Cultural History

"Monuments and Myths" is the first publication to examine the intersecting careers of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French, the leading American sculptors of the Gilded Age. With rich new thinking and stunning photographs, this catalogue examines the role of America’s most iconic public sculptures in the complex negotiation of national identity.

The art and architecture of the Islamic world strongly influenced the development of Western modernism. Some 170 works from the mid-19th century to the present day illustrate this fascinating cultural exchange. Beguiling examples of fine and decorative art reflect the diversity of this lively transfer.

Cooler and harder than glass, but softer than a diamond: rock crystal has always been regarded as an unusual material. Countless legends have grown up around its origins and its remarkable strengths. At the latest since Antiquity, rock crystal has played an important part as a remedy, for fortune-telling, in the Church and at courtly banquets. Breathtaking artworks have been assembled in this publication.

The significance of the street is complex: it is a place of representation, self-dramatisation and communication, of resistance and protest. In this lavishly illustrated volume we encounter the bandwidth of this highly topical subject and its implementation in painting, graphics, photography, film, performance and installation during the 20th and 21st centuries.

Sculpture is just a word, an English word, which elicits an image in the mind’s eye. Sculpture is a European idea. In China, on the other hand, statues, stele, and other figural objects were made for millennia without being thought of as Sculpture. There was no Sculpture in China. "Imagining Sculpture" is the story of this something that did not exist.

Important artists of Hungarian Classical Modernism lived and worked temporarily on the banks of the Spree and were present in the Berlin avant-garde. The publication presents a brilliant overview of the close links between the culture of the Weimar Republic and the creative forces of Hungary, which ended with the seizure of power by the National Socialists.

Johann Gottfried Schadow’s "Princess group" has gone down in the annals of art history. As the first statue of two female historical personalities it testifies to the innovation, enormous artistry and productivity of sculpture workshops in the 19th century – a symbol of the important sculpture of German Classicism.

In 1991, the town of Pulheim initiated the Stommeln Synagogue art project, a permanent process of examination of this historically significant location. Since then it has continued to make a contribution to a culture of remembrance. A wide-ranging overview of remarkable works is being assembled on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the synagogue.

How and why did painters centre sensory experience, enchanting emotions and cultural landscapes in South Asia? "A Splendid Land" is the first book to address this question through dazzling paintings made over a period of two hundred years that extends from Mughal to colonial India. The works have never been published or exhibited in the United States.

The English illustrator Anna Atkins (1799–1871) was in every respect a modern woman. For the publication of her plant collections she used the latest technology, the recently invented cyanotype. In 1843 she used the process to create the first photo book in history, with images of breathtaking beauty and originality which often look like modern art.