Museums

Photography

A picture tells a thousand stories, but the one it doesn't tell is how the shot was made. Barbara London and John Upton's Photography is an all-inclusive look at the craft of photography. This book will help any amateur move up a few notches, and it serves as a refresher course for professionals as well. The sixth edition of this classic work (the first was published in 1976) includes a companion Web site with interactive activities, Web resources, and a learning archive. Amply illustrated with at least one photograph or diagram on almost every page, Photography is the one reference work every student of photography must have--even those who will never set foot in a classroom. --Brenda Pittsley

This best-selling, comprehensive guide to photography—featuring superb instructional illustrations—is the most cutting-edge photography book on the market. It offers extensive coverage of digital imaging—with the latest technological developments, such as Web page design and formatting photos on CD-ROMs. Chapter topics explore the process of getting started, camera, lens, film and light, exposure, processing the negative, mounting and finishing, color, digital camera, digital darkroom, lighting, special techniques, view camera, zone system, seeing photographs, and the history of photography. Step-by-step instructions include a “Lights Out” feature to help learners better identify darkroom techniques. For anyone with a personal or professional interest in photography.

The Photographer's Eye

The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski is a twentieth-century classic--an indispensable introduction to the visual language of photography. Based on a landmark exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1964, and originally published in 1966, the book has long been out of print. It is now available again to a new generation of photographers and lovers of photography in this duotone printing that closely follows the original. Szarkowski's compact text eloquently complements skillfully selected and sequenced groupings of 172 photographs drawn from the entire history and range of the medium. Celebrated works by such masters as Cartier-Bresson, Evans, Steichen, Strand, and Weston are juxtaposed with vernacular documents and even amateur snapshots to analyze the fundamental challenges and opportunities that all photographers have faced. Szarkowski, the legendary curator who worked at the Museum from 1962 to 1991, has published many influential books. But none more radically and succinctly demonstrates why--as U.S. News & World Report put it in 1990--"whether Americans know it or not," his thinking about photography "has become our thinking about photography."

Calder Jewelry

The Polaroid Book: Selections from the Polaroid Collections of Photography (Taschen's 25th Anniversary Special Editions)

This survey features more than 400 works from the Polaroid Collection along with essays by Hitchcock, who illuminates the beginnings and history of the Polaroid Corporation.

Fodor's Walt Disney World® with Kids 2009: with Universal Orlando and SeaWorld (Special-Interest Titles)

Entering its 20th edition, Fodor’s Walt Disney World® with Kids delivers the definitive but always-easy-to-access advice of former Disney Magazine contributing editor Kim Wright Wiley, who has logged more than 50 visits to the parks both as a keen-eyed journalist and as a parent. Every family needs her tips and insider knowledge to make the most of a trip to Walt Disney World.
Wiley not only rates attractions and rides based on their age-related suitability and "scare" factor, but also incorporates feedback from hundreds of families who, like her, have not-so-tirelessly field tested it all. Inside you'll find:
Ø Everything a family needs to choose the right hotel, including driving times to the parks from each property
Ø Full ratings as well as quick-reference charts for the most kid-pleasing rides and restaurants
Ø Must-see attraction checklists geared toward young kids as well as preteens and teens
Ø Time-saving tips, such as how to avoid crowds and lines at the park
Ø Insider's secrets and the skinny on "Hidden Mickeys"
Ø Cautionary tales and success stories from parents about their park experiences
Ø Convenient maps of Walt Disney World and Universal Studios
"Must reading for everyone planning to bring their family."–Katie Couric, NBC's Today Show

Reinventing the Museum, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift

Reinventing the Museum gathers 35 seminal articles reflecting over 100 years of dialogue within the musem community about what it means to be a high-quality, relevant institution. Important reading for museum professionals, students, and anyone interested in museums and their development.

Chinese Art and Culture (Trade Version)

Lucid, authoritative, written with verve by two respected American scholars, this generously illustrated work provides an introduction to more than 7,000 years of Chinese art—from the pottery-making and jade-carving cultures of the Neolithic Age to contemporary Chinese artists working in video,installation, and performance media.

By placing the arts in context—in active engagement with societies, economies, and wider fields of culture—the authors of this much-needed general survey introduce a dynamic and continually evolving tradition rather than a sequence of isolated museum masterpieces. Although the story of Chinese art unfolds chronologically, the authors introduce relevant themes for each era that will deepen the reader's understanding of and appreciation for what they describe as arguably “the most abundantly productive, continuous artistic culture in the history of the world.”

Museum Administration: An Introduction (American Association for State and Local History Book Series)

Museum Administration is the handbook for students, new professionals, and anyone who needs to know what goes into running a museum. The authors cover everything from basic organization to human resource management, with case studies and exercises to help reinforce the text. Includes an extensive bibliography and appendices. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Frida Kahlo

Few artists have captured the public's imagination with the force of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. During her lifetime, she was best known as the flamboyant wife of celebrated muralist Diego Rivera. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship: Rivera declared himself to be "unfit for fidelity." As if to assuage her pain, Kahlo recorded the vicissitudes of her marriage in paint. She also recorded the misery of her deteriorating health--the orthopedic corsets that she was forced to wear, the numerous spinal surgeries, the miscarriages and therapeutic abortions. The artist's sometimes harrowing imagery is mitigated by an intentional primitivism and small scale, as well as by her sardonic humor and extraordinary imagination. In celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Kahlo's birth, this major new monograph is published on the occasion of the 2007-08 traveling exhibition. It features the artist's most renowned work--the hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits--as well as a selection of key portraits and still lifes; more than 100 color plates, from Kahlo's earliest works, made in 1926, to her last, in 1954; critical essays by Elizabeth Carpenter, Hayden Herrera and Victor Zamudio-Taylor; and a selection of photographs of Kahlo and Rivera by preeminent photographers of the period, including Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Gisele Freund, Tina Modotti and Nickolas Muray. The catalogue also contains snapshots from the artist's own photo albums of Kahlo with family and friends such as Andre Breton and Leon Trotsky--some of which have never been published, and several of which Kahlo inscribed with dedications, effaced with self-deprecating marks or kissed with a lipstick trace--plus an extensive illustrated timeline, selected bibliography, exhibition history and index.

Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner

One of the visionary architects of the twentieth century, John Lautner designed dramatically innovative buildings with a rare sensitivity to site, vista, and structure. Accompanying a full-scale exhibition on Lautner at Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum, this is the first publication to comprehensively explore his work, including his apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright and the cultural and geographical context of Los Angeles, through an intensive examination of the archives of the John Lautner Foundation. Although Lautner’s dramatic houses are well-known, this is the first time his work has been seriously examined by scholars. Historian Nicholas Olsberg contributes an analysis of Lautner’s evolution, providing social and cultural context. Architect Frank Escher covers the relationship between his experiments in structure and poetics of space, and Jean-Louis Cohen discusses Lautner’s place in new design tendencies.This richly illustrated monograph includes previously unpublished sketches, drawings, construction images, and Lautner’s own photographs to unveil the evolution, originality, and logic of his designs, focusing on the atmospheres and vistas they establish and the connections to landscape and sensory fluidity that mark their innovative spatial arguments.