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Fowle, Frances; Cleary, MaryKate
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
, 2025
; English
; 345 Pages
This book considers how art market stakeholders, including art dealers, collectors and agents, have shaped museum collections and affected exhibition practices since the mid-nineteenth century. Based on new archival research and data analysis, it explores the role of dealers not only in selling directly to museums, but in influencing museum collecting priorities, as well as potential donors. It also examines the important but hitherto overlooked contribution of the female curator-agent.
The book is divided into three sections, which address the relationship between art dealers and museums, women as art agents and influencers, and the strategies of entrepreneurial collectors. Featuring contributions from a wide range of international specialists in the market for decorative arts and antiquities, as well as European modernism, The Art Market and the Museum explores the origins and development of the modern Western art market and the global art networks that operated not only in Paris, London and New York, but in cities such as Glasgow, Vienna, Melbourne and Kansas City. It is perfect reading for scholars and researchers on the history of the art market, museum studies and art history more broadly.
Fowle, Frances; Cleary, MaryKate
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
, 2025
; English
; 345 Pages
This book considers how art market stakeholders, including art dealers, collectors and agents, have shaped museum collections and affected exhibition practices since the mid-nineteenth century. Based on new archival research and data analysis, it explores the role of dealers not only in selling directly to museums, but in influencing museum collecting priorities, as well as potential donors. It also examines the important but hitherto overlooked contribution of the female curator-agent.
The book is divided into three sections, which address the relationship between art dealers and museums, women as art agents and influencers, and the strategies of entrepreneurial collectors. Featuring contributions from a wide range of international specialists in the market for decorative arts and antiquities, as well as European modernism, The Art Market and the Museum explores the origins and development of the modern Western art market and the global art networks that operated not only in Paris, London and New York, but in cities such as Glasgow, Vienna, Melbourne and Kansas City. It is perfect reading for scholars and researchers on the history of the art market, museum studies and art history more broadly.

eBook
Lillie P. Bliss : collector, advocate, and visionary benefactor of the Museum of Modern Art
Walsh, Irene M.
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
, 2025
; English
; 249 Pages
She helped found MoMA and pioneered the promotion of work of American and French modern artists at the turn of the 20th century, but until now, her life and legacy remain woefully under examined.
An early pioneer and patron of French and American modernism, Lillie P. Bliss (1864-1931) was one of three female cofounders of MoMA in 1929, and went on to furnish the museum with one of the finest collections of modern art in the world. Presenting case-studies alongside data-driven analysis drawn from original research into the American art market, this book reconstructs Bliss's influential career in rich and compelling detail. It weaves together extensive archival material related to the art and the artists that Bliss collected and patronised – such as Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, and Odilon Redon – the art market of the time and the evolution of the New York museum ecosystem, and highlights the importance of private collecting in the development of American museums.
By revisiting MoMA's foundational history, author Irene Walsh explores how Lillie P. Bliss's visionary bequest of over 120 artworks upon her death in 1931 profoundly influenced and shaped the institution, questioning why her pioneering role has been overshadowed by other collectors. Combining biography, market knowledge, institutional analysis, and art history, it enriches our understanding of early 20th-century dealer dynamics and collection strategies in New York, illuminates the role of collections in shaping art narratives, while offering contemporary insights into women's agency in the arts. Global, interdisciplinary, and timely, the book provides fascinating first-hand research into a collector of great importance, and will make a long standing contribution to studies in the art market and 20th-century collecting.
Walsh, Irene M.
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
, 2025
; English
; 249 Pages
She helped found MoMA and pioneered the promotion of work of American and French modern artists at the turn of the 20th century, but until now, her life and legacy remain woefully under examined.
An early pioneer and patron of French and American modernism, Lillie P. Bliss (1864-1931) was one of three female cofounders of MoMA in 1929, and went on to furnish the museum with one of the finest collections of modern art in the world. Presenting case-studies alongside data-driven analysis drawn from original research into the American art market, this book reconstructs Bliss's influential career in rich and compelling detail. It weaves together extensive archival material related to the art and the artists that Bliss collected and patronised – such as Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, and Odilon Redon – the art market of the time and the evolution of the New York museum ecosystem, and highlights the importance of private collecting in the development of American museums.
By revisiting MoMA's foundational history, author Irene Walsh explores how Lillie P. Bliss's visionary bequest of over 120 artworks upon her death in 1931 profoundly influenced and shaped the institution, questioning why her pioneering role has been overshadowed by other collectors. Combining biography, market knowledge, institutional analysis, and art history, it enriches our understanding of early 20th-century dealer dynamics and collection strategies in New York, illuminates the role of collections in shaping art narratives, while offering contemporary insights into women's agency in the arts. Global, interdisciplinary, and timely, the book provides fascinating first-hand research into a collector of great importance, and will make a long standing contribution to studies in the art market and 20th-century collecting.

eBook
Albrecht Dürer’s material world
Wouk, Edward H.; Spinks, Jennifer
Manchester University Press
, 2024
; English
; 225 Pages
The painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer is one of the most important figures of the German Renaissance. This book accompanies the first major exhibition of the Whitworth art gallery’s outstanding Dürer collection in over half a century. It offers a new perspective on Dürer as an intense observer of the worlds of manufacture, design and trade that fill his graphic art.
Artworks and artefacts examined here expose understudied aspects of Dürer’s art and practice, including his attentive examination of objects of daily domestic use, his involvement in economies of local manufacture and exchange, the microarchitectures of local craft and, finally, his attention to cultures of natural and philosophical inquiry and learning.
Wouk, Edward H.; Spinks, Jennifer
Manchester University Press
, 2024
; English
; 225 Pages
The painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer is one of the most important figures of the German Renaissance. This book accompanies the first major exhibition of the Whitworth art gallery’s outstanding Dürer collection in over half a century. It offers a new perspective on Dürer as an intense observer of the worlds of manufacture, design and trade that fill his graphic art.
Artworks and artefacts examined here expose understudied aspects of Dürer’s art and practice, including his attentive examination of objects of daily domestic use, his involvement in economies of local manufacture and exchange, the microarchitectures of local craft and, finally, his attention to cultures of natural and philosophical inquiry and learning.

eBook
An unfinished canvas : life of Koh Seow Chuan
Tai Ho, Woon
World Scientific
, 2024
; English
; 341 Pages
Koh Seow Chuan likes to see his life as a continuous painting, and himself as the painter.
An Unfinished Canvas is about a unique individual who sees life as just that — a canvas that is never finished.
This book traces his remarkable life from the age of four, following his journey as a stamp collector, national swimmer, architect and art collector.
In all his endeavours, he reached the very top on a global field.
The book makes clear how he lived and continues to live his life guided by two principles, his strong belief in the power of knowledge and the power of teamwork, which he found and followed relatively early in his life.
Through stamps, he saw what knowledge could do for him academically and how it would always put him in a position of strength in whatever he did later in life.
But it is in his absolute embrace of the power of teamwork that sees him succeeding in project after project.
People see in him a leader they rarely see in the world of architecture, the leader who insists on we over I, group glory over personal glory.
The architecture firm he founded, DP Architects, is more than 50 years old — and is now one of the biggest in the world.
In his 80s now, he reminds us that his canvas is still unfinished.
Tai Ho, Woon
World Scientific
, 2024
; English
; 341 Pages
Koh Seow Chuan likes to see his life as a continuous painting, and himself as the painter.
An Unfinished Canvas is about a unique individual who sees life as just that — a canvas that is never finished.
This book traces his remarkable life from the age of four, following his journey as a stamp collector, national swimmer, architect and art collector.
In all his endeavours, he reached the very top on a global field.
The book makes clear how he lived and continues to live his life guided by two principles, his strong belief in the power of knowledge and the power of teamwork, which he found and followed relatively early in his life.
Through stamps, he saw what knowledge could do for him academically and how it would always put him in a position of strength in whatever he did later in life.
But it is in his absolute embrace of the power of teamwork that sees him succeeding in project after project.
People see in him a leader they rarely see in the world of architecture, the leader who insists on we over I, group glory over personal glory.
The architecture firm he founded, DP Architects, is more than 50 years old — and is now one of the biggest in the world.
In his 80s now, he reminds us that his canvas is still unfinished.

eBook
Curating transcultural spaces : perspectives on postcolonial conflicts in museum culture
Hegenbart, Sarah; Barnstone, Deborah Ascher; Haakenson, Thomas O.
Bloomsbury Publishing
, 2024
; English
; 281 Pages
"Curating Transcultural Spaces asks what a museum which enables the presentation of multiple perspectives might look like. Can identity be global and local at the same time? How may one curate dual identity? More broadly, what is the link between the arts and processes of identity construction? This volume, an indispensable source for the process of engaging with colonial history in Germany and beyond, takes its starting point from the 'scandal' of the Humboldt Forum. The transfer of German state collections from the Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art, located at the margins of Berlin in Dahlem, into the centre of Germany's capital indicates the nation's aspiration of purported multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism; yet the project's resurrection of the site's former Prussian city palace, which was demolished during the GDR, stands in opposition to its very mission, given that the Prussian rulers benefited from colonial exploitation. By examining the contrasting successes of other projects, such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, Curating Transcultural Spaces compellingly argues for the necessity of taking post-colonial thinking on board in the construction of museum spaces in order to generate genuine exchange between multiple perspectives"-- Provided by publisher.
Hegenbart, Sarah; Barnstone, Deborah Ascher; Haakenson, Thomas O.
Bloomsbury Publishing
, 2024
; English
; 281 Pages
"Curating Transcultural Spaces asks what a museum which enables the presentation of multiple perspectives might look like. Can identity be global and local at the same time? How may one curate dual identity? More broadly, what is the link between the arts and processes of identity construction? This volume, an indispensable source for the process of engaging with colonial history in Germany and beyond, takes its starting point from the 'scandal' of the Humboldt Forum. The transfer of German state collections from the Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art, located at the margins of Berlin in Dahlem, into the centre of Germany's capital indicates the nation's aspiration of purported multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism; yet the project's resurrection of the site's former Prussian city palace, which was demolished during the GDR, stands in opposition to its very mission, given that the Prussian rulers benefited from colonial exploitation. By examining the contrasting successes of other projects, such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, Curating Transcultural Spaces compellingly argues for the necessity of taking post-colonial thinking on board in the construction of museum spaces in order to generate genuine exchange between multiple perspectives"-- Provided by publisher.

eBook
Women art dealers : creating markets for modern art, 1940-1990
Chagnon-Burke, Véronique; Toschi, Caterina; Brown, Kathryn (Series Editor)
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
, 2023
; English
; 333 Pages
Women Art Dealers brings together fascinating case studies of galleries run by women between the 1940s and 1980s. It marks a departure from other work in the field of art markets, challenging male-dominated histories by analyzing the work of female dealers who anticipated the global model, worked to promote art across continents, and thus developed an international art market.
Part 1 focuses on the women gallerists behind the promotion of modern art after World War II who participated in important research about the neo-Avant-Garde. Part 2 examines the contributions by women art dealers toward the birth of new markets – through establishing the reputation of artistic genres, such as video art and photography, and working at the forefront of advancing contemporary art. Finally, Part 3 analyzes case studies from the southern European art scene, paying fresh attention to several under-researched markets in the region like Italy and Portugal.
Each chapter study provides a historiographic profile of the gallery under discussion and critical analysis is supported with a wide range of visual material including portraits of the women art dealers, photographs of the exhibitions they managed, and printed documentation like catalogues, invitations, and posters that were often used to support artists on display in experimental ways.
Chagnon-Burke, Véronique; Toschi, Caterina; Brown, Kathryn (Series Editor)
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
, 2023
; English
; 333 Pages
Women Art Dealers brings together fascinating case studies of galleries run by women between the 1940s and 1980s. It marks a departure from other work in the field of art markets, challenging male-dominated histories by analyzing the work of female dealers who anticipated the global model, worked to promote art across continents, and thus developed an international art market.
Part 1 focuses on the women gallerists behind the promotion of modern art after World War II who participated in important research about the neo-Avant-Garde. Part 2 examines the contributions by women art dealers toward the birth of new markets – through establishing the reputation of artistic genres, such as video art and photography, and working at the forefront of advancing contemporary art. Finally, Part 3 analyzes case studies from the southern European art scene, paying fresh attention to several under-researched markets in the region like Italy and Portugal.
Each chapter study provides a historiographic profile of the gallery under discussion and critical analysis is supported with a wide range of visual material including portraits of the women art dealers, photographs of the exhibitions they managed, and printed documentation like catalogues, invitations, and posters that were often used to support artists on display in experimental ways.

eBook
Illustrated catalogue of the Willitts J. Hole art collection
Stearns, Margaret Lamar
University of California Press
, 2023
; English
; 54 Pages
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1942.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived
Stearns, Margaret Lamar
University of California Press
, 2023
; English
; 54 Pages
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1942.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived

eBook
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis : works from the collection of the university of applied arts Vienna
Kitzberger, Stefanie; Rainer, Cosima; Schädler, Linda
De Gruyter
, 2022
; English
; 353 Pages
Bauhaus artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis The work of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898–1944) occupies a key position in the broader history of the Austrian avant-garde while also deepening our understanding of modernism. Her work covers an impressive range of media and genres in the visual and applied arts. Influenced by her studies at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule (which later became the University of Applied Arts Vienna), the Itten Private School, and the Bauhaus in Weimar, she worked as a painter, stage designer, architect, designer in Vienna and Berlin, in exile, and as a deportee. This book explores the heterogeneity of Dicker’s work, reconstructs her artistic strategies and references to aesthetic and political discourses from the 1920s to the 1940s, and documents for the first time her works in the collection of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Portrait of her work and collection catalog, dedicated to the artist, designer, and architect Friedl Dicker-Brandeis Essays by Julie M. Johnson, Robin Rehm, Daniela Stöppel, and others To accompany an exhibition in Vienna and Zurich; awarded as one of the most beautiful books in Austria in 2022
Kitzberger, Stefanie; Rainer, Cosima; Schädler, Linda
De Gruyter
, 2022
; English
; 353 Pages
Bauhaus artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis The work of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898–1944) occupies a key position in the broader history of the Austrian avant-garde while also deepening our understanding of modernism. Her work covers an impressive range of media and genres in the visual and applied arts. Influenced by her studies at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule (which later became the University of Applied Arts Vienna), the Itten Private School, and the Bauhaus in Weimar, she worked as a painter, stage designer, architect, designer in Vienna and Berlin, in exile, and as a deportee. This book explores the heterogeneity of Dicker’s work, reconstructs her artistic strategies and references to aesthetic and political discourses from the 1920s to the 1940s, and documents for the first time her works in the collection of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Portrait of her work and collection catalog, dedicated to the artist, designer, and architect Friedl Dicker-Brandeis Essays by Julie M. Johnson, Robin Rehm, Daniela Stöppel, and others To accompany an exhibition in Vienna and Zurich; awarded as one of the most beautiful books in Austria in 2022

eBook
The Met and the masses in postwar America : a study of the museum and popular art education
Frank, Mitchell B.
Bloomsbury Publishing
, 2022
; English
; 273 Pages
This book explores the collaborations, during the mid-20th century, between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Book-of-the-Month Club. Between 1948 and 1962 the two institutions collaborated on three book projects-The Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures (1948-1957), The Metropolitan Seminars in Art (1958-60), and a print reproduction of Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1962)-bringing art from the Met's collections right into the homes of subscribers.The Met and the Masses places these commercial enterprises in a variety of contemporary and historical contexts, including the relation of cultural education to democracy in America, the history of the Met as an educational institution, the rise of art education in postwar America, and the concurrent transformation of the home into a space that mediated familial privacy and the public sphere.Using never before published archival material, the book demonstrates how the Met sought to bring art to the masses in postwar America, whilst upholding its reputation as an institution of high culture. It is essential reading for scholars, researchers and curators interested in the history of modern art, museum and curatorial studies, arts and cultural management, heritage studies, as well as the history of art publications.
Frank, Mitchell B.
Bloomsbury Publishing
, 2022
; English
; 273 Pages
This book explores the collaborations, during the mid-20th century, between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Book-of-the-Month Club. Between 1948 and 1962 the two institutions collaborated on three book projects-The Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures (1948-1957), The Metropolitan Seminars in Art (1958-60), and a print reproduction of Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1962)-bringing art from the Met's collections right into the homes of subscribers.The Met and the Masses places these commercial enterprises in a variety of contemporary and historical contexts, including the relation of cultural education to democracy in America, the history of the Met as an educational institution, the rise of art education in postwar America, and the concurrent transformation of the home into a space that mediated familial privacy and the public sphere.Using never before published archival material, the book demonstrates how the Met sought to bring art to the masses in postwar America, whilst upholding its reputation as an institution of high culture. It is essential reading for scholars, researchers and curators interested in the history of modern art, museum and curatorial studies, arts and cultural management, heritage studies, as well as the history of art publications.

eBook
The New York market for French art in the gilded age, 1867–1893
Zalewski, Leanne M.
Bloomsbury Publishing
, 2022
; English
; 265 Pages
This transatlantic study analyses a missing chapter in the history of art collecting, the first art market bubble in the United States.
In the decades following the Civil War, French art monopolized art collections across the United States.
During this "Gilded Age picture rush," the commercial art system-art dealers, galleries, auction houses, exhibitions, museums, art journals, press coverage, art histories, and collection catalogues-established a strong foothold it has not relinquished to this day.
In addition, a pervasive concern for improving aesthetics and providing the best contemporary art to educate the masses led to the formation not only of private art collections, but also of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the publication of art histories.Richly informed by collectors' and art dealers' diaries, letters, stock books, journals, and hitherto neglected art histories, The New York Market for French Art in the Gilded Age, 1867-1893 offers a fresh perspective on this trailblazing era.
Zalewski, Leanne M.
Bloomsbury Publishing
, 2022
; English
; 265 Pages
This transatlantic study analyses a missing chapter in the history of art collecting, the first art market bubble in the United States.
In the decades following the Civil War, French art monopolized art collections across the United States.
During this "Gilded Age picture rush," the commercial art system-art dealers, galleries, auction houses, exhibitions, museums, art journals, press coverage, art histories, and collection catalogues-established a strong foothold it has not relinquished to this day.
In addition, a pervasive concern for improving aesthetics and providing the best contemporary art to educate the masses led to the formation not only of private art collections, but also of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the publication of art histories.Richly informed by collectors' and art dealers' diaries, letters, stock books, journals, and hitherto neglected art histories, The New York Market for French Art in the Gilded Age, 1867-1893 offers a fresh perspective on this trailblazing era.











