Art Museum

How to deal with the colonial history of art in museums and monuments in the public realm is a thorny issue that we are only just beginning to address. Alice Procter provides a guide for deconstructing everything you thought you knew about art history and tells the stories that have been left out of the canon. A much-needed provocation to look more critically at the accepted narratives about art and rethink and disrupt the way we interact with the museums and galleries that display it.

Tonight, inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art—somewhere between the hours of 8 PM and 5 AM—Auden Peck will fall in love with Miki Kawamura. That’s Miki’s plan, anyway. And the plan is destiny. See, Miki’s grandparents fell in love after accidentally being locked in the Met overnight...

A fascinating biography of the philanthropist Albert Barnes, whose pioneering collection of modern art was meant to transform America’s soul From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new portrait of America’s first great collector of modern art, Albert Coombs...

From the New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Horns comes this e-short story—from Joe Hill’s award-winning collection 20th Century Ghosts. Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in...

A thought-provoking microhistory of the humble pocket that uncovers what pockets reveal about us—and why it matters. It’s a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress...

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK From one of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists, an important and timely work of cultural history that looks at the origins and much debated future of anthropology museums “A provocative look at questions of ethnography, ownership and restitution...

In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France's Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000 volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading.

From the Newbery Medal–winning author of the beloved classic From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler comes four jewel-like short stories—one for each of the team members of an Academic Bowl team—that ask questions and demonstrate surprising answers. How had Mrs. Olinski chosen...

The Museum of Curiosity is BBC Radio 4's monumental comedy edifice, and the only one with gargoyles in the foyer. It allows nothing inside unless it makes you scratch your head, stroke your chin or, at the very least, go 'Hmm'. Secondly, it is almost completely empty. Fortunately, helping to fill its vacant plinths is a gathering of the world's most original minds.

The Maryhill Museum of Art is located on 5,300 acres in the Columbia River Gorge. Miles from any sizeable town and surrounded by the gorge's spectacular scenery, Maryhill is an internationally recognized - and undeniably eclectic - repository of art that ranges from one of the nation's best Rodin collections to one of the world's largest assemblage of chess sets. Dancer, Dreamers, and the Queen of Romania is the story of the four widely disparate people whose lives intertwined in such a way as to lay the foundation for the museum.

A never-before-published Dr. Seuss book about creating and looking at art! Based on a manuscript and sketches discovered in 2013, this audiobook is like a visit to a museum—with a horse as your guide! Explore how different artists—including Picasso, George Stubbs, Rosa Bonheur...

The Louvre. The very name conjures up scenes of art and elegance, and of long halls filled with beauty and people strolling through them whispering quietly among themselves about the glories they are witnessing. Even those who have never been to the Louvre know some of its most prized possessions, from ancient statues to Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. As the world's largest museum, the Louvre is the cultural highpoint of Paris, a city that has long been considered the cultural center of Europe.

Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she steps into the archive of memory, deftly stitching together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in spare, luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist: Art, Ambition, and Unsolved Mystery (1990) offers a gripping deep dive into the events of that night and the decades-long investigation that followed. Author James G. Edwards II masterfully blends true crime with art history, exploring how a single robbery devastated a cultural institution, shook the art world, and fueled countless theories—from mob connections to inside jobs.

Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. They remove books that patrons no longer check out, and they put back books they treasure. Annie Spence, who has a decade of experience as a Midwestern librarian, does this not only at her Michigan library but also at home, for her neighbors, at cocktail parties - everywhere. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she addresses those books directly.

A brief, unnerving, and exceptionally hard-hitting novel about time and loss as only the bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of White Noise and Underworld can tell it. In this potent and beautiful novel, the writer The New York Times calls “prophetic about 21st-century...

In this page-turning novel set in 2003 New York City, a genderqueer book conservator feels trapped by her gender presentation, her ill-fitting relationship, and her artistic block—until she discovers a decades-old hidden queer love letter and becomes obsessed with tracking down its author...

A powerful art dealer who presents a convincing portrait of international success pulls an idealistic young gallery assistant into his web of lies. This sharp, edgy social thriller explores the price of ambition in the decadent underbelly of the high-end art world. Nobody knows quite who Rudolph...

Breathtaking suspense, unforgettable characters, and a pinch of magic combine in the dual stories of two young people—one in 731 China, and one in 1931 Chinatown—on perilous journeys to save their families. An instant classic from the beloved and bestselling author of the Vanderbeekers...

Inspired by the real-life unsolved theft of a 17th-century painting, this is a “smart and hugely entertainingly thriller, with so many sharp twists and hairpin turns that you’ll need to hold on for dear life” (Lou Berney, author of November Road) from the acclaimed author of Three Graves...