Drawings In Midwestern Collections

Old master drawings kept in storage, their access limited to a few, will now be made widely accessible in this new series which will eventually include all drawings in some 70 midwestern collections. The first volume introduces a corpus of the rarest of European drawings through the year 1500, a time when artists had just begun to value drawings as works of art. It presents 30 entries written by 12 scholars, each a specialist in the art of the period, and each with immediate access to the artwork itself. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This catalogue contains descriptions of nearly two hundred pieces of art from the Baroque age from museum collections throughout the Midwest.

Energetic, incisive, spontaneous, and expressive, the drawings of Filippino Lippi (1457/58-1504) are among the most original and creative of the Italian Renaissance.

Recognized as a major figure in postwar American painting, Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) was an artist strongly identified with California. Published to coincide with the first retrospective of Diebenkorn's work since his death, this catalog is the most comprehensive volume on the artist now available. 192 color illustrations.

An anthology of 42 essays by distinguished scholars on current research and methodology in the art history of the late medieval and early modern periods in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, written in tribute to Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

This collection of essays, which derive from a symposium held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005, tells the story of how medieval art was collected by both individuals and institutions in the American Midwest. This book will appeal to both medievalists and scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth century American history. In addition, it will also appeal to scholars who are interested in museum studies and the history of collecting. The essays in the first section, “Collecting and Displaying Medieval Art,” consider the formation of medieval art collections at influential cultural institutions in three of the most important centers of industry and culture in the Midwest: Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. The second section, “Medieval Art as Inspiration and Education,” examines the motives of both private donors and museum professionals in forming collections and establishing period rooms and cloistered spaces at museums in Toledo, Kansas City, and St. Louis, among others. At the opposite end of the spectrum was a new trend in curatorial practice, beginning in the 1930s, that favored the dismantling of period rooms and espoused displaying historical works of art in more distinctly modern settings, a theme that pervades section three, “Medieval Art and Modernism.” An essay on medieval art in Midwestern university art museums and another one that considers the impact of works from medieval collections in special exhibitions serve as a remarkable coda to the rest of the volume. Two appendices follow this, one that provides an overview of medieval art collections in Midwestern university museums and another which provides a biographical sketch of prominent dealers of medieval art from 1900-1950.