How does one communicate with colors? December 20, 2021 Architecture is represented not only with lines, figures, and words, but also with colors. What sounds like a truism today—when colorful, computer-generated renderings of building projects dominate architectural media—is in fact a relatively recent phenomenon. Read More
Humanities to the rescue November 08, 2021 Environmentally speaking, it might be said that Western culture backed the wrong horse with both Christianity and capitalism. Each ingrained a self-centeredness—respectively, inter- and intra-species—that has proven disastrous for the planet. Read More
All stories are stories about food September 27, 2021 A confession: for many years I lived a double life—as a writer, anyway. I started as a scholar of the Renaissance and antiquity who loved to cook, to eat, and to taste wine; then, by various happy accidents, I began to receive requests that I actually write about cooking, eating, and tasting wine. Read More
Listen in: Twelve Caesars September 24, 2021 What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? Read More
Things Fall Together: A Guide to the New Materials Revolution June 03, 2021 Things in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Personal items deteriorate. Yet today’s researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that physically sense, adapt, and fall together instead of apart. Read More
Visualizing Dunhuang: A look inside the nine‑volume set June 01, 2021 We invite you to take a look inside this stunning nine-volume presentation of the incredible Buddhist caves at Dunhuang in northwestern China. Read More
Marci Kwon on Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism March 29, 2021 Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) is best known for his exquisite and alluring box constructions, which transform found objects into enchanted worlds that blur the boundaries between fantasy and the commonplace. Read More
Abloh-isms: Essential quotations from the renowned fashion designer, DJ, and stylist March 15, 2021 Abloh-isms is a collection of essential quotations from American fashion designer, DJ, and stylist Virgil Abloh, who has established himself as a major creative figure in the worlds of pop culture and art. Read More
The surprising partnership of art and data February 18, 2021 In the mid-1960s, the renowned art historian Jules Prown was jeered. He was presenting new research at the annual meeting of the College Art Association, the principal professional art historical association. Read More
Nicola Suthor on Bravura February 05, 2021 The painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a polished image of the artist by downplaying the creative process, bravura celebrated a painter’s distinct materials, virtuosic execution, and theatrical showmanship. Read More
The year of conferencing virtually January 21, 2021 For editors and publishers, conferences offer the opportunity to present our lists as a whole to the members of the disciplines in which we are embedded, each title a star in its larger constellation. Read More
Goya: A Portrait of the Artist January 15, 2021 The life of Francisco Goya (1746–1828) coincided with an age of transformation in Spanish history that brought upheavals in the country’s politics and at the court which Goya served, changes in society, the devastation of the Iberian Peninsula in the war against Napoleon, and an ensuing period of political instability. Read More
Material unfurling, digital scrolling, urban strolling, c. 1830–now January 14, 2021 The companion website, developed with support from Princeton University Press’s Global Equity Grant, supplements The Place of Many Moods: Udaipur’s Painted Lands and India’s Eighteenth Century. While taking the book to broader audiences, the website features objects published and studied for the first time in-depth. Read More
Sexuality, gender, and race in the Middle Ages December 18, 2020 While the term “intersectionality” was coined in 1989, the existence of marginalized identities extends back over millennia. Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around matters of sexual and reproductive consent, bullying and slut-shaming, homosocial and homoerotic relationships, trans and nonbinary gender identities, and the depiction of racialized minorities. Read More
Katherine Zubovich on Moscow Monumental December 17, 2020 In 1947, Stalin decreed that eight monumental buildings be built in the Soviet capital. Seven of these neoclassical structures were completed in the 1950s and these buildings continue to stand today as originally intended: as elite apartment complexes, luxury hotels, and the headquarters of key institutions including Moscow State University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Read More
