Ashgate Publishing Co.

Indian Renaissance; British romantic art and the prospect of India.

The authors (both professors of English at the U. of Tulsa) examine the artistic productions of English artists traveling in India in the 1780s and 90s, arguing that the "energy of their original vision of the prospect of India was more than well received — and it became the visual impetus and the cultural fuel fro an Indian Renaissance in the art and culture of Romantic Britain." The term prospect is used to encompass the visual meanings technical to art history, the suggestions of the term in philosophical discourse, and the practical assumptions of tangible acquisition of empire. In addition to some 60 color plates, the text is illustrated with black and white art reproductions throughout. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Intrepid women; Victorian artists travel.

One very nice element of having both time and money as a woman living in Victorian time was the opportunity to travel. Given that crossing the Sahara in a corset and five petticoats is no romp, it appears that the women who chose to seek the exotic on their own time and dime were a hardy lot; those who also practiced as artists en route or who used their travels as inspiration closer to home were an even tougher and particular breed. In these eight essays contributors examine how the artist abroad influenced the world with such topics as the progress of Victorian women artists around the Empire, travel writing, fine arts, cultural juxtaposition, the natural world at home, the example of Louisa Anne Meredith at home in Tasmania, Emma Macpherson not so much at home in New South Wales, and Cameron's visual politics at the edge of what was then the whole world. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The invention of the model; artists and models in Paris, 1830-1870.

At the beginning of the 19th century, says Waller (art and art history, U. of Missouri-Saint Louis), the academic stereotype of a artist's model was male, and his role off the model stand was irrelevant, but by the end of the century, the model was popularly assumed to be female, often sexually available, and perhaps in a sexual relationship with the artist. She presents a study intertwining a social history of the men and women who posed, a cultural history of stereotypes of models, and a history of how art fashioned and was fashioned by the stereotypes. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Islamic art and beyond.

Grabar (emeritus, Harvard U., now Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton U.), one of the founders of the study of Islamic art, archaeology, and architecture in the US, has selected and arranged twenty-three previously published articles on the theory of Islamic art and architecture as well as on general art theory and aesthetics in this work, the third of three volumes. Topics include urban design (Cairo), the symbolism of the dome, the links between geometry and ideology, and — one of the most prevalent themes — the aesthetics of Islamic art, architecture, and architectural decoration. Each article is accompanied by its original notes and bibliography and there is a general index, though of proper names only. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Islamic visual culture, 1100-1800.

The 25 previously published articles collected in this volume (the second of three) present an easily accessible means to the work of Grabar, one of the founders of the study of Islamic art, archaeology, and architecture in the US. Grabar, for decades at Harvard and now at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, has contributed an introduction that describes his early research, with many anecdotes, in Istanbul and elsewhere, when Islamic art was little studied. The articles of this volume are grouped into the topics of objects, art of the book, architecture and culture, and Islamic art and the West. Aesthetics, the development of style, and the interchange of ideas and culture are frequent tropes. The articles are well illustrated with good quality b&w plates on glossy paper. Each article is accompanied by its original notes and bibliography and there is a general index, though of proper names only. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Jerusalem.

In this fourth volume of collected works, the articles published by Grabar on the city of Jerusalem are presented. The essays present lengthy treatment of the Dome of the Rock, the Haram al-Sharif, and the history of the construction and use of Islamic commemorative monuments in Jerusalem, among other topics. In addition, an introduction presents an extended personal account of Grabar's research years at the American School in 1953-4 and 1960-1. The volume is well illustrated with b&w plates and concludes with an impressively long chronological bibliography of the author's publications through 2005. Grabar, now at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, was for years professor of Islamic art and architecture at Harvard U. where he trained many graduate students who number among the leading scholars in the field. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Joan of Arc in French art and culture (1700-1855); from satire to sanctity.

Heimann (art history, Catholic U. of America) looks at the legendary martyr's reputation three to four-and-a-half centuries after her execution in the France she fought to free from foreign rule. Pornography as hagiography and the engendering of virtue in Chapelain and Voltaire, the age of revolution and Romantic tragedy, and Napoleon are among her perspectives. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Local/global; women artists in the nineteenth century.

They were not confined to being the Angel in the home, and they did not all live in Europe. In this collection of 12 essays, contributors describe the contributions of nineteenth-century women in Australia, the imperial court of China, south Asia, the harems of the Ottoman empire, the studios of Paris, the salons of patrons in England, amongst the native and settler souvenir artists, in Ireland, in North American textiles and neoclassical sculpture, and in Mexico. Here we find women portrait painters at the court of an empress, women artists in India in practice and finding patronage, the theatricality and artistry surrounding Saran Bernhardt, the role of colonialism in material culture, the negotiation of identity, the role of the quilt in female artistry, the regulation of race, and strategies of representation. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Luxury and legitimation; royal collecting in ancient Mesopotamia.

Thomason (Southern Illinois U.-Edwardsville) explores the relevance that luxury objects held in Mesopotamia, examining what Mesopotamians had to say about their objects and their reasons for collecting them. Her aim is to understand how Mesopotamian conceptions of luxury and collections were important parts of the culture. After chapters defining collection and introducing Mesopotamian society, she surveys collecting in each of the three millennia before the current era. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Managing urban futures; sustainability and urban growth in developing countries.

The editors (of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland) present 13 papers that examine different aspects of how cities grow and change and the challenges facing those who would seek to manage them in the future. The papers examine the urban development process in Asia, Latin America, and Africa; consider issues of shifting scales in space and time; explore issues of political reform, citizens' rights, and poverty alleviation in China and Brazil; and discuss issues of multiculturalism, environmentalism, and globalization. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Museum educator's handbook, 2d ed.

Museums already serve as primary sources of alternative education and still have enormous potential for increased and even more innovative methods of teaching at all age levels. Specialist Talboys describes how more museums are realizing this fact, and are moving more and more to becoming educational institutions as well as rich sources of materials and ideas. He clearly and accessibly covers the educational role of museums, the reasons fro providing educational services, the role of the museum educator, background research, creating policy and other constitutional documents, user groups, marketing, provision, information and indirect services, direct services, loan services, inclusion in school curriculum, resourcing and funding. This edition includes new research into potential resources, technologies and methods. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Negating the image; case studies in iconoclasm.

Art historians and other scholars from the US and Europe explore some of the enormous variety in historical attacks on images and image-making: variety in the objects assailed, in the sponsors of iconoclasm and defenders of images, in the arguments advanced on all sides, and in the severity of the iconoclastic episodes. Among their case studies are an early Indian mosque, revolutionary Mexico, Byzantium, and ancient Egypt. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Nonlinear models for archaeology and anthropology; continuing the revolution.

American archaeologists and other anthropologists present theoretical perspectives and case studies extending nonlinear systems theory — also called complexity, chaos theory, or dynamical systems — to archaeological studies of politics and economy. Their topics include human groups as complex ecaptive systems, social theory and agent-based simulations. factional formation and community dynamics in middle-range societies, and modeling pre-historic maize agriculture as dissipative process. Most of the eight contributions are expanded from presentations at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Painting the Bible; representation and belief in mid-Victorian Britain.

Giebelhausen (art history and theory, U. of Essex) investigates the transformation of religious painting beginning in the 1840s. Her study interweaves many aspects of the social and cultural contexts, including the high-art ideal and its tradition, modification, and innovation. After discussion of the Pre-Raphaelite challenge and influence and what emerged from the turmoil of ideas, she looks in depth at William Holman Hunt whose work exemplifies many of the study's themes. The book is nicely produced, with 13 color plates in the front matter and numerous b&w illustrations throughout. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Planning public library buildings; concepts and issues for the librarian.

Dewe (information studies, U. of Wales, Aberystwyth) offers a guide for librarians and architects undertaking a public library building project for the first time. The text reviews the concepts, issues, topics and options about which the librarian must be concerned during the information-gathering phase prior to the actual planning and design process itself. Coverage includes the mission and roles of public libraries, and debates over their demise in the UK; the role of modern cultural buildings; service point provision, size and shape; location; alternatives to new building; sustainability, safety, and security; planning, design, and construction details for the architect's brief; communicating the building's identity and style; and the interior. Though written for British readers, the text may also appeal to an international audience. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Presence; the inherence of the prototype within images and other objects.

Based upon a series of papers delivered at the April 2000 conference of the Association of Art Historians held at the U. of Edinburgh, this collection reflects upon the role of presence, defined as the identity of the image with the thing it depicts. The contributors note the various theoretical and linguistic issues, but concentrate on their individual approaches to provide a variety of case studies. Topics include Ming funerary portraiture, the monumental cross, consecration of a Jina image, Appar's guide to devotional receptivity, metonymy in Inca art, Poussin's mythical figures, the psychological analysis of deciding if something is presented, touching artwork, the deceived viewer, Rembrandt's representation of the soul, images and healing pilgrimage in classical Greece, rethinking the fetish, the image of the Roman emperor, and the sound observer and ways of representing presences. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Preservation, tourism and nationalism; the jewel of the German past.

Hagen (Marshall U.) uses the northern Bavarian town of Rothenburg as a cultural geography case study of the relationship between place, tourism, and the construction of German national identity. His narrative spans from the beginning of the 19th century to the closing decades of the 20th, exploring changing practices of historical preservation of the town's medieval architecture, Nazi appropriation of Rothenburg's image, post-war efforts to repair and disassociate Rothenburg's image from the Nazis, and the fluctuating ability of the town to serve as a national symbol of Germany. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Public life and the place of the church; reflections to honour the Bishop of Oxford.

From 1987 to 2006, a time when the world and the Church were buffeted by issues, the Right Reverend Richard Harries served as Bishop of Oxford. He proved particularly capable in locating the nature of the Church's role within public life and the example it should lead for the laity; in essence, he and his ministry stayed ready to learn as well as ready to teach. This volume celebrates Harries's conviction that Christian ideals have the potential to transform the world for the better. Contributors discuss issues such as arms and justice, the media, contemporary spirituality, multicultural Britain and interfaith dialogue, sex, capitalism and the gospel for the rich, art and faith, poetry and truth, the House of Lords and religion and Christian medical ethics. The final articles address the role of dialogue in public life and the place of the church in it. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Public problems — private solutions?; globalising cities in the South.

Globalization has wrought changes far beyond merely opening new international markets in both labor in demand. It has also required nations to change the ways in which they organize themselves socially, provide political governance, and provide for present and future generations of participants in the global economic system. In these 22 essays that come from a project organized by the Free University of Berlin, contributors examine how states are transferring aspects of governance to non-state agencies in response, creating a crisis in governance. They find that cities must balance competitiveness with internal viability, that cities must restructure economically and redistribute property rights, they must deregulate public services and decide if security is a public or private matter, and that they must now deal with public response because the public now constitutes human capital. The cities under study include Johannesburg, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The pursuit of comparative aesthetics; an interface between East and West.

From perspectives of philosophy, art, and literature, scholars from Europe, Asia, and the US ponder aspects of that branch of philosophy known as comparative or transcultural aesthetics. Their topics include Schopenhauer's aesthetics seen from the Buddhist point of view, Chinese aesthetics and Kant, agriculture as the image of aesthetics and ethics, and using the phenomenological method to explain Japanese aesthetic concepts. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)