Books published by Metropolitan Museum of Art

Positioning Alice Neel as a champion of civil rights, this book explores how her paintings convey her humanist politics and capture the humanity, strength, and vulnerability of her subjects

This engaging exploration of the Maya pantheon introduces readers to the complex stories of Mesoamerican divinity through the stunning carvings, ceramics, and metalwork of the Classic period

This timely study of Winslow Homer highlights his imagery of the Atlantic world and reveals themes of racial, political, and natural conflict across his career

The first major exhibition catalogue to focus on Jacques Louis David's drawings and their crucial role in his iconic history paintings made before, during, and after the French Revolution

A critical reexamination of Carpeaux's bust Why Born Enslaved! and other nineteenth-century antislavery images-this book interrogates the treatment of the Black figure as a malleable political symbol and locus of exoticized beauty

This career-spanning publication features conceptual, political, formal, and technical perspectives on the work of contemporary sculptor Charles Ray

How Walt Disney and the Disney Studios wove the aesthetics of French decorative arts into the fairy-tale worlds of beloved animated films, from Cinderella to Beauty and the Beast and beyond

A look at the artistic and technical innovation of British printmaking from World War I to the eve of World War II, as artists from the Grosvenor School and beyond harnessed an emerging modernist style

Featuring texts by leading scholars of the history and culture of medieval Armenia, this book offers an in-depth look at its art, trade, and religious traditions

Portraits, an inherently personal subject, provide an engaging entry point to an exploration of the politics, patronage, and power in Renaissance Florence

Offering a novel way of looking at and understanding Cubism, this book reveals unexplored aspects of the work of Picasso, Braque, and Gris.

This exploration of Francisco Goya's graphic output reveals his technical virtuosity and boundless imagination

A fascinating new look at the artistic legacy of the Tudors, revealing the dynasty's influence on the arts in Renaissance England and beyond

A lavishly illustrated monograph that spans the entire career of Gerhard Richter, one of the most celebrated contemporary artists "Spans the contemporary German artist's six-decade career. . . . [A] stirring exhibition in [its] own right."‿New York Times"[A] weighty catalogue... illuminat[es] some less-visited corners of Richter's oeuvre."‿New York Review of Books  Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post‿Second World War Germany, in both broad and very personal terms. This handsomely designed book features approximately 100 of his key canvases, from photo paintings created in the early 1960s to portraits and later large-scale abstract series, as well as select works in glass. New essays by eminent scholars address a variety of themes: Sheena Wagstaff evaluates the conceptual import of the artist‿s technique; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh discusses the poignant Birkenau paintings (2014); Peter Geimer explores the artist‿s enduring interest in photographic imagery; Briony Fer looks at Richter‿s family pictures against traditional painting genres and conventions; Brinda Kumar investigates the artist‿s engagement with landscape as a site of memory; André Rottmann considers the impact of randomization and chance on Richter‿s abstract works; and Hal Foster examines the glass and mirror works. As this book demonstrates, Richter‿s rich and varied oeuvre is a testament to the continued relevance of painting in contemporary art. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:The Met Breuer, New York (March 4‿July 5, 2020)Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (August 14, 2020‿January 19, 2021)

"Beginning with Paul Strand's "From the Viaduct" in 1916 and continuing through the present day, "Photography's Last Century" examines moments in the history of the medium. Featuring nearly 100 works, it includes examples of works by artists, including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Walker Evans, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and Cindy Sherman, as well as a group of lesser-known practitioners who helped define photography in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Jeff Rosenheim's text addresses the avant-garde artists of the early decades of the 20th century, the changing role of the camera after the Second World War, the rise of the international market for fine photographic prints in the 1960s, the photography boom in the late 1970s, and the implications of calling this period the "last" century of photography."--

The first comprehensive look at the origins and diffusion across Europe of the etched print during the late 15th and early 16th centuries The etching of images on metal, originally used as a method for decorating armor, was first employed as a printmaking technique at the end of the 15th century. This in-depth study explores the origins of the etched print, its evolution from decorative technique to fine art, and its spread across Europe in the early Renaissance, leading to the professionalization of the field in the Netherlands in the 1550s. Beautifully illustrated, this book features the work of familiar Renaissance artists, including Albrecht Durer, Jan Gossart, Pieter Breughel the Elder, and Parmigianino, as well as lesser known practitioners, such as Daniel Hopfer and Lucas van Leyden, whose pioneering work paved the way for later printmakers like Rembrandt and Goya. The book also includes a clear and fascinating description of the etching process, as well as an investigation of how the medium allowed artists to create highly detailed prints that were more durable than engravings and more delicate than woodblocks. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (October 23, 2019-January 19, 2020)

Featuring beautiful color reproductions and enlightening descriptions, this is the definitive guide to one of the largest, and most beloved, collections of art in the world