An excellent introduction to the study of Chinese textiles, this volume was originally written as a handbook to accompany a special exhibit of Chinese court robes and accessories presented by the Museum in December, 1931. In addition to providing an historical background information essential to understanding these beautiful objects, specific examples from the Met's collection are discussed in detail.

In Olafur Eliasson's exhibition The Blind Pavilionfor the Danish pavilion at the most recent Venice Biennale, virtually all the strategies that the artist had employed up until now were activated: mirror reflections, glass kaleidoscopes, stretches of stairway, architectural interventions, and camera obscuras. An all-encompassing exhibition, it cancelled out the dividing lines between work and viewer, between outside and inside, between art and science. A parallel counterpart to the pavilion, rather than a mere representation of it, is the book The Blind Pavilion. Created by Eliasson in close collaboration with Danish author Svend Uge Madsen, who has persistently challenged our notions of time and space in his writings, The Blind Paviliongathers writing by authors, poets, and theoreticians who were invited to contribute texts that explore our constantly shifting and ever-evolving capacity for "orienting" ourselves. The texts serve as contributions to an examination of how we physically and psychologically orient ourselves to the world--and of what happens when we are deprived of one or more of our orientation possibilities, for example our ability to hear and remember, to expect something, or to experience the passage of time.

This picture book was composed in 1940 to display choice pieces from the Museum's Near East jewelry collection. Along with its array of photographs, the assembling curators have provided an introductory essay on the history and cultures that surround each of these carefully crafted ornaments, as well as the techniques used to produce them.