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On the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, a series of tipis situated alongside Claes Oldenburg and Coojse van Bruggen’s Shuttlecocks (1994) provides an intriguing glimpse of The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky, an exhibition curated by Gaylord Torrence, senior curator of American Indian Art at the museum. The juxtaposition between the tents and the sculpture draws attention to their design similarities while also suggesting that tipis have become objects of American kitsch, much like Oldenburg and Van Bruggen’s badminton birdie. Despite such associations, guests are invited to enter the conical structures to observe the unique… Full Review

Aesthetic of the Cool: Afro-Atlantic Art and Music is arguably Robert Farris Thompson’s most canonical study of visual art, music, and dance in the Black Atlantic world. True to its subject, the book attempts to identify and examine commonly held traits among these modes of creative expression. Presented in twenty-five relatively short chapters (two of which are interviews), the book is effective in its aim by providing readers with a broad yet simultaneously succinct view of Afro-Atlantic music, dance, art, and, more importantly, the individualized and collective cultural meanings ascribed to each of these artistic outlets. Aesthetic of the Cool… Full Review

Scott Bukatman’s The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit appears, at first glance, to be a book about the work of pioneering cartoonist, animator, and chalk-talker Winsor McCay (1867–1934). After all, McCay’s most celebrated work—Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905–11)—is explicitly referenced in the title, and three illustrations from two distinct Little Nemo strips adorn the front and back cover. But Bukatman’s book, although organized around an extended examination of McCay’s life and work, is much more ambitious than this. For Bukatman, Slumberland is not merely a fictional nation visited by Nemo in the strip that bears… Full Review

Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time is a site-specific mural installation at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Herstory Gallery, organized by Saisha M. Grayson, Assistant Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. A multimedia artist known for articulating feminist and queer narratives that weave religious, mythological, and popular iconographies, Ganesh (b. 1975) was born and raised in a Hindu Indian family in Brooklyn and Queens. Her wide-ranging practice—which includes drawings, photographic digital collages, text-based works, and collaborations—draws from a vast array of canonical images and historical writings, both worshiped and vernacular, in the pursuit of an expansive and at times… Full Review

The appearance of lush dresses or a cute pair of kitten heels in a museum might strike the contemporary viewer as incongruous. But why is this? By now we have become accustomed to seeing design objects displayed cheek by jowl with the hidebound mediums of painting and sculpture. The intrepid museum visitor once had to seek out the designed object, which was relegated to discrete period rooms or wholly separate sections devoted to the so-called decorative arts. This separation, however, is no more. Indeed, as the recent reinstallation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of early twentieth-century modern art… Full Review

A Companion to Ancient Egyptian Art, a volume of essays on a wide range of topics related to the study of Egyptian art, is part of Blackwell’s series “Companions to the Ancient World.” The book as a whole is impressive in its scope and theoretical sophistication, helpful to students of both Egyptology and art history, and vital as a snapshot of the current state of Egyptian art history. Its editor, Melinda Hartwig, is to be thanked for the thought and effort involved in producing such a volume, particularly in assembling the impressive list of contributors. The collection is organized… Full Review

Architectural historian Henry Matthew’s Greco-Roman Cities of Aegean Turkey: History, Archaeology, Architecture is intended to be an educated layperson’s detailed travel companion to the archaeological sites of western Turkey. Given Turkey’s popularity as a tourist destination for history buffs, it is surprising that such a book has not been written previously. As such, it fills a lacuna and is a welcome addition to the genre of guidebooks in the vein of Freya Stark’s Ionia: A Quest (London: John Murray, 1954), George Ewart Bean’s Aegean Turkey: An Archaeological Guide (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), Ekrem Akurgal’s Ancient Civilizations and Ruins… Full Review

Few sites in China have engaged the religious imagination with more intensity than Mount Wutai, so named for its five “peaks” or “platforms.” Situated in northeast Shanxi Province, nowadays a four-hour bus ride from the city of Taiyuan, and long considered the abode of Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom, Mount Wutai has been a destination of pilgrimage for people of all walks of life. The Qianlong Emperor (r. 1735–1796) famously visited the site six times during his life. Not surprisingly, Mount Wutai has been the subject of a number of recent English-language studies, which encompass such fields as literary studies… Full Review

By 1600, there were over fifty miraculous images in Florence: weeping Madonnas, bleeding Christs, paintings and sculptures—often veiled and only occasionally exposed to direct view, surrounded by heaps of votive offerings left by the faithful in gratitude for miracles experienced. Their proliferation during the previous three hundred years in churches, oratories, and street tabernacles throughout the city occurred alongside the founding of many more cults across Florence’s hinterland, or contado. Indeed, as the commune extended its territorial domain, so the new subject-cities spawned miraculous images—a process of sacralization strongly supported by the Florentine regime. With painstaking scholarship, Megan… Full Review

The Berthouville Treasure, discovered by a farmer in Normandy, France (ancient Gaul), in 1830, represents one of the largest and best-preserved collections of Roman silver to survive from the ancient world. The objects, most of which date to the second and third centuries CE, were found within the confines of a large sanctuary to the god Mercury, and functioned as votive objects. The treasure, on loan from the Département des Monnaies, médailles et antiques of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is on display as part of the exhibition Ancient Luxury and the Roman Silver Treasure from Berthouville at the Getty… Full Review