Giorgio Vasari and the Birth of the Museum offers the first dedicated and comprehensive study of Vasari?s original contributions to the making of museums, addressing the subject from the full range of aspects - collecting, installation, conceptual-historical - in which his influence is strongly felt. Uniting specialists of Giorgio Vasari with scholars of historical museology, this collection of essays presents a cross-disciplinary overview of Vasari?s approaches to the collecting and display of art, artifacts and memorabilia. Although the main focus of the book is on the mid-late 16th century, contributors also bring to light that Vasari?s museology enjoyed a substantial afterlife well into the modern museum era. This volume is a fundamental addition to the museum studies literature and a welcome enhancement to the scholarly industry on Giorgio Vasari.

Giorgio Vasari and the Birth of the Museum offers the first dedicated and comprehensive study of Vasari?s original contributions to the making of museums, addressing the subject from the full range of aspects - collecting, installation, conceptual-historical - in which his influence is strongly felt. Uniting specialists of Giorgio Vasari with scholars of historical museology, this collection of essays presents a cross-disciplinary overview of Vasari?s approaches to the collecting and display of art, artifacts and memorabilia. Although the main focus of the book is on the mid-late 16th century, contributors also bring to light that Vasari?s museology enjoyed a substantial afterlife well into the modern museum era. This volume is a fundamental addition to the museum studies literature and a welcome enhancement to the scholarly industry on Giorgio Vasari.

Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones, first published in Latin in 1565, is an ambitious effort to demonstrate the pragmatic value of curiosity cabinets, or Wunderkammern, to princely collectors in sixteenth-century Europe and, by so doing, inspire them to develop their own such collections. Quiccheberg shows how the assembly and display of physical objects offered nobles a powerful means to expand visual knowledge, allowing them to incorporate empirical and artisanal expertise into the realm of the written word. But in mapping out the collectability of the material world, Quiccheberg did far more than create a taxonomy. Rather, he demonstrated how organizing objects made their knowledge more accessible; how objects, when juxtaposed or grouped, could tell a story; and how such strategies could enhance the value of any single object. Quiccheberg’s descriptions of early modern collections provide both a point of origin for today’s museums and an implicit critique of their aims, asserting the fundamental research and scholarly value of collections: collections are to be used, not merely viewed. The First Treatise on Museums makes Quiccheberg’s now rare publication available in an English translation. Complementing the translation are a critical introduction by Mark A. Meadow and a preface by Bruce Robertson.

Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.

In this book, Douglas Biow analyzes Vasari's Lives of the Artists - often considered the first great work of art history in the modern era - from a new perspective. He focuses on key words and shows how they address a variety of compelling, culturally determined ideas circulating in late Renaissance Italy. The keywords chosen for this study investigate five seemingly divergent, yet still interconnected, ideas. What does it mean to have a 'profession', professione, and possess 'genius', ingegno, in the visual arts? How is 'speed', prestezza, valued among visual artists of the period and how is 'time', tempo, conceptualized in Vasari's narrative and descriptions of visual art? Finally, how is the 'night', notte, conceived and visually represented as a distinct span of time in The Lives? Written in an engaging manner for specialists and non-specialists alike, Vasari's Words places the Lives - a truly foundational and innovative book of Western culture - within the context of the modern discipline of intellectual history.

The definitive reference text on curation both inside and outside the museum A Companion to Curation is the first collection of its kind, assembling the knowledge and experience of prominent curators, artists, art historians, scholars, and theorists in one comprehensive volume. Part of the Blackwell Companion series, this much-needed book provides up-to-date information and valuable insights on the field of curatorial studies and curation in the visual arts. Accessible and engaging chapters cover diverse, contemporary methods of curation, its origin and history, current and emerging approaches within the profession, and more. This timely publication fills a significant gap in literature on the role of the curator, the art and science of curating, and the historical arc of the field from the 17th century to the present. The Companion explores topics such as global developments in contemporary indigenous art, Asian and Chinese art since the 1980s, feminist and queer feminist curatorial practices, and new curatorial strategies beyond the museum. This unique volume: Offers readers a wide range of perspectives on curating in both theory and practice Includes coverage of curation outside of the Eurocentric and Anglosphere art worlds Presents clear and comprehensible information valuable for specialists and novices alike Discusses the movements, models, people and politics of curating Provides guidance on curating in a globalized world Broad in scope and detailed in content, A Companion to Curation is an essential text for professionals engaged in varied forms of curation, teachers and students of museum studies, and readers interested in the workings of the art world, museums, benefactors, and curators.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance covers the period 1400 to 1600. The Renaissance was a cultural movement, a time of re-awakening when classical knowledge was rediscovered, leading to an efflorescence in philosophy, art, and literature. The period fostered an emerging sense of individualism across European cultures. This sense was expressed through a fascination with materiality and the natural world, and a growing attachment to things. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds. James Symonds is Professor at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Objects set. General Editors: Dan Hicks and William Whyte

This book breaks new ground by illuminating the key role of verse-writing as a cultural strategy on the part of Italian Renaissance artists. It does so by undertaking a wide-ranging study of poems by painters, sculptors, architects, and goldsmiths who were active in Florence under Cosimo I and Francesco I de’ Medici – a milieu in which many practitioners of the visual arts appropriated the literary medium to address issues related to their primary professions. New Apelleses, and New Apollos intervenes in the burgeoning scholarly discourse on the intellectual life of artists in early modern Italy, revealing how poetry often provides fresh insights into art-theoretical debates, patronage questions, workshop cultures, issues of professional identity, and networks of personal relations.

In recent years, the emerging field of museum studies has seen rapid expansion in the critical study of museums and scholars started to question the institution and its functions. To contribute differentiated viewpoints to the currently evolving meta-discourse on the museum, this volume aims to investigate how the institution of the museum has been visualized and translated into different kinds of images and how these images have affected our perception of these institutions. In this interdisciplinary collection, scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds, including art history, heritage, museums studies and architectural history, explore a broad range of case studies stretching across the globe. The volume opens up debate about the epistemological and historiographical significance of a variety of different images and representations of the Art Museum, including the transformation or adaptation of the image of the art museum across periods and cultures. In this context, this volume aims to develop a new theoretical framework while proposing new methodological tools and resources for the analysis of museological representations on a global scale.

This edited collection traces the impact of monographic exhibitions on the discipline of art history from the first examples in the late eighteenth century through the present. Roughly falling into three genres (retrospectives of living artists, retrospectives of recently deceased artists, and monographic exhibitions of Old Masters), specialists examine examples of each genre within their social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Exhbitions covered include Nathaniel Hone’s 1775 exhibition, the Holbein Exhibition of 1871, the Courbet retrospective of 1882, Titian's exhibition in Venice, Poussin's Louvre retrospective of 1960, and El Greco's anniversaty exhibitions of 2014.