, he is more popular than the fearsome king. Jealous and insecure, the enraged king plots to destroy this enemy. But, being a magician, he has a trick up his sleeve that saves his own life and the king’s. With help from an unexpected friend, the king transforms from a feared and brutal monarch to a beloved leader. Enduring messages about the power of wisdom and compassion are conveyed in a classic storytelling style and outstanding, original artwork.

Established by an act of Congress in 1989, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is dedicated to the preservation, study, and exhibition of the life, languages, literature, history, and the arts of Native Americans. The museum’s collections span more than 10,000 years and – as this lavishly illustrated miniature volume demonstrates – include a multitude of fascinating objects, from ancient clay figurines to contemporary Indian paintings, from all over the Americas.

The Bari people, who settled on the banks of the White Nile, remained closed off from the outside world until the dawn of the 19th century. The earliest contact dates back to the “scientific” expedition commissioned in 1840 by Ismail Pascha, followed by repeated forays by explorers in search of the sources of the Nile during the closing decades of the Ottoman period in Egypt, interspersed with the often competing efforts of slave hunters.

This book places the collection of Bari statues known today in the historical context of the Egyptian Sudan, from the earliest contacts with explorers Joseph Pons d’Arnaud and Wilhelm Werne in 1841 to the final stages of the pre-colonial era described by Wilhelm Junker. Many museums founded during the 19th century embarked on a frantic scramble to collect ethnographic objects, relying in particular on explorers, but also on traders and adventurers. This book catalogues the roughly 63 Bari statues that are known today and offers a comprehensive overview of historical sources and current knowledge of the Egyptian Sudan that provide the context for these works, their use and stylistic diversity.

Text in English and French.

The Ashcan School and The Eight are now recognised as America’s first modern art movement: rejecting their academic training and the practices of the National Academy of Design, they forged a new art that represented America’s shifting values. By focusing on urban streets scenes, the lives of immigrants, popular entertainments, and the working poor, this loosely affiliated group of artists became synonymous with ordinary, everyday subjects — in the words of one critic, “pictures of ashcans.” Yet this is only part of their story: they also experimented with complex colour theory and embraced scientific studies about movement and perception, while also creating scenes of bourgeois leisure and society portraits in attempts to reconcile their high-art practices with their populist reputations.

This catalogue features nearly 130 works across media, including paintings, drawings, pastels, and prints — rarely seen objects and popular favourites. Collectively these works emphasise the Ashcan School’s and The Eight’s valuable contributions to the formation of American modernism at the beginning of the 20th century.

This is the era of the Smart Ecosystems Economy, where the companies that thrive must be ready to cope with randomness and unexpected events. In this digital world, the traditional boundaries have disappeared, paving the way for new and smarter ecosystems to develop. Companies seeking to transform into future-proof organisations would do well to understand these ecosystems, and get a grasp on how they work.

This book serves as a guide to building smart, competitive ecosystems for both small and large organisations. A timely book that cracks the code of tomorrow’s business models.

This lavishly illustrated book records the high profile restoration of Rembrandt van Rijn’s 17th century masterpiece, The Night Watch, one of the world’s most famous paintings. Many questions about the creation of this work have been answered by extensive technical studies done in conjunction with the restoration. The popular Dutch TV program The Secret of the Master has documented the restoration of The Night Watch in four episodes, assisted in this by various external specialists. This book, by the producer of that series, reveals the many secrets of this fascinating and important work.

A Sino-Chinese family find their destiny is inseparably entangled with that of the country they have adopted as a home. Not long before the Communist revolution, Tong, sent by his peasant-parents in impoverished rural China to work with a relative in Siam, has risen to become a rice-trading tycoon in Bangkok’s Chinatown, married a former palace cook and built a large family in the town of Pad Riew. Haunted by the dream of returning to his true home in China, Tong, along with his wife and their five children, are swept along by the torrents of history as World War II breakout and China turns red, while the military strongman in Thailand act out the interminable cycle of power struggle, rebellion and coup d’état.

Memories of the Memories of the Black Rose Cat, the award-winning second novel by Veerapon Nitiprapha, is a generations-spanning family saga that explores the roots of the Chinese diaspora in Siam and how the tragedy of ruined love, maternal betrayal and futile ambition shape the lives of Tong’s clan members, each of them hounded by their own ghosts and burdened by their own sins. All of this is played out against the backdrop of Siam’s mid-century social and political history, the most chaotic period the formation of the nation.

In 1856, just months after Britain and Siam had finalised the historic Bowring trade treaty that would prevent the countries colonisation, the violent death of a Siamese official at the new British consulate threatens to scuttle the deal and lead to war. The King and the Consul explores UK and Thai archives to reveal the twists, turns and tensions of this little-known episode that pitted Thailand’s renowned King Mongkut, Rama IV, against the first British Consul, Charles Hillier. The crisis was resolved without war, but not without cost for the participants who suffered unintended tragic outcomes. By examining the background to this tragedy, the book reveals how history has often overlooked the importance of an issue that lay behind it the right of foreigners to own land in the country, and issue that continues to be a thorn in the side of Thailand’s foreign relations to this day.

“The tragic deaths in 1856 of the first British consul to Siam and a Siamese official had an unusual impact on Thailand‘s property law and Britain’s diplomatic presence in the country. This intriguing book could only be written by someone with long residence in Bangkok, through knowledge of Thailand’s property law, and enthusiasm for history. Simon Landy gives us a slice of legal and diplomatic history with close attention to its human dimensions. An unusual and lovely read” – Chris Baker

The Strofades: two small, flat, windswept islands rising out of the Ionian Sea, known to the ancient Greeks as the home of the terrible Harpies, and to most modern Greeks simply unknown. On the larger of the two islets, Stamfani, stands a massive fortified monastery, founded as early as the 13th century, for centuries a refuge for honest seafarers and a target for pirates and Turkish raiders. In its heyday, this imposing compound was home to some 40 farmer-monks, who kept the entire island under cultivation; by 1976, it was home to just one, Father Gregory Kladis (1937–2017), who alone tended the monastery until 2014. Today the monastery—badly damaged by an earthquake in 1997—lies empty and in danger of ruin.   This book is intended to tell the world about the Holy Monastery at Strofades, and encourage its preservation. At its core are the words of the last monk himself, Father Gregory, who guides the reader through his historic monastery—its chapels, refectory, mills, bakehouse, and living quarters—and the natural beauties of its island setting, as depicted in Robert McCabe’s superb photographs. The testimonies of the boatman who brought Father Gregory his supplies, as well as the lighthouse keeper who was once his only companion on the island, lend texture and context—as do essays on the history, geology, and architecture of the Strofades, and architectural drawings that reconstruct the monastery’s phases of construction. Nobody who peruses this volume—the result of a yearslong collaboration between more than a dozen researchers and friends of the Strofades—will be able to forget the islands’ last monk, or be unmoved by the plight of his monastery.