Catalog of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 1, 2013-January 5, 2014.

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 1, 2013-January 5, 2014.

The words 'amateur artist' conjure up a picture of Victorian ladies and gentlemen sketching in watercolours out of doors. This text challenges such an image, describing and illustrating over 200 works from the British Museum's collections.

"A fun-filled art activity book that will encourage kids to express themselves while teaching them about key artistic styles and a selection of pioneering artists from history"--

Contemporary Norwegian painter Fredrik Vrslev (b. 1979) presents his new series in this deconstructed exhibition catalog/artists book, All Around Amateur. Inspired by sunsets taken with his iPhone, Vrslev re-creates the images on canvas by using a mechanical trolley used for marking lines on roads or sports fields. The rows of applied color are rubbed into the canvas resulting in resonant toned paintings mimicking the glow of the sun. The paintings are installed to create a massive line of shimmering tones recalling the color field paintings of Rothko. The artist book, accompanying the solo exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall, is available as two different versions, each made up of 320 one-to-one digital images scanned from eight of the new sunset paintings and reproduced in the book sequentially, left to right, top to bottom. Full-bleed scans in each volume together reproduce an entire wall of paintings. Following the images are newly commissioned texts by Ina Blom, Martin Clark, and Steinar Sekkingstad plus an interview with artist Anne Pontgnie.

What if we fundamentally misunderstood what it meant to run arts organizations "like a business"? What if our management metaphors actually contribute to the problems we hope they will solve? In these 50 "field notes" from his first quarter century of teaching, research, and consulting in arts and cultural management, E. Andrew Taylor reframes and reimagines the ways we think and work in the arts. "Andrew Taylor has an uncanny ability to find the small things that make a big difference and provokes his large readership to think outside their own areas of expertise. Doubtful there is anyone blogging on the arts who is more respected and beloved." Barry Hessenius

Inside an art gallery, it is easy to forget that the paintings there are the end products of a process involving not only creative inspiration, but also plenty of physical and logistical details. It is these "cruder," more mundane aspects of a painter's daily routine that motivated Brooklyn artist Joe Fig to embark almost ten years ago on a highly unorthodox, multilayered exploration of the working life of the professional artist. Determined to ground his research in the physical world, Fig began constructing a series of diorama-like miniature reproductions of the studios of modern art's most legendary painters, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. A desire for firsthand references led Fig to approach contemporary artists for access to their studios. Armed with a camera and a self-made "Artist's Questionnaire," Fig began a journey through the workspaces of some of today's most exciting contemporary artists.