Book Review
Haroutiun Galentz’s True Colors
A new book traces the function of color as both a mask and a mirror in psychological portraits by the modernist painter, who lost his parents during the Armenian Genocide.
Book Review
Book Review
Why Won’t Britain Return Looted Gold to Ghana?
In “The African Kingdom of Gold,” Barnaby Phillips explores how British colonial forces plundered the Asante people and expertly traces the stolen artifacts’ afterlives in museum storage.
Book Review
The Fruitless Search for Vermeer’s Personal God
A recent biography spends too much time speculating about the Dutch artist’s religious beliefs and not enough exploring other mysteries, including his possible use of a camera obscura.
Book Review
Helen Levitt Captured the Poetry of New York City
A new survey publication serves as a testament to the photographer’s belief that the city’s working-class communities of color possessed a beauty and drama all their own.
Book Review
The Many Lives of Frederic Edwin Church
Victoria Johnson’s biography is a nuanced portrait of the artist, whose landscapes conveyed the anxieties of a nation struggling over slavery, war, and disunion.
Book Review
The Story of Printmaking Is the Story of Democracy
Holly EJ Black deftly weaves a narrative that integrates varied geographical and cultural perspectives, centering figures who may not have been artists themselves.
Book Review
The Hidden History of Stock Photography
In her first book, scholar Simona Supekar mines the history of stock imagery as a vessel for racism and sexism and considers its role in the age of AI.
Book Review
John Constable’s Four Seasons
Art historian Susan Owens's exquisitely illustrated new book narrates the painter’s story through his relationship to weather, place, and time.
Book Review
Every Dog Has Its Artist
A compassionate new book explores how canine companions across Western art history break down the emotional boundaries between species.
Book Review
James Cahill’s Character Study of the Art World
“The Violet Hour” is a dreamy chronicle of fame, greed, and ambition, full of cartoonish personalities you’ve likely had the misfortune of encountering firsthand.
Book Review
The World That Held Peter Hujar and Paul Thek
As a dyke, I particularly cherished this portrait of queer entanglement characterized by duration and valences beyond the sexual or romantic.
Book Review
The Looter Who Built Your Favorite Museum
A new book maps the network that allowed Douglas Latchford to violently rip Khmer statues from their homes and funnel them into Western institutions.