Exploring the popularity and meaning of neoclassical dress in the 1790s, this book traces its evolution in Europe and relationship to other artistic media.

Page duBois, a classicist known for her daring and originality, turns in this new book to one of the most troubling subjects in the study of antiquity: the indispensability of slaves in ancient Greece. DuBois argues that every object and text in the world of ancient Greece bears the marks of slavery and the need to reiterate the distinction between slave and free. And yet the ubiquity of slaves in ancient societies has been overlooked by scholars who idealize antiquity, misconstrued by those who view slavery through the lens of race, and obscured by the split between historical and philological approaches to the classics. DuBois begins her study by exploring the material culture of slavery, including how most museum exhibits erase the presence of slaves in the classical world. Shifting her focus to literature, she considers the place of slaves in Plato's Meno, Aristotle's Politics, Aesop's Fables, Aristophanes' Wasps, and Euripides' Orestes. She contends throughout that portraying the difference between slave and free as natural was pivotal to Greek concepts of selfhood and political freedom, and that scholars who idealize such concepts too often fail to recognize the role that slavery played in their articulation. Opening new lines of inquiry into ancient culture, Slaves and Other Objects will enlighten classicists and historians alike.

"In 1875 Anne Whitney traveled to Florence, Italy, to select the marble for a statue of Samuel Adams commissioned for the U.S. Capitol. That summer, in a small village outside Paris, she noticed a woman who worked as a model for the local sculptors. Not the typical artists model, the woman was quite old and would often drowse while sitting for them, her kerchiefed head fallen forward in sleep. Later, when Whitney returned to America, she brought with her not only the completed statue for her respectable commission but the far less conventional Le Modèle, a deeply human image of the old woman. Created at a time when such subjects as the old and the poor were rarely given attention, Whitney's sculpture is highly innovative for its day. Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein's American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions chronicles the lives and works of hundreds of women such as Anne Whitney, telling of their public successes, their private sensibilities and visions, their unique contributions to their chosen art form as women and as individuals. Rich in anecdote and analysis, the book brings to life their personal stories and the times they lived in to create an intimate yet wide-reaching portrait. It is the first comprehensive survey of the American woman's generous contribution to the sculpted form. From small garden bronzes and portrait busts to large-scale equestrian monuments and war memorials, the works of American women sculptors stand in parks, plazas, and public buildings across the country. Often struggling to overcome the persistent obstacle of sexism - and for women of color, racism - these women took part in every significant art movement of their time: they were neoclassicists who worked in marble in Rome, modernists who brought cubism and abstract sculpture to the United States, leaders among the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and abstract expressionists, minimalists, and installation artists. Yet despite this continuous history of achievement, their stories have gone largely untold, their contributions often unrecognized. As Rubenstein writes in her introduction, "How many of the thousands who pass Bethesda Fountain in Central Park know that it was created by a woman?" Rubenstein takes as her starting point in this history the expressive masks, basketry, and ceramics of pre-Colonial Native American women rarely included in traditional art surveys. Following are Patience Wright, considered by many to be America's first professional sculptor; the women sculptors of the Gilded Age, whose creativity flourished under the influence of the suffrage movement; the women who worked for the Federal Art Project during the Depression, among the founding members of the Sculptor's Guild, and such important abstract sculptors as Louise Nevelson and Louise Bourgeois. The author concludes with the contributions of such young contemporary sculptors as Maya Lin, whose Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall has become one of the country's landmarks. Both major and lesser-known artists are included, and the more conventional definitions of sculpture expanded to consider artists working in a variety of three-dimensional forms. Rubinstein discusses the works of weavers, potters, furniture carvers, and even performance artists, acknowledging the enormous influence women have had in these endeavors. Throughout the book Rubinstein illuminates the works themselves and the artists' techniques with detailed description and commentary, while the text is complemented by more than 300 illustrations. American Women Sculptors will be valued for the author's meticulous research and enjoyed for her appreciation of storytelling. It celebrates a rich, lively history." --

The Henry Moore Institute is a world-recognised centre for the study of sculpture in the heart of Leeds. An award-winning exhibitions venue, research centre, library and sculpture archive, the Institute hosts a year-round programme of exhibitions, conferences, lectures, research, and publications that aim to expand the under-standing and scholarship of historical and contemporary sculpture. It is a part of The Henry Moore Foundation, which was set up by Moore in 1977 to encourage appreciation of the visual arts, especially sculpture. Sculpture and the Museum is the first in-depth examination of the varying roles and meanings assigned to sculpture in museums and galleries during the modern period, from neo-classical to contemporary art practice. It considers a rich array of curatorial strategies and settings in order to examine the many reasons why sculpture has enjoyed a position of such considerable importance--and complexity--within the institutional framework of the museum and how changes to the museum have altered, in turn, the ways that we perceive the sculpture within it. In particular, the contributors consider the complex issue of how best to display sculpture across different periods and according to varying curatorial philosophies. Sculptors discussed include Canova, Rodin, Henry Moore, Flaxman and contemporary artists such as Rebecca Horn, Rachel Whiteread, Mark Dion and Olafur Eliasson, with a variety of museums in America, Canada, the UK and Europe presented as case studies. Underlying all of these discussions is a concern to chart the critical Importance of the acquisition, placement and display of sculpture in museums and to explore the importance of sculptures as a forum for the expression of programmatic statements of power, prestige and the museum's own sense of itself in relation to its audience and its broader institutional aspirations. We have become familiar with the notion that sculpture has moved into the `expanded field', but this field has remained remarkably faithful to defining sculpture on its own terms. Sculpture can be distinct, but it is rarely autonomous. For too long studied apart, within a monographic or survey format, sculpture demands to be reintegrated with the other histories of which it is a part. In the interests of representing recent moves in this direction, this series will provide a forum for the publication and stimulation of new research examining sculpture's relationship with the world around it, with other disciplines and with other material contexts.

A radical, lively departure from received notions about art of the Romantic period For many, the term "neoclassicism" has come to imply discipline, order, restraint, and a certain myopia. Leaving the term behind, this book radically challenges enduring assumptions about the art produced from the late 18th century to the early Victorian period, casting new light on appropriations of the classical body by British artists. It is the first to foreground the intersections of gender, race, and class in discussions of British visual classicism, laying bare artists' alternately politicizing and emphatically sensual engagements with Greco-Roman art. Rather than rely exclusively on subsequent scholarship, the book takes up the poet John Keats (1795-1821) as a theoretical framework. Eschewing the "Golden Age" narrative, which sees J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) as the pinnacle of the period's artistic achievement, the book examines overlooked artists, such as Henry Howard (1769-1847) and John Graham Lough (1798-1876). The result is a fresh account of underappreciated works of British painting and sculpture. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art