New Books in Art

On an afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. Dazed soldiers and worried citizens could only watch as the flames engulfed the museum’s castle. Rare objects and valuable paintings were destroyed. The flames at the Smithsonian were not the first—and certainly would not be the last— disaster to upend a museum in the United States. Beset by challenges ranging from pandemic and war to fire and economic uncertainty, museums have sought ways to emerge from crisis periods stronger than before, occasionally carving important new paths forward in the process.The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience (NYU Press, 2022) explores the concepts of the multiple “crises” of the museums, and these historic institutions attempts to dealt with challenges ranging from depression and war to pandemic and philosophical uncertainty.Samuel J. Redman speaks to Pierre d'Alancaisez about the fires, floods, wars, and existential crises that have redefined what museums do and how they think of themselves and their public, asking challenging questions about American cultural life. Not deterred by these institutions' tendency to forgot their even recent past, Redman argues that cultural institutions can, and should, use their history to construe their future identity.Samuel J. Redman is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums and Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology.Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

What are the latest developments in the sociology of the arts? In Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), Arturo Rodríguez Morató, a Professor of Sociology and current Director of the CECUPS (Center for the Study of Culture, Politics and Society) at the University of Barcelona, and Alvaro Santana-Acuña, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Whitman College, bring together 12 leading researchers to present new empirical and theoretical breakthroughs within the field. The book has a huge range of case studies and approaches, from architectural competitions and graffiti to The Beatles, opera, and football shirts. Drawing on Spanish-speaking scholarship, the book broadens the global basis for the sociology of art, and is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences.Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

Today I interview Kelcey Ervick and Tom Hart about their new collaboration, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature (Rose Metal Press, 2023). The book brings together 28 of today’s most innovative creators of poetry comics, graphic narratives, and image-text hybrids. With original craft essays, corresponding exercises, and full-color examples of their work, each contributor offers reflection and instruction informed by their own methods and processes. It’s a beautiful and vibrant book that invites writers, artists, and would-be creators into a feast of play and possibility.Kelcey Ervick is the author of the graphic memoir, The Keeper and other books. Her comics have been published widely, including in The Washington Post, The Believer, and Lit Hub, and two featured comics series of hers have appeared in The Rumpus. She is a professor of English at Indiana University South Bend, where she teaches creative writing, comics, and literary collage.Tom Hart is the author/artist of The New York Times #1 bestselling graphic memoir Rosalie Lightning and of The Art of the Graphic Memoir. He is the executive director of The Sequential Artists Workshop, an organization and school for comics and graphic novels in Gainesville, Florida. Before founding SAW, Tom was a core instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City for 10 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

The cinephile community knows Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) as one of the most important filmmakers of the previous decades. This volume illustrates why the Iranian filmmaker achieved critical acclaim around the globe and details his many contributions to the art of filmmaking. Kiarostami began his illustrious career in his native Iran in the 1970s, although European and American audiences did not begin to take notice until he released his 1987 feature Where’s the Friend’s House? His films defy established conventions, placing audiences as active viewers who must make decisions about actions and characters while watching the narratives unfold. He asks viewers to question the genre construct (Close-Up) and challenges them to determine how to watch and imagine a narrative (Ten and Shirin). In recognition for his approach to the craft, Kiarostami was awarded many honors during his lifetime, including the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for Taste of Cherry.In Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews (UP of Mississippi, 2023) ,editor Monika Raesch collects eighteen interviews (several translated into English for the first time), lectures, and other materials that span Kiarostami’s career in the film industry. In addition to exploring his expertise, the texts provide insight into his life philosophy. This volume offers a well-rounded picture of the filmmaker through his conversations with journalists, film scholars, critics, students, and audience members.Monika Raesch is associate professor of film studies and video production at Suffolk University. A native of Germany, she is editor of Margarethe von Trotta: Interviews, published by University Press of Mississippi, and author of The Kiarostami Brand: Creation of a Film Auteur. Her work has appeared in such publications as the Journal of Film and Video and Feminist Media Studies.Kaveh Rafie is a PhD candidate specializing in modern and contemporary art at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His dissertation charts the course of modern art in the late Pahlavi Iran (1941-1979) and explores the extent to which the 1953 coup marks the recuperation of modern art as a viable blueprint for cultural globalization in Iran. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

In The Story of Follies: Architectures of Eccentricity (Reaktion, 2023), Celia Fisher presents an amusing, informative guide to a fanciful and charming building, the folly.Are they frivolous or practical? Follies are buildings constructed primarily for decoration, but suggest another purpose through their appearance. In this superbly illustrated book Celia Fisher describes follies in their historical and architectural context, looks at their social and political significance and highlights their relevance today. She explores follies built in protest, follies in oriental and gothic styles, animal-related follies, waterside follies and grottoes, and, finally, follies in glass and steel. Featuring many fine illustrations, from historical paintings to contemporary photographs and prints, and taking in follies from Great Britain, Ireland and throughout Europe and beyond, this is an amusing and informative guide to fanciful, charming buildings.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

What is art, and who gets to define it? Museums have long staked a claim on knowing what to show, but there has always been a wide range of how viewers engage with art. There is also a wide range of artists and what is considered art, from classical masters like Titian to modern conceptual artists like Marcel Duchamp.Lance Esplund is an art critic, journalist, educator, and author. His book, titled The Art of Looking: How to Read Modern and Contemporary Art, is about telling the reader how to become a better viewer of art, what to look for, and how to engage with the works of more conceptual and modern artists.Lance and Greg discuss how people can think when they engage with works of art, and the intentions that can be known from the artists. They discuss art history courses and what they get right and wrong, how art is always changing and yet still the same as the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, and Lance’s tips for how to go through a museum.Gregory LaBlanc is a lifelong educator with degrees in History, PPE, Business, and Law, Greg currently teaches at Berkeley, Stanford, and HEC Paris. He has taught in multiple disciplines, from Engineering to Economics, from Biology to Business, from Psychology to Philosophy. He is the host of the unSILOed podcast. unSILOed is produced by University FM. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

What does data science tell us about art auctions? This episode is syndicated from the new Harvard Data Science Review Podcast. Published by the MIT Press, Harvard Data Science Review is an open access multidisciplinary journal that defines and shapes data science as a scientifically rigorous field based on the principled and purposed production, processing, parsing and analysis of data.In this episode, the journal’s Features Editor Liberty Vittert and Editor in Chief Xiao-Li Meng discuss art auctions with art curator Dan Cameron and Artnome’s Jason Bailey.If you enjoy this preview of the Harvard Data Science Review podcast, find the journal on twitter at @TheHDSR and remember to subscribe to their podcast on your favorite platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

Featured episode from Between Art and Science, a new podcast from Leonardo.This episode, hosted by Erica Hruby, features a conversation between two authors published in the Leonardo special issue “Cosmos and Chaos:” Bettina Forget and Lindy Elkins-Tanton. Listen as these authors discuss the connection between art and science, the flawed idea of the hero, exploration of both land and space, and the complexities of being a woman in male dominated fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

Writer and academic Anthony Gardner (NSK from Kapital to Capital, Politically Unbecoming) interviews Marko Ilić about his new book A Slow Burning Fire, which documents Yugoslavia's cultural output throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s.This first comprehensive study of the former Yugoslavia's alternative art scene tells the origin stories of some of the most significant artists of the late twentieth century. In Yugoslavia from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, state-supported Students' Cultural Centers became incubators for new art. This era's conceptual and performance art—known as Yugoslavia's New Art Practice—emerged from a network of diverse and densely interconnected art scenes that nurtured the early work of Marina Abramović, Sanja Iveković, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), and others. In this book, Marko Ilić examines Yugoslavia's New Art Practice in light of the political upheavals of the 1980s.Countering the usual binary of official versus unofficial art, Ilić shows that the Students' Cultural Centers were an expression of Yugoslavia's “third way” political and economic system, which was founded on workers' self-management. Ilić examines key actions, gestures, and propositions affiliated with the New Art Practice, including the conceptual and dematerialized art practices that emerged from Zagreb's Student Center Gallery, the struggle of Belgrade's Students' Cultural Center (where Abramović performed her career-defining Rhythm 5), to break into the international art scene, the pre-Žižek culture of Ljubljana, and Sarajevo's miraculous dokumenta, held in the midst of Yugoslavia's disintegration.Produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

How can sociology help us understand art and music? In The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music: New Directions and New Discoveries (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022), the editor Lisa McCormick, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh, draws together the latest research in cultural sociology that examines art and music. Global in scope, and eclectic in choice of subjects and methods, the book is united by the shared approach of the strong programme in cultural sociology. As a result, the book offers a cultural approach to cultural objects, setting new agendas and explaining controversies. The range of topics, both historical and contemporary, make the book essential reading across both arts and humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in art and music!Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art