“A witty journey through the wonderfully tumultuous world of art dealers and markets—organized in the style of a dictionary, complete with a glossary.” —Interview Two questions are key to experiencing a work of art in a museum or exhibition: 1.) Do I like it? 2.) Who’s it by? You need quite a few more questions if you’re in an auction room or dealer’s gallery, however. You’ll find yourself asking, How much is it worth? How much will it be worth in five or ten years? And finally, what will people think of me if they see it hanging on my wall? Breakfast at Sotheby’s is not only a guide to finding the answers to such questions, but also a glimpse into the rarely discussed financial side of the art world. Based on author Philip Hook’s thirty-five years of experience in the art market, the book explores various shades of artist (including -isms, Gericault, and suicides), subject and style (from abstract art and banality through surrealism and war), “wall-power,” provenance, and market weather. Comic, revealing, piquant, splendid, and occasionally absurd, Breakfast at Sotheby’s is a book of pleasure and intelligent observation, as engaged with art as it is with the world that surrounds it. “A breezy, whimsical and often wry compendium, chock-full of hard-won wisdom about what makes someone spend millions of dollars to buy an artwork at auction.” —The New York Times “A winner. Readers will learn more about the modern art market in this simple book than in any college course.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review

This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.

Featuring 140 color illustrations, the catalogue Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist accompanies the first full-scale survey of the work of the American painter and master colorist Archibald Motley (1891-1981).

Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool accompanies the first career retrospective of the renowned American artist Barkley L. Hendricks, on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University from February 7, 2008 through July 13, 2008. Hendricks was born in 1945 in Philadelphia. His unique work contains elements of both American realism and postmodernism, occupying a space between the portraitists Chuck Close and Alex Katz and the pioneering black conceptualists David Hammons and Adrian Piper. Hendricks is best known for his life-sized portraits of people of color from the urban northeast. His bold portrayal of his subject's attitude and style elevates the common person to celebrity status. Cool, empowering, and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks' artistic privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today's younger generation of artists. This richly illustrated book contains 100 color images of paintings created from 1964 to the present. It focuses primarily on the artist's full-figure portraits, as well as lesser known early works and the artist's more recent portal-like landscape paintings. The catalog includes the most comprehensive bibliography on Hendricks to date, a timeline of the artist's life, and an interview with the artist by Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It also includes essays by Barkley L. Hendricks, Duke University art historian Richard J. Powell, exhibition curator Trevor Schoonmaker, and Franklin Sirmans, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Menil Collection.