Books by N.Y.) Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York

Created in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this unique hands-on book and craft kit allows readers to learn bead-making from jewelry art representing five African regions.

Discusses the designs, histories, construction, and woods of a variety of chairs, tables, chests, desks, bookcases, and clocks.

Traces the history of the Hudson River School of American painters, shows works by Church, Cole, and Inness, and describes the background of each painting.

Looks at 150 paintings from the 18th to the 20th centuries.

From the first major discoveries a century ago, the painted portraits of Roman Egypt were a revelation to scholars and the public alike, and the recent finding of a new cache of these gilded images, which made national headlines, have only heightened their mystery and appeal. Published to coincide with a new major exhibition of these portraits, Ancient Faces is the most comprehensive, up-to-date survey of these astonishing works of art.

Dating from the later period of Roman rule in Egypt, shortly before the birth of Christ, the painted mummy portraits are among the most remarkable products of the ancient world, a fusion of the traditions of pharonic Egypt and the Classical world. They are historical and cultural objects of outstanding importance and beauty, superb works of art that represent some of the earliest known examples of life-like portraiture. Though the subjects of the portraits believed in the traditional Egyptian cults, which offered them a firm prospect of life after death, they

From the first major discoveries a century ago, the painted portraits of Roman Egypt were a revelation to scholars and the public alike, and the recent finding of a new cache of these gilded images, which made national headlines, have only heightened their mystery and appeal. Published to coincide with a new major exhibition of these portraits, Ancient Faces is the most comprehensive, up-to-date survey of these astonishing works of art.

Dating from the later period of Roman rule in Egypt, shortly before the birth of Christ, the painted mummy portraits are among the most remarkable products of the ancient world, a fusion of the traditions of pharonic Egypt and the Classical world. They are historical and cultural objects of outstanding importance and beauty, superb works of art that represent some of the earliest known examples of life-like portraiture. Though the subjects of the portraits believed in the traditional Egyptian cults, which offered them a firm prospect of life after death, they

Shows an eighteenth-century Neapolitan creche and the angels and cherubs designed to decorate a Christmas tree.

Contemporary German artist Anselm Kiefer has produced large-scale, monumental works, watercolors, woodcuts, and "books" as artistic objects. Themes of German history, culture, and myth run through the various media. This volume, a Metropolitan Museum exhibition catalog, includes 54 works on paper from 1969 to 1993, with additional illustrations.

The catalogue of a 1995 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This magnificent book presents art from the glorious period when New York City rose to become an international center for culture.

Published to accompany an exhibition which opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1998, this volume is the first major study of the French Neoclassical sculptor Augustin Pajou in almost a century and the only one in English. Little known outside his native land, here Pajou's work is discussed and illustrated in depth, and a detailed picture is provided of the artistic, courtly, and aristocratic mileu in which he was active. This fresh examination of the 18th-century French intellectual world concentrates on the beginnings of Neoclassicism and explores the philosophical and scientific underpinnings of the Enlightenment.

This critical study of the French neoclassical sculptor--the first written in English--looks at the aristocratic and courtly circles in which the sculptor traveled, as well as 18th-century French thought from neoclassicism to the Enlightenment. A social, cultural, and artistic history, with over 400 illustrations.

The author writes about three of Friedrich's spare and melancholy moonlit paintings, in which two people gaze at the sky, and claims that they influenced, for example, Beckett's WAITING FOR GODOT.

This book accompanies a major traveling exhibition that brings together 163 of Corot's finest paintings to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Classic poems about cats are matched with works of art from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Offering a look at the artist's life and multifaceted career, this volume contain's more than three hundred reproductions of Hockney's art--more than half in full-color--and seven essays by distinguished critics and artist friends.

Documents the influence of the institution on twentieth-century American design, including furniture, architecture, interior design, and other arts and crafts.

Female nudes by the celebrated photographer Irving Penn, from the years 1949 and 1950--many of them never before seen.

Impressionist painter Edgar Degas' canvases, pastels, and sculptures are recognized around the world. Few people, however, are aware that late in his career Degas produced a series of mesmerizing photographs. This book accompanies the first exhibition to focus on these imaginative works; they were never displayed in public in the artist's lifetime.Some 40 photographs are reproduced in exquisite tritone and duotone plates. Most of these are portraits of family and friends taken in 1895. Carefully posed and lit and often requiring long exposures, they are utterly distinctive works that stretch the physical and expressive limits of the medium.The photographs will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, beginning in October 1998. The exhibition travels to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, in January 1999 and to the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris in May.Malcolm Daniel is associate curator of photography at the Metropolitan Museum.Eugenia Parry is an independent scholar based in New Mexico who has published extensively on Degas.Theodore Reff is professor of art history at Columbia University in New York City.

The Embodied image new perspectives on the beauty, offers power, and art of the written word in China. Containing many never-before-published masterpieces from the third century to the modern period, all from the premier John B. Elliott Collection, this volume accompanies the most comprehensive exhibition of Chinese calligraphy ever seen outside China. Whether brushed on silk, cast on bronze, or engraved in stone, Chinese calligraphy evokes the forces of nature, promotes social ideals, and asserts the creativity of individual artists. Scholarly essays by distinguished Chinese and American scholars examine the complex relationships between calligraphy and religion, poetry, and literature. The Embodied Image makes a landmark contribution to the understanding of Chinese calligraphy and civilization.

Works of Fabergé collected by Americans, including Matilda Geddings Gray, Lillian Thomas Pratt, Marjorie Merriweather Post, and Malcolm Forbes.

Offers a glimpse into the land of the fairies through art and poems by a variety of authors, including William Shakespeare, William Butler Yeats, and Langston Hughes.

Poetry to delight anyone who still believes in magic.
"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies."
-- J. M. Barrie, Scottish, 1860-1937, from Peter Pan

The art of Englishman Richard Doyle offers lush glimpses into the world of the wee folk. Doyle's fairies troop through meadows, twirl in the moonlight, and enlist birds and bugs in games and mischief. His whimsical illustrations, chosen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection, are paired with poems by William Shakespeare, John Keats, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Butler Yeats, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Stevie Smith, and Langston Hughes, among others.
Fairy sweethearts among the roses illustrate Wilder's "The Fairies in the Sunshine," elf babies in a snail race match Robert Graves's "I'd Love to Be a Fairy's Child," and a fairy queen carried by butterflies reimagines Shakespeare's popular "Queen Mab" soliloquy. A magical treasury that will enchant readers of all ages.

The story of Sir Austen Henry Layard's rediscovery of ancient Assyria and its fabled capital, Nineveh, is one of the great tales of the nineteenth century, uniting archaeological imperialism, genius, and romance. No less remarkable is the story of the collection, dispersal, and then frantic re-acquisition in the twentieth century of the world's greatest Assyrian collection ever to be in private hands. In this fascinating history of the reception of ancient Assyrian art in England and subsequently in America, John Malcolm Russell recounts the story of the huge collection of artifacts that Layard brought back to England. Much went to the British Museum, but much also to the fascinating Lady Charlotte Guest and then, via a Manhattan dealer and numerous competitive curators and millionaires, to the Metropolitan Museum. The last of Layard's Assyrian sculptures, discovered by the author in a private British school, was sold for $12 million at auction in 1994--a figure that tripled the highest price ever paid for a work of antiquity. This book is based almost entirely on unpublished archives, including the 10,000-page diary of Lady Charlotte Guest, the brilliant and resourceful cousin of Layard and the richest woman in England. At her country house, Canford Manor, Guest commissioned from Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, the "Nineveh Porch" to display the remarkable sculptures. This established a whole new decorative and architectural fashion for "Assyrian Revival." Russell explores the events that led to the creation of the Porch, casting vivid new light on the archaeological, cultural, and architectural politics of the day. The dispersal of the collection after World War I, and the initial reluctance of any American museum to acquire the sculptures, form another story--entertainingly illuminated by the ingenious and ultimately successful scheme of the dealer Kelekian to sell them to John D. Rockefeller and others. Assyria's admission to the family of world art and ethical questions surrounding the appropriation of antiquities add another strand of the tale, culminating in Saddam Hussein's attempted intervention at the Christie's sale in 1994. With previously unpublished photographs, illustrations from rare nineteenth-century sources, and extensive passages from Guest's diary, this book provides an unprecedented look into the rich history and meaning of Assyrian art and of nineteenth-and twentieth-century taste, dealing, and collecting.

In conjunction with a major exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in September 1998, From Van Eyck to Bruegel celebrates the northern Renaissance, one of the great epochs of Western art.Beginning about 1425, artists from the area of modern Belgium and Holland created paintings startling in their realism and innovative approach. This book begins with the work of the legendary inventor of oil painting, Jan van Eyck, and concludes with that of the highly original genius Pieter Bruegel. More than 100 colorplates with individual commentaries present the accomplishments of virtually every key figure of the period, all drawn from the extensive holdings of the Metropolitan. The work of Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Gerard David, and Hans Memling is included.Essays by experts in the field treat various aspects of the subject. Biographies are provided for all the artists represented, along with comparative illustrations of prints and paintings from other collections.Keith Christiansen is Jayne Wrightsman Curator of European Paintings at the Metropolitan.Maryan W. Ainsworth is senior research fellow in the Department of Paintings Conservation at the Metropolitan.

Beginning about 1425, artists from the area of modern Belgium and Holland created paintings startling in their realism and innovative approach. This book begins with the work of the legendary inventor of oil painting, Jan van Eyck, and concludes with that of the highly original genius Pieter Bruegel. More than 100 colorplates with individual commentaries present the accomplishments of virtually every key figure of the period, all drawn from the extensive holdings of the Metropolitan. The work of Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Gerard David, and Hans Memling is included.

The well-known art historian Robert L. Herbert brings his critical insights to bear on the work of Georges Seurat--on whom he is a noted expert--in this collection of articles, which reveal Seurat to be interesting as a painter for many other things besides his famous pointillist technique.

A catalog accompanying an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art highlights the designer's contributions to fashion.

This stunning book focuses on the spectacular works of art created during the 5th to the 4th centuries B.C. and recently excavated in Russia.

Surveys the exhibition of Greek gold jewelry held in 1994 at the British Museum and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A lively history of haute couture from the formation of the House of Worth in mid-19th-century Paris to the designers of today, highlighting designs that changed the fashion world: Chanel's little black dress, Dior's New Look, Balenciaga's sack dress, and more. The book also looks closely at the highly skilled crafts that are the backbone of haute couture.

Around 1525, a new fashion emerged in armor design inspired by the forms and ornament of classical art. Embossed in high relief, richly gilt, and inlaid with gold and silver, these lavish parade armors are invariably associated with Filippo Negroli, the most innovative and celebrated of the renowned armorers of Milan. This richly illustrated book accompanies the first exhibition devoted to Negroli and Renaissance armor in the classical style.

This in-depth study of the Herter Brothers, New York, the leading furniture-making and decorating firm of late-19th-century America, is the first to focus on the design, richness of materials, and splendid diversity in the work of Gustave and Christian Herter. Herter Brothers finest furniture and interiors are displayed here in 133 color and 167 black-and-white illustrations, many showing rich detail. The authors place the company in its context, international as well as domestic, and provide an absorbing narrative of the furniture industry in New York City.

Lannuier's furniture designs from the Late Federal period. In the early 1800s, Lannuier created gilded card and marble-topped tables, bedframes, and chairs for upper-class homes. This catalog accompanied a 1998 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Presents a collection of prayers, psalms, and spiritual poetry accompanied by thematically related works of art from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Photographs of the former first lady and the suits, dresses, and gowns she wore during her White House years accompany essays describing each outfit's history.

A fortieth anniversary celebration of Jacqueline Kennedy's initiation as America's first lady explores her influence on style, examining eight original gowns, suits, dresses, and accessories that impact fashion trends today.

Discusses Japanese pottery and its role in Japanese culture.

This book--published to accompany a 1995 exhibition organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston--focuses on the paintings, pastels, and miniatures produced by American painter John Singleton Copley before he moved to London in 1774. Four principal essays place Copley's work in historical and social context and bring new critical methods to bear upon the study of portraits; while four shorter texts treat Copley's use of costume, his accomplishments as a miniaturist, his pastels, and the frames he selected for his work. Catalogue entries detail the lives of sitters, decode the emblematic language that reflected status in colonial society, and reveal the way Copley enhanced his subjects' sense of self.

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) was one of America's preeminent masters of the decorative arts. Best known for his achievements in glass, especially for his vibrantly colored windows and lamps, Tiffany also excelled in mosaics, enamels, metalwork, ceramics, and jewelry. All of these are handsomely represented here in freshly photographed works from the outstanding collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In what is possibly the most lavishly illustrated book available on Tiffany, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen presents his works in the context of his career, which included designing jewelry for Tiffany & Co., founded by his father. She discusses his artistic themes and devotion to nature and sheds new light on his technical virtuosity, including his invention of iridescent Favrile glass. Each page in this volume proclaims Tiffany's inexhaustible creativity and perfectionism in every medium. Many off his drawings are published here for the first time.

This lovely volume features an informative text complemented by beautiful illustrations of Tiffany's stunning accomplishments, including the famous lamps, stained-glass windows, mosaics, jewelry, paintings, enamels, bronzes, and much more.

Illustrates and describes nine hundred works of art representing each of the Museum's eighteen departments.

A brief history of the founding and development of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a pictorial survey of selected works of art in the museum's collections.

Displays over two hundred important objects representing the best of Medieval art as exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1999

Nadar was an astonishing presence in 19th-century France, reinventing himself as a bohemian writer, a journalist, a romantic utopian, a caricaturist, a portrait photographer, a balloonist, and a scientific innovator. However, it is for his photography that he is remembered, specifically his extraordinarily beautiful portraits of many of the great men and women of his time: including Dumas, Rossini, Baudelaire, Sarah Berndardt, Daumier, Berloiz, George Sand, and Delacroix. This book, which is the catalogue for an exhibition which opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1995, includes some 100 photographs from Nadar's finest period along with descriptions of their subjects.

The New Vision is the first broad historical study of the provocative innovations of the European and American photography between the World Wars. This volume presents more than 160 images from the extraordinarily rich Ford Motor Company Collection, a group of about 500 photographs formed by John C. Waddell, which Ford Motor Company and the collector recently gave to the Metropolitan Museum.

Influenced by issues of social injustice as well as the European avant-garde, Strand combined realism and abstraction to create one of the major bodies of photographic work of the century. A 1998 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Pergamon was an ancient royal capital in what is now Turkey. To proclaim the city's importance, its Hellenistic kings built a Great Altar--a massive stone podium about one hundred feet long and thirty-five feet high. The story of Telephos, the mythical son of Herakles and the Greek princess Auge, whose lineage the kings wanted to claim for themselves, surrounded the sacrificial altar.
These two volumes of essays by classicists and art historians were compiled to accompany an exhibition of the Telephos frieze at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Volume one treats the scholarly efforts to interpret correctly the fragments of the frieze, since its discovery by German archaeologists in the late nineteenth century. Color photographs illustrate twelve marble panels from the frieze, which the contributors treat as the first known instance of continuous narrative in sculpture.
Volume two provides essential information for Hellenistic scholars, as well as conservators. It presents the latest research in English on the frieze, with detailed discussions of the art, architecture, and coinage of Pergamon, the dating and significance of the frieze, and its restoration history. Also included are over two hundred detailed black-and-white drawings and photographs, a foldout topographical plan of the site, a scale model of the Pergamon Altar, and a stunning foldout drawing of the Telephos frieze itself.

Renowned artist Picasso was one of the most prolific printmakers in history, producing more than 2,500 plates. Brigitte Baer, who inventoried the Picasso estate, has gathered for exhibition and publication this representative selection from the unique collection of the Picasso Museum in Paris. Baer's work provides a fresh evaluation of Picasso's genius. 100 illustrations.

This catalog from a show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art showcases Bruegel's allegorical drawings and the prints made from them as well as other works by his contemporaries. It also includes essays on Bruegel's influences, draftsmanship, and other relevant topics.

Published to accompany a major international exhibition and prepared by eminent American and European scholars, this volume brings together a wealth of original source materials-letters, critical reviews, biographical documents, photographs-to firmly situate Ingres' portrait subjects in their time and place.

Early European art was a consuming interest of both Robert Lehman and his father, Philip Lehman, an interest reflected in the remarkable number and quality of drawings they owned from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In addition to an important group of early German drawings, the collection includes a Saint Paul from a series associated with Jan van Eyck and the famous Scupstoel from the circle of Rogier van der Weyden, the only design for a decorative sculpture to survive from the fifteenth century. The great artists of the seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Claude Lorrain, and Rembrandt among them, are also represented, Rembrandt by seven drawings, including the large study of Leonardo's Last Supper that would stay in his mind all through his career, whenever he depicted groups of figures conversing with each other. Drawings by Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honore Fragonard, and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin are among the many from eighteenth-century France. This volume is the ninth to be published in a projected series of sixteen that will catalogue the entire Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum. It discusses all 140 drawings at length, placing each in its art historical setting and complementing the discussion with comparative illustrations of related works.

The exotic culture of Tibet has been of enormous interest to Westerners in recent decades. Sacred Visions, which accompanies a major exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in October 1998, is devoted to a period of extraordinary cultural achievement, when Tibet became known as the Buddhist holy land.From the 11th to the mid-15th century, Tibetans commissioned and created exquisite paintings, or thankas, that incorporated traditions from eastern India, Nepal, and China, as well as their own Buddhist imagery. Though Tibet was closed to the West until the early 20th century and then closed again by the Chinese in 1950, many magnificent thankas have survived in Western collections. Sacred Visions brings these rare masterpieces together for the first time.Superbly illustrated, Sacred Visions includes scholarly essays that provide historical, stylistic, and technical information on these remarkable works. The related exhibition travels to the Reitberg, Zurich, in February 1999.Steven M. Kossak is associate curator of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.Jane Casey Singer has written and lectured widely on Himalayan art. She lives in London.

A celebration of surrealism focuses on the works of Duchamp, Magrritte, Ernst, Dali, de Chirico, Giacometti, Bellmer, Tanning, Claude Cahum, and many others.

This volume is a companion to the exhibition of the same name.

Shares selected images from the American photographer's life's work, and analyzes a career that spanned more than four decades.

The tie-in to an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this richly illustrated study incorporates more than two hundred prints, paintings, drawings, and illuminated books by poet, artist, and mystic William Blake, accompanied by introductory essays on Blake the man, his role in the political and social upheavals of his era, his innovative printing techniques, and his visionary art.

This book examines the immensity of Homer's artistic accomplishments, focusing not only on his masterpieces in various media but also on the suites of works on the same subject that reflect the artist's essentially modern practice of thinking and working serially and thematically. The book discusses and reproduces more than two hundred paintings, watercolors, and drawings that span Homer's career, all of which are discussed in entries by Cikovsky and Kelly.