An engaging guide to over 150 art museums and more throughout New England

A tour of America's most notable museums is also a history of the nation's art that highlights each location's top works while discussing the backgrounds of each building and featured piece of art.

The Art Museum is the finest art collection ever assembled between two covers. This revolutionary and unprecedented virtual art museum in a book, features 1,000 oversized pages of over 2,500 works of art. It is the most comprehensive and visually spectacular history of world art ever published. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with a global team of 100 specialists in art history, who have collected together important works as they might be displayed in the ideal museum for the art lover. Unrestricted by the constraints of physical space, this volume contains an unprecedented wealth of masterworks spanning three millennia and culled from 650 museums, galleries and private collections from 60 countries to tell the history of world art. It is organized by innovative color-coded, galleries, rooms, corridors and special exhibitions, which display the paintings, sculptures, frescos, photographs, tapestries, friezes, installations, performances, videos, woodblock prints, folding screens, ceramics and manuscripts that tell the history of world art. This is the only museum to house Leonardo's Mona Lisa, a collection of Rembrandt's finest self portraits, Velázquez's Las Meninas and Picasso's Guernica, as well as ceramics from China, Hokusai's woodblock prints, gold artefacts from Peru, and works by Jackson Pollock in one place. With intelligent in-depth text throughout, explanatory lels for each artwork, a comprehensive glossary and detailed location maps, The Art Museum, is accessible for everyone from casual art fans to experts in the field.

Initiated in 1985, the MTA Arts & Design collection of public art now encompasses more than 250 projects, creating a dynamic underground museum of contemporary art that spans the entire city and its immediate environs. Since the program was founded, a diverse group of artists—including Elizabeth Murray, Faith Ringgold, Eric Fischl, Romare Bearden, Acconci Studio, and many others—has created works in mosaic, terra-cotta, bronze, and glass for the stations of the New York City Subways and Buses, Metro-North Railroad, Long Island Rail Road, and Bridges and Tunnels. An update of the classic Along the Way, this expanded edition features nearly 100 new works installed in stations since 2006, including Sol LeWitt’s Whirls and twirls (MTA) at Columbus Circle, Doug and Mike Starn’s See it split, see it change at South Ferry, and the James Carpenter/ Grimshaw/Arup Sky Reflector-Net at Fulton Center. The book illustrates how the program has taken to heart its original mandate: that the subways be “designed, constructed, and maintained with a view to the beauty of their appearance, as well as to their efficiency.” MTA Arts & Design is committed to preserving and restoring the original ornament of the system and to commissioning new works that exemplify the principles of vibrant public art, relating directly to the places where they are located and to the community around them. The definitive guide to works commissioned by MTA Arts & Design, a reference for riders who have wondered about an artist or the meaning behind the art they’ve seen, as well as a memento for visitors, New York’s Underground Art Museum provides 300 color illustrations and insightful descriptions sure to infuse any future trip or viewing with a fresh appreciation and understanding of this historic enterprise.

Presenting the latest iteration of this crucial exhibition, always a barometer of contemporary American art The 2022 Whitney Biennial is accompanied by this landmark volume. Each of the Biennial's participants is represented by a selected exhibition history, a bibliography, and imagery complemented by a personal statement or interview that foregrounds the artist's own voice. Essays by the curators and other contributors elucidate themes of the exhibition and discuss the participants. The 2022 Biennial's two curators, David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, are known for their close collaboration with living artists. Coming after several years of seismic upheaval in and beyond the cultural, social, and political landscapes, this catalogue will offer a new take on the storied institution of the Biennial while continuing to serve--as previous editions have--as an invaluable resource on present-day trends in contemporary art in the United States.

During the economic boom of the 1990s, art museums expanded dramatically in size, scope, and ambition. They came to be seen as new civic centers: on the one hand as places of entertainment, leisure, and commerce, on the other as socially therapeutic institutions. But museums were also criticized for everything from elitism to looting or illegally exporting works from other countries, to exhibiting works offensive to the public taste. Whose Muse? brings together five directors of leading American and British art museums who together offer a forward-looking alternative to such prevailing views. While their approaches differ, certain themes recur: As museums have become increasingly complex and costly to manage, and as government support has waned, the temptation is great to follow policies driven not by a mission but by the market. However, the directors concur that public trust can be upheld only if museums continue to see their core mission as building collections that reflect a nation's artistic legacy and providing informed and unfettered access to them. The book, based on a lecture series of the same title held in 2000-2001 by the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors, also includes an introduction by Cuno and a fascinating--and surprisingly frank--roundtable discussion among the participating directors. A rare collection of sustained reflections by prominent museum directors on the current state of affairs in their profession, this book is without equal. It will be read widely not only by museum professionals, trustees, critics, and scholars, but also by the art-loving public itself.

"This book takes you through the collection gallery by gallery, illuminating the art and installations in each room"--From preface.