"Larry Shiner challenges our conventional understandings of art and asks us to reconsider its history entirely, arguing that the category of ine art is a modern invention - and that the lines drawn between art and craft emerged only as the result of key European social transformations during the long eighteenth century"--Publisher's description.

From Egyptian wall paintings to the Venetian Renaissance, impressionism to digital images, Philip Ball tells the fascinating story of how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted throughout the ages to render the gorgeous hues we admire on our walls and in our museums. Finalist for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Chinese edition of The art of invention:The Creative Process of Discovery and Design by Steven J. Paley. In Traditional Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

American art museums share a mission and format that differ from those of their European counterparts, which often have origins in aristocratic collections. This groundbreaking work recounts the fascinating story of the invention of the modern American art museum, starting with its roots in the 1870s in the craft museum type, which was based on London’s South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum. At the turn of the twentieth century, American planners grew enthusiastic about a new type of museum and presentation that was developed in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. Called Kulturgeschichte (cultural history) museums, they were evocative displays of regional history. American trustees, museum directors, and curators found that the Kulturgeschichte approach offered a variety of transformational options in planning museums, classifying and displaying objects, and broadening collecting categories, including American art and the decorative arts. Leading institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, adopted and developed crucial aspects of the Kulturgeschichte model. By the 1930s, such museum plans and exhibition techniques had become standard practice at museums across the country.

“Readers curious about the making of Renaissance art, its cast of characters and political intrigue, will find much to relish in these pages.” —Wall Street Journal Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was a man of many talents—a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar—but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari’s extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari’s visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift. Lauded by Sarah Bakewell as “insightful, gripping, and thoroughly enjoyable,” The Collector of Lives reveals how one Renaissance scholar completely redefined how we look at art.

Fully illustrated, this story brings together the histories of arts and mathematics and shows how infinity at last acquired a precise mathematical meaning.

Arthur Efland puts current debate and concerns in a well-researched historical perspective. He examines the institutional settings of art education throughout Western history, the social forces that have shaped it, and the evolution and impact of alternate streams of influence on present practice.A History of Art Education is the first book to treat the visual arts in relation to developments in general education. Particular emphasis is placed on the 19th and 20th centuries and on the social context that has affected our concept of art today. This book will be useful as a main text in history of art education courses, as a supplemental text in courses in art education methods and history of education, and as a valuable resource for students, professors, and researchers. “The book should become a standard reference tool for art educators at all levels of the field.” —The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism “Efland has filled a gap in historical research on art education and made an important contribution to scholarship in the field.” —Studies in Art Education