"Georgia Bellflowers" advances in

The video above shows us flipping through an advance copy of the book for our upcoming exhibition "Georgia Bellflowers: The Furniture of Henry Eugene Thomas." The rest of the books should be in stock in early January, in time for the exhibition, but we will be offering special pre-orders in the Museum Shop (in-person only, not online) until then. The book is only $16 and makes a great holiday gift for anyone interested in decorative arts, local history, woodworking or great stories.

New children's book about contemporary art

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA) recently published a new children’s book on contemporary art called “Breaking the Rules: What is Contemporary Art?” by Susan Rubin. According to MOCA, the book is “the first to make the museum’s world-renowned permanent collection accessible to young audiences.”

The book introduces the work of artists from MOCA’s collection, including that of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chris Burden and Maurizio Cattelan, among others. The book uses full-color print reproductions of the pieces along with quotes, texts and artists’ biographies to give children a better understanding of contemporary art and interpretation.

MOCA director of education Suzanne Isken describes why the book stands out from other children’s art books:

“Breaking the Rules” fills a gap in the kind of art presented to young audiences. While art books for children about Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein multiply, texts about the more contemporary artists are few and far between. “Breaking the Rules” expands the canon and includes leading contemporary female artists as well as a multicultural group of some of the most groundbreaking and exciting artists of our time.

MOCA has about 6,000 works in its collection created since 1940 in all visual media. The 64-page hardcover book introduces 25 contemporary artists and “explores some of the most intriguing works in the museum’s holdings, leading young audiences to examine the creative process of artists working today.” The book showcases works that “break the rules” of traditional art.

MOCA plans to donate 200 copies of the book to Los Angeles County Schools as part of the museum’s Contemporary Art Start program (CAS). “Breaking the Rules: What is Contemporary Art?” is available online or at MOCA Store locations for $14.95.

Recycling

Sometimes, much as we hate to admit it, books run their course. They get dropped in the bathtub or the pages fall out or, saddest of all, no one wants them anymore. This is where Jacqueline Rush Lee comes in (thanks to PICDIT for highlighting her). Her works aren't immediately recognizable as using books for their medium, but they have a beautiful, organic feel, kind of like the hay bales that show up in the fields around Athens later in the year.

More on the 2010 Green Symposium

Bonnie Ramsey, former director of communications for the museum and member of the Decorative Arts Advisory Committee, sent out the following earlier this week:

The Henry D. Green Symposium accolades continue to roll in to Dale
Couch and Linda Chesnut. After a packed 48-hour schedule, over 325 attendees from eight states and speakers cannot stop talking about the program and the weekend's activities. Congratulations to all who made this event a success: the staffs of the Georgia Museum of Art and the Center for Continuing Education, members of the decorative arts committee, the gracious hosts and hostesses for the social events and our beloved sponsors. As Bill Eiland likes to say, "hats off" to all and especially to the adjunct curator (who defies that term) who not only survived his first symposium but made many new friends for the program in the process.

Here's a sampling of the enthusiastic responses:

"The symposium was FABULOUS!! We loved it being at the Center for Continuing Education. It made it so much nicer for everyone..."
Mary Burdell
St. Simons

"It was an honor to have been asked to participate...I cannot thank GMOA and the advisory committee enough for the hospitality and kindness I was shown. It was simply overwhelming. I am sorry I could not stay and thank each member personally."
Charlotte Crabtree
The Silver Vault, Charleston

"...I thought everything went beautifully, and I agree that the lectures were all good. You Georgia folks really know how to to give a good symposium! I've never been wined and dined quite as thoroughly as I was by the good
people of Athens! I am also grateful for the rides to various places..."
June Lucas
MESDA

"...Personally I thought the symposium was perfect and would be hard to improve upon. I like the venue and, man, you Georgians know how to entertain! June and I both loved all the wonderful parties. The hosts could not have been warmer or more welcoming."
Robert Leath
MESDA

"Could not have been better" certainly applied to the entire weekend! In case you did not have a chance to purchase "A Colorful Past: Decorative Arts of Georgia," a collection of the 2008 symposium papers, you can do so by contacting the Museum Shop.

You can order it online from the shop or call 706.542.0450, where Amy Miller will be happy to take your order for the book, which is full-color and retails for $35 + shipping and handling. Distribution is being handled by UGA Press, so, with luck, you'll start to see the book showing up in Atlanta-area bookstores soon.

GMOA in the Blogs

Julie Phillips highlights GMOA's recent snagging of three publications awards at SEMC. This is the first year SEMC added awards for content, so we're particularly proud to have received two golds in that category. You can buy all three books in our shop by clicking here.

If you're keeping track, that's two awards so far for The American Scene on Paper (the other one being an IPPY in the fine art books category), and we wouldn't be surprised if there are more on the way.

Corpus

We mentioned the "Corpus of Early Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections: The South" in passing a couple of weeks ago. This project, with entries by Perri Lee Roberts, was conceived by Bruce Cole and Andrew Ladis back in 1993 and has been in process ever since. We get several phone calls a year from wholesalers asking if the books are in stock yet, and we've had to say no every time. But the printer in Asia just sent this image to make sure its staff is assembling the three volumes correctly in the slipcase, and it's confident the books will be ready to start their journey across the ocean in early November. Three volumes, a smidge over 800 pages, and right around 400 paintings catalogued, with provenance, bibliography and notes on each of them will be for sale for $200 a set. This undertaking has been massive, and it is extremely exciting to see it nearing conclusion.

Stealing the Mona Lisa

The 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, a crime supposedly solved a little over two years after the heist, is garnering renewed interest in the form of two recent books. The New York Times reviews R. A. Scotti’s “Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa,” while over at Vanity Fair an excerpt from Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler’s “The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection” covers much of the same ground. Both books trace the sensational snatching of the painting, with interesting digressions and anecdotes about the Parisian art scene at the turn of the century. In the end, however, the crime remains somewhat of a mystery, as the only person convicted for it, Vincenzo Perugia, gave wildly varying accounts of the heist, leading many to suspect that he was covering up a much larger forgery scheme surrounding the painting.

Also in relation to the smiling lady, an article at the Art Newspaper details another close escape by the painting, this time from a malfunctioning sprinkler. In 1963, the Mona Lisa made its first trip into the United States, coming to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and narrowly avoided disaster from a sprinkler that showered the masterpiece for a few hours one night—an incident the museum discreetly did not mention to the public at the time.