Sylvia Lavin uncovers the origins of one of the fundamental concepts of modern architectural theory, the idea that architecture is a form of language.

The importance of this dictionary stems from Quatreme're's profound reflections on the nature of architecture: on the principles which are at the source of his rules and on the roles of imitation and invention within tradition. This book provides the first English translation of the theoretical essays from his seminal work, Le Dictionnaire Historique d' Architecture.

Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849) was the most important Neoclassical art historian in the generation after Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768). It is difficult now to appreciate his importance, due in part to the lack of translations of his 21 published books: three were rendered into English in the 19th century, and one in the 21st. The Moral Considerations has long been considered the most shattering polemic against public museums ever written. But I will show that Quatremère’s polemic was aimed, not against museums per se, but rather against the imperialist and secularist curatorial purposes of Parisian museums in the age of Revolution. His Neoclassical commitments maintained the centrality of religion, and of incarnation, to any proper understanding of the place and purpose of the fine arts.

Quatremére de Quincy, the most famous art critic at the end of the Enlightenment, published two sets of letters about the role of museums. He first implored them to return works of art to their original settings but later argued in favor of the museum as a place where artworks can be safely stored and made available for artists to study. Immensely contraversial and influential since they were written two centuries ago, Quatremére's texts sum up the most bewildering moment of the debate on museums: did the new institution inauguate the death of art, or bring it to its perfection? This volume offers the first English translation of the letters, as well as an extensive introduction that reveals their content, the reason for their intellectual success, and how they enlarge contemporary disputes about cultural property, national claims and universal beauty.

First published in 2004, this volume recognises that there is much more to museums than the documenting, monumentalizing, or theme-parking of identity, history and heritage. This landmark anthology aims to make strange the very existence of museums and to plot a critical, historical and ethical understanding of their origins and history. A radical selection of key texts introduces the reader to the intense investigation of the modern European idea of the museum that has taken place over the last fifty years. Texts first published in journals and books are brought together in one volume with up-to-the-minute and specially commissioned pieces by leading administrators, curators and art historians. The selections are organized by key themes that map the evolution of the debate and introduced by Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, two considerable critics, who write with the edge and enthusiasm of art historians who have spent their lives working with museums. Grasping the World is an invaluable resource for students and teachers of art history and museum studies.

While most historians and critics have focused on the treatise, Judith Major gives equal emphasis to Downing's spirited monthly editorials in the Horticulturist. In the journal, Downing "spoke American" and encouraged his countrymen and women to practice economy, to use America's rich natural resources wisely yet artfully, to be content with a little cottage and a few fine native trees.

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year A Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year “Sharp, revealing, funny.” —The Guardian “An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again... [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.” —The Economist Architecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form that shapes the world as it pleases. Four Walls and a Roof turns this fiction on its head, offering a candid account of what it’s really like to work as an architect. Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, Reinier de Graaf reveals the world of contemporary architecture in vivid snapshots: from the corridors of wealth in London, Moscow, and Dubai to the demolished hopes of postwar social housing in New York and St. Louis. We meet ambitious oligarchs, developers for whom architecture is nothing more than an investment, and layers of bureaucrats, consultants, and mysterious hangers-on who lie between any architect’s idea and the chance of its execution. “This is a book about power, money and influence, and architecture’s complete lack of any of them... Witty, insightful and funny, it is a (sometimes painful) dissection of a profession that thinks it is still in control.” —Financial Times “This is the most stimulating book on architecture and its practice that I have read for years.” —Architects’ Journal