Bøger udgivet af Museum of Fine Arts,Boston

Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch is Head of the Arts of Africa and Oceania, and Teel Curator of African and Oceanic Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Erica E. Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Chinese art collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is one of the finest outside East Asia, with particularly superb holdings of paintings and ceramics, along with important sculptures, bronzes and examples of the decorative arts. Some 100 objects have been selected here to represent its riches, arranged to explore themes such as religion or the scholar tradition throughout China's long history. The works featured in Arts of China range from Neolithic tomb artifacts to contemporary painting and include exquisite porcelains, paintings, sculptures, lacquerware and metalwork created for worship, court life, foreign trade or everyday use. Many reflect engagement with earlier traditions or with cultures outside China, including those of Central Asia and India as well as Europe and America. Enhanced with illuminating essays, this book offers an ideal introduction to the breathtaking beauty and variety of Chinese art.

Helen Burnham is Pamela and Peter Voss Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Mary Weaver Chapin is Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon. Joanna Wendel is Morse Curatorial Research Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Erica E. Hirshler is the Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Naomi Slipp is Assistant Professor of Art History, Fine Art Department, Auburn University at Montgomery, Alabama.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has been at the forefront in presenting pre-Columbian artifacts as part of art history rather than in the context of natural history or archaeology. The artworks featured in this volume exemplify the aesthetics and supreme craftsmanship of the peoples of the ancient Americas in pictorial pottery, sumptuous gold body adornments, and luxury textiles.

The life of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) is one of the richest and most mythic in the history of Western art. Abandoning a career in banking, a family and his homeland, in the last decade of the nineteenth century he sailed from France to the South Seas to seek a life "in ecstasy, in peace and for art." During his years in Tahiti, Gauguin brought forth a wealth of astonishing paintings, culminating in this monumental meditation on what he called the "ever-present riddle" of human existence posed in the work's title. This compact introduction to Gauguin's masterpiece explores its relation to European models as well as to the artist's own companion pieces.

Text by Anne Havinga, Karen Haas, Nancy Keeler.

Evocative photographs of a major archaeological expedition from the last century, conveying the effort and excitement of discovery and the austere beauty of the desert landscape. Specially trained Egyptian photographers were an integral part of the pioneering Harvard-MFA expedition during the first half of the twentieth century. Their photographs documented the excavations with thousands of images, as the riches of a great ancient civilization in northern Sudan were uncovered. The best of these photographs bring to life the dramatic landscapes of the Nile Valley, the excitement of archaeological discovery, and the artistry of the photographers who recorded it all.

Glorious, sophisticated, and refined works of art produced in ancient Nubia, drawn from one of the richest museum collections in the world and presented in their cultural contexts. Ancient Nubia was home to a series of civilizations between the sixth millennium bce and ad 350 that produced towering monuments, including more pyramids than in neighbouring Egypt, and artifacts of enduring beauty and significance. Nubia's trade network reached across the Mediterranean and far into Africa. At the time that Nubian kings conquered Egypt, in the middle of the eighth century bce, they controlled one of the largest empires of the ancient world. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has the largest and most important collection of ancient Nubian art outside of Khartoum, mostly gathered during the pioneering Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition in the first half of the twentieth century. The objects highlighted in this volume include refined early ceramics, monumental statues and relief carvings made for royal pyramids, exquisite gold and enamel jewelry, playful decorations for furniture and clothing, and luxury goods traded from around the Mediterranean world. Together they provide a fascinating introduction to a sophisticated cultural tradition and a rich history that are still being revealed today.

A close look at photographic postcards made in Africa in the first decades of the twentieth century reveals surprising images and tells their often-complicated stories. Photographers in Africa grasped the opportunity to serve a lucrative market for images of the continent, both locally and worldwide, during the global postcard craze that peaked around 1900 and continued for several decades. Their picture postcards now contribute to understanding political, social and cultural changes in Africa at the time, as the rise of the new medium coincided with the expansion and consolidation of colonial rule. They also provide a way to reconstruct the life and work of the photographers of European, African and other backgrounds who created these images - which often survive only in postcard form - and in some cases published them as well. The cards were produced for residents and travellers in Africa, as well as for buyers and collectors who had never set foot on the continent. Their depictions of colonial administrations, exploitation of resources and peoples, as well as images inscribing tribal identities and racial classifications, often reflect the colonizers' worldview. Yet it is also possible to recover the authorship of some of the African women and men who participated in these photographic encounters. For instance, some cards show that members of Africa's elites recognized the power of photographic images to enhance their standing and present their own narratives. Postcards from Africa reproduces a significant selection of these complex cards - the majority drawn from the extensive Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - accompanied by a leading scholar's exploration of the stories they tell.

A rediscovery and appreciation of an intriguing form of Chinese painting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that encoded messages about modern society in realistic depictions of fragments from China's past. Developed during the mid-19th century in China, the bapo 'eight brokens' painting genre combines ingeniously realistic depictions of antique documents, such as calligraphies, rubbings, paintings, and pages from old books, sometimes alongside everyday contemporary ephemera including advertisements, receipts, and postmarked envelopes. The resulting seemingly haphazard, overlapping compositions contain coded reflections on the decay of cultural traditions, or wishes for the recipient's good fortune. This book explores the origins of bapo in Chinese visual culture and traces how it blossomed into an intriguing and inventive tradition in the hands of many artists.

An authoritative and beautifully illustrated history of the innovative, colourful and finely crafted Arts and Crafts jewelry created by a circle of artists in the first decades of the 20th century. Belief in the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, which held that art and beauty could instill morality and inspire joy, united a vibrant and active community of jewelry makers - along with artists, craftspeople, scholars and critics and patrons - at the turn of the 20th century in Boston. Frank Gardner Hale, who trained in England with founders of the movement, became the most prominent and prolific creator of works of wearable art, helping to define the 'Boston look' characterized by bold use of colored stones and brilliant enamels; refined and delicate settings; and exquisite design and craftsmanship, conceived and executed by a single craftsman. A leading figure in the community of jewelers, and an advocate for the Society of Arts and Crafts, Hale influenced many other important makers, among them Josephine Hartwell Shaw, Edward Everett Oakes, Margaret Rogers and Elizabeth Copeland. This book, the first in-depth study of the subject, reproduces dozens of ornaments in dazzling colour, accompanied by design drawings from the extensive Frank Gardner Hale archive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. These drawings provide insight into the works' transformation from two to three dimensions and represent rare renderings of many pieces of jewelry that are now lost. The authoritative text brings together scholars of jewelry history and American design to explore how Hale and his contemporaries expressed Arts and Crafts principles in the creation of jewels of enduring allure.

A stunning stained glass window becomes a lens through which to view the career of Louis Comfort Tiffany and intersecting arcs of art and design in America. The story of the Parakeets stained glass window - from national and international recognition to years of obscurity, followed by a return to the limelight - parallels the public reception of the art of its maker, Louis Comfort Tiffany, who had one of the most recognized names in American art at the turn of the twentieth century. It is a story of artistic ambition and experimentation, of nationalist pride and promotion, and of the capricious nature of public opinion and the art market. A careful study of the fabrication, imagery, and life of the window offers an intimate look into the legacy of Tiffany, as well as the nineteenth-century revival of the lesser-known medium of stained glass, which some argue was the United States' first major contribution to the international art world.

A comprehensive exploration of postcards used as propaganda throughout the major military and political conflicts of the 20th century.

Takashi Murakami's irreverent, pop culture-infused art has made him one of the most recognized Japanese artists today. His bright, contemporary boisterousness, however, belies his deep scholarship and engagement with traditional Japanese art. Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics presents key examples of Murakami's work alongside a rich selection of Japanese masterpieces spanning several centuries and arranged here according to concepts laid out by his mentor and foil, leading Japanese art historian Nobuo Tsuji. Beautifully illustrated with Tsuji's selections from the pre-eminent Japanese art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as some of the Murakami's best known works of painting and sculpture, the combination of old and new in this groundbreaking volume enriches our understanding of each, and ultimately shows us how contemporary art can be seen as part of a continuum or lineage.

Katie Hanson is Assistant Curator, Art of Europe, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Rarely seen postcards by Eugène Atget, the famous photographer of Old Paris before he was discovered.

Gerald W. R. Ward is Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

A snapshot of the current state of the field of contemporary craft, where boundaries between art, craft and design are becoming increasingly blurred.

Explores the dynamic and complex traditions of Islamic art through more than 115 major works in a dazzling array of media.

Published on the occasion of an exhibition held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 11, 2015-January 18, 2016 and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, February 20-May 29, 2016.

New in the MFA HIGHLIGHTS series, which presents the best of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's collections accessibly and affordably.