This study sets developments within the frameworks both of their unstable social, political and intellectual world and of the official and independent institutions of art.

Where, how, by whom and for what were the first museums of contemporary art created? These are the key questions addressed by J. Pedro Lorente in this new book. In it he explores the concept and history of museums of contemporary art, and the shifting ways in which they have been imagined and presented. Following an introduction that sets out the historiography and considering questions of terminology, the first part of the book then examines the paradigm of the Musée des Artistes Vivants in Paris and its equivalents in the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century. The second part takes the story forward from 1930 to the present, presenting New York's Museum of Modern Art as a new universal role model that found emulators or 'contramodels' in the rest of the Western world during the twentieth century. An epilogue, reviews recent museum developments in the last decades. Through its adoption of a long-term, worldwide perspective, the book not only provides a narrative of the development of museums of contemporary art, but also sets this into its international perspective. By assessing the extent to which the great museum-capitals - Paris, London and New York in particular - created their own models of museum provision, as well as acknowledging the influence of such models elsewhere, the book uncovers fascinating perspectives on the practice of museum provision, and reveals how present cultural planning initiatives have often been shaped by historical uses.

"The purpose of this book is the identification of artists' signatures: some 4,500 American artists and, in addition, some 600 Canadian and Latin American artists. Necessary biographical information, such as nationality, birth and death dates, is given along with bibliographical references and auction records in the form of key letters which help direct the reader to further sources of information. With each artist, there is presented at least one signature facsimile; in many cases, multiple signatures totalling nearly 10,000 examples taken from oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints covering as broad a range as possible in painting styles and periods from 1800 through 1989. For the easy identification of an artist who signs his or her work with a pseudonym, monogram, symbol or indecipherable signature, there are three separate sections in the back of the book."--Introduction.

Includes two of John Ruskin's famous essays: "The Nature of the Gothic" and "The Work of Iron" from his book The Stones of Venice. Ruskin's insights into the need for individual artistic freedom, and his disdain for the mass-production art of the Victorian era, radically altered society's perception of creative design and remain powerfully relevant to our ideas of beauty today.