Vol. 35, no. 2

Fall 2009
In-print
$16.95

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Contents Summary

Featuring more than 40 objects handpicked by President and Eloise W. Martin Director James Cuno, this special issue of Museum Studies continues our ongoing commitment to lovingly bring the museum’s collecting activities into public view. The publication takes an extended look at important acquisitions made by the museum’s curatorial departments from 2007 to 2009, surveying a dazzling range of examples by artists both ancient and modern.

Among the works highlighted are a Maya vessel with bird and peccary heads that is over 1,700 years old; a 12th-century Japanese sutra scroll, painted in gold and silver, in its original wrapper; the Whitfield Cup, made in 1590 from an ostrich egg by English silversmith John Spilman; a vivacious watercolor from 18th-century Rajasthan, which depicts a princely procession that includes a magnificent elephant; Alvan Fisher’s painting The Prairie on Fire, the museum’s first acquisition bythis significant early American landscapist; Earthly Paradise, a sideboard carved and painted by Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard; and a spectacular snake headdress in painted wood from late-19th-century Guinea. The 20th- and 21st-century works are equally spectacular and varied. They include a propaganda poster by Soviet artist Viktor Klutsis; Ellsworth Kelly’s shimmering Tableau Vert; Yves Béhar’s award-winning XO Laptop for the One Laptop Per Child program; and Hinoki, an imposing sculpture by contemporary American artist Charles Ray, on view in the museum’s new Modern Wing. Enlivened by generous, full-color reproductions and an engaging, accessible text, this is an indispensable guide to the newest and finest that the Art Institute has to offer.

Table of Contents

Foreword and Acknowledgments
James Cuno
African and Amerindian Art
American Art
Architecture and Design
Contemporary Art
European Decorative Arts
Medieval Through Modern European Painting and Sculpture
Photography
Prints and Drawings
Textiles
Notes

The Art Institute of Chicago, 2009
8 3/8 x 10 1/4 in.; 96 pages; 56 color illustrations
Softcover $16.95 ISBN: 978-0-865-59236-0