The concept of an encyclopedic museum was born of the Enlightenment, a manifestation of society’s growing belief that the spread of knowledge and the promotion of intellectual inquiry were crucial to human development and the future of a rational society. But in recent years, museums have been under attack, with critics arguing that they are little more than relics and promoters of imperialism. Could it be that the encyclopedic museum has outlived its usefulness? With Museums Matter, James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, replies with a resounding “No!” He takes us on a brief tour of the modern museum, from the creation of the British Museum—the archetypal encyclopedic collection—to the present, when major museums host millions of visitors annually and play a major role in the cultural lives of their cities. Along the way, Cuno acknowledges the legitimate questions about the role of museums in nation-building and imperialism, but he argues strenuously that even a truly national museum like the Louvre can’t help but open visitors’ eyes and minds to the wide diversity of world cultures and the stunning art that is our common heritage. Engaging with thinkers such as Edward Said and Martha Nussbaum, and drawing on examples from the politics of India to the destruction of the Bramiyan Buddhas to the history of trade and travel, Cuno makes a case for the encyclopedic museum as a truly cosmopolitan institution, promoting tolerance, understanding, and a shared sense of history—values that are essential in our ever more globalized age. Powerful, passionate, and to the point, Museums Matter is the product of a lifetime of working in and thinking about museums; no museumgoer should miss it.

Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (The Rice University Campbell Lectures)

Cuno, James

Reference

University of Chicago Press

Arts & Photography

This new Museum Studies volume features significant acquisitions made by the Art Institute of Chicago over the past two years, bringing into wide public view the recent collecting activities of one of America’s most prestigious museums.The forty highlighted works––which have been chosen by the museum’s director–range in date from ancient to modern times and include decorative arts, drawings, paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, and textiles. Roy Lichtenstein’s impressive Mirror in Six Parts, a delicately rendered sixteenth-century nativity scene by Fra Bartolommeo, and a sleek Manhattan cocktail set by Norman Bel Geddes are among the many objects presented. Each work is illustrated in color and accompanied by a lively entry that discusses its art-historical significance.

Notable Acquisitions at the Art Institute of Chicago (Museum Studies)

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Art Institute of Chicago

This handsome book examines the remarkable new addition to the Art Institute of Chicago, designed by Renzo Piano and scheduled to open in May 2009. This expansion to the Art Institute of Chicago, already one of the largest museums in the country, will provide new galleries for modern and contemporary painting and sculpture, as well as for photography, film and video, and architecture and design. The structure is Piano’s largest art museum building to date. 
The museum’s director, James Cuno, discusses the history of the commission, and Paul Goldberger writes on how this building fits into the larger context of Piano's work―especially his many museum designs―as well as considers its positioning in a city celebrated for its architecture. Judith Turner provides exquisite architectural photographs, showing many nuanced details and views of the structure, while Joseph Rosa comments on her images and how they convey the beauty and sophistication of the building. Photographs by New York-based architectural photographer Paul Warchol complete the book

The Modern Wing: Renzo Piano and The Art Institute of Chicago

Goldberger, Paul

Rosa, Joseph

Architecture

Whether antiquities should be returned to the countries where they were found is one of the most urgent and controversial issues in the art world today, and it has pitted museums, private collectors, and dealers against source countries, archaeologists, and academics. Maintaining that the acquisition of undocumented antiquities by museums encourages the looting of archaeological sites, countries such as Italy, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and China have claimed ancient artifacts as state property, called for their return from museums around the world, and passed laws against their future export. But in Who Owns Antiquity?, one of the world's leading museum directors vigorously challenges this nationalistic position, arguing that it is damaging and often disingenuous. "Antiquities," James Cuno argues, "are the cultural property of all humankind," "evidence of the world’s ancient past and not that of a particular modern nation. They comprise antiquity, and antiquity knows no borders."
 Cuno argues that nationalistic retention and reclamation policies impede common access to this common heritage and encourage a dubious and dangerous politicization of antiquities--and of culture itself. Antiquities need to be protected from looting but also from nationalistic identity politics. To do this, Cuno calls for measures to broaden rather than restrict international access to antiquities. He advocates restoration of the system under which source countries would share newly discovered artifacts in exchange for archaeological help, and he argues that museums should again be allowed reasonable ways to acquire undocumented antiquities. Cuno explains how partage broadened access to our ancient heritage and helped create national museums in Cairo, Baghdad, and Kabul. The first extended defense of the side of museums in the struggle over antiquities, Who Owns Antiquity? is sure to be as important as it is controversial.

Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage

History & Criticism

Princeton University Press

Whether antiquities should be returned to the countries where they were found is one of the most urgent and controversial issues in the art world today, and it has pitted museums, private collectors, and dealers against source countries, archaeologists, and academics. Maintaining that the acquisition of undocumented antiquities by museums encourages the looting of archaeological sites, countries such as Italy, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and China have claimed ancient artifacts as state property, called for their return from museums around the world, and passed laws against their future export. But in Who Owns Antiquity?, one of the world's leading museum directors vigorously challenges this nationalistic position, arguing that it is damaging and often disingenuous. "Antiquities," James Cuno argues, "are the cultural property of all humankind," "evidence of the world's ancient past and not that of a particular modern nation. They comprise antiquity, and antiquity knows no borders."
 Cuno argues that nationalistic retention and reclamation policies impede common access to this common heritage and encourage a dubious and dangerous politicization of antiquities--and of culture itself. Antiquities need to be protected from looting but also from nationalistic identity politics. To do this, Cuno calls for measures to broaden rather than restrict international access to antiquities. He advocates restoration of the system under which source countries would share newly discovered artifacts in exchange for archaeological help, and he argues that museums should again be allowed reasonable ways to acquire undocumented antiquities. Cuno explains how partage broadened access to our ancient heritage and helped create national museums in Cairo, Baghdad, and Kabul. The first extended defense of the side of museums in the struggle over antiquities, Who Owns Antiquity? is sure to be as important as it is controversial.

As civility appears to crumble around us and our society, people are thinking seriously about how they contribute to decorum, respect and courtesy in their work and in their lives. They are asking themselves if they do enough, and they are seeking a forward-looking answer that means civility will be better served tomorrow than today, and even better the day after. Such thought and resolve are major steps in assuring that civility remains one of our core values, and that we always advance its cause in our words and deeds. The 12 distinguished, successful people who have shared their views with the world in this book foster civility in the course of their daily interactions. They are leaders who set the bar high for us all.

Civility in America Volume II: New Essays from America's Thought Leaders

History

Bratton, William

Klein, Joel

Vincent, Fay

Goodman, Allan E.

Mosbacher, Georgette

Dilenschneider, Robert. L.

Reilly, Edward T.

Nugent, Georgia M.

Donohue, Thomas J.

Americas

Significance Press

Two celebrated and complementary collections of Rubens' sketches - in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - are brought together to form the basis of this study of the artist's work.Often regarded as one of the most compelling and remarkable aspects of the artist's work, Rubens' oil sketches reveal the genesis of many of his most important commissions. This book, published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Hermitage Rooms, Courtauld Institute of Art, focuses on Rubens' projects where the Hermitage and Courtauld holdings are exceptionally rich, including the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and the now lost ceiling of the Jesuit church in Antwerp. By bringing together preparatory material from a number of major commissions this book aims to provide a concentrated account of the role of the oil sketch in Rubens' work.

Peter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance

Rubens, Peter Paul

Woodall, Joanna

Gritsay, Natalya

Piotrovksy, Mikhail

Larionov, Alexey

Vegelin Van Claer

Durante, Stephanie-Suzanne

Prestel Pub

Out of print since 1999, the classic catalogue raisonnª of Joseph Beuys's multiples is available again at last. Beuys, the most influential German--and perhaps the most influential European--artist of the postwar period, was born in 1921. He had planned to be a doctor, but following World War II he enrolled in the Dsseldorf Academy of Art. As a professor there in the early 1960s he encountered the influence of Fluxus and began to make and show the multiples--prints and boxes and other objects in editions--that became such a key part of his work. Those highlighted here include sleds, pieces of felt, signed head shots of the artist and texts calligraphed onto bank notes in francs, marks and schillings. Bruno Cora Tea mocks both mass production and boutique cachet by refilling a Coca-Cola bottle with tea, resealing it with flourishes worthy of a Belgian beer, and putting the whole thing in a glass-fronted box. Joseph Beuys: Multiples includes some 600 pieces, annotated lists of the major collections where they can be found, essays from significant curators and scholars and an interview with the artist.

Joseph Beuys: The Multiples

Nisbet, Peter

Stemmler, Dierk

Edition Schellmann

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