Cultural History

Like many great artists, Heinz Mack also found inspiration in African art. His artistic expeditions into the African desert and his encounters with the special light, the people and the architecture have continued to influence his art to this day. His collection of African art is being published for the first time.  

This survey in 14 essays of Fatimid art between the 10th and 12th centuries showcases the pottery, rock crystal, metalwork, textile, architectural, wood, and calligraphic creations of one of the most artistically inventive periods in Islamic culture, with special attention paid to the art of Christian and Jewish communities under the Fatimids.

"A Princely Pursuit" highlights more than seventy pieces from the Meissen porcelain collection of Malcolm D. Gutter. Promised to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the collection’s roughly 170 works focus on exemplary early examples from the German manufactory and trace the evolution and experimentation of Meissen wares.

The German architect Rudolf Schwarz (1897–1961) numbers among the leading masters of church architecture in the 20th century. Inspired by the Catholic Youth Movement, he has designed over 40 religious buildings since 1924. His oeuvre includes numerous new buildings as well as alterations and renovations. In addition, he has made a name for himself as the author of fundamental texts on sacred architecture.  

The Bavarian architect Hans Döllgast (1891–1974) was accepted into the international canon of modern architecture quite late, but then remained a part of it all the longer. His most important achievements after 1945 were the “creative restorations” of buildings in Munich that had been destroyed by war: the Alte Pinakothek, the Basilica of St. Boniface, and the major municipal cemeteries.

Fully integrated into the nature of the Corinthian countryside, the Museum Liaunig is at once restrained and spectacular. An outstanding example of contemporary museum architecture, it creates spaces for the Liaunig collections whose focus is on Austrian art from the post-war era to the present.

Electro-mobility is the number one topic when it comes to our mobility in the future. What does the vision of BMW, Germany’s main pioneer in the field, look like? For the first time providing extensive insight into BMW’s workshop of ideas, this volume presents the multi-faceted concept for sustainable and visionary mobility right up to autonomous driving.

Assembling buildings designed by modern star architects from Tadao Andō to Peter Zumthor, this photography book is a total-work-of-art: its felicitous interplay of brilliant architectural photography, exquisite book design, and texts approaching the subject from the angle of the history of thought places Marcel Chassot’s imagery within European cultural history.

Muslims, Christians and Jews have a great deal in common. In his new large-format oilstick drawings Eran Shakine shows them appearing together as an indistinguishable trio in actions that are both profound and humorous. He thus reveals both the diversity and the similarity of the three and shows his own highly individual view of these three world religions.

In the early 19th century, artists and printers embraced the new medium of lithography, an innovative method to mass-produce and distribute images. Known for its collection of French prints and posters, the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University has rich holdings of lithographs made over the course of the 1800s, including examples from lithography’s early years in Paris to iconic colour posters from the 1890s.