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The monumental exhibition The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830, held in the fall of 2004 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, signaled recognition of the tapestry and silverwork masterpieces produced during the viceregal period in the Andes. One of the achievements of the exhibition’s curators, Elena Phipps and Johanna Hecht, and consulting curator, Cristina Esteras Martín, was their ability to obtain from both private collectors and institutions vital objects that had rarely, if ever, been exhibited. The result was a remarkable collection of many of the most significant artistic treasures from the late pre-Hispanic Inca and colonial periods… Full Review

Visitors entering Canaletto in England at the Yale Center for British Art are confronted with two large canvases reunited for the first time in a century: a 1745–46 view of the Molo in Venice on Ascension Day (cat. 54, presumably painted in Venice), and a view of the Thames below Westminster on Lord Mayor’s Day a year or so later (cat. 23, painted in London). It is an instructive comparison that sets up the themes of style, subject matter, and patronage explored by this exhibition. The Venetian view features all of the mature vedutista’s familiar hallmarks, with its frontal… Full Review

Rumors of a tight relationship between photography and memory have been circulating since the nineteenth century, despite the many objections raised in both scholarly and fanciful works. A feature of these attacks is the prosecutor’s reluctance to produce evidence. Roland Barthes writes a long meditation on photography as a form of counter-memory that ultimately rests on a portrait of his mother that he allows no one to see. Siegfried Kracauer launches his skeptical study of photography and memory by evoking a magazine illustration of the “demonic diva,” whose image lures consumers into the memory-vacuum of an eternal present. And who… Full Review

In the last fifteen years, scholarship on indigenous imagery from colonial Latin America has grown substantially in breadth and sophistication. Across the 1990s, as scholars rejected the dichotomy of resistance to colonial rule versus acquiescence, studies of indigenous agency and creativity became prominent, as did analyses of visual culture and ethnic identity. Recently, as more nuanced understandings of colonial processes have developed (especially in the fields of anthropology and history), interpretive frameworks have again begun to shift. Less crucial is indigenous agency, pure and simple; more pressing questions now concern indigenous practices as constituent of, and pivotal to, colonial society… Full Review

A sense of curatorial rigor pervaded many of the compact exhibition spaces of this year’s biennale in Gwangju, a major city in southern Korea known for its rich cultural past and for the May 1980 democratic movement. For its sixth installment, this leading art biennale in East Asia adopted a self-conscious mode of re-examining its raison d’être and selected as its main theme an idea that had in fact existed all along: Asia. Such an inquiry was timely, as the stake to distinguish oneself from others has never been higher for each of the proliferating biennales in Asia—from Singapore to… Full Review

Studies of Venice, including surveys of art, architecture, politics, and business, often hinge on an author’s understanding or characterization of Venezianità, or the concept of being Venetian. Bronwen Wilson directly addresses this facet of early modern Venetian studies in her erudite explication of the evolution of Venetian identity in an era featuring the dynamic growth of the printing industry and the increasing use of prints by illustrators and artists. For Wilson, Venetians learned to read images of Venice and Venetians themselves, as did the outside world, and, indeed, “may have come to see themselves as they were seen by… Full Review

In her exemplary book, which began as a doctoral dissertation in 1992, Alison Wright provides a comprehensive examination of the Pollaiuolo brothers’ substantial artistic productivity in Florence and Rome during the second half of the quattrocento, contextualizing their working lives and era. Although she adopts a traditional monographic approach to her subject, the author seeks to reveal the professional reputations of these artists and the innovative characteristics of their works of art. Wright implements a roughly chronological arrangement for her ambitious project, examining Antonio’s and Piero’s works categorically, by medium or project. In fourteen chapters, she explores the iconography, reception… Full Review

In this masterly new book, Gülru Necipoğlu examines completely afresh the centrality of Sinan, chief imperial Ottoman architect between 1538 and 1588, in the creation of what she calls “architectural culture.” Based on a wide variety of primary sources—including some not previously considered from the point of view of architectural history—this is the first exhaustive study offering a wealth of insights into Sinan’s architecture within the context of its own intellectual, political, and religious milieus. The production value of the book is equally remarkable. It is richly illustrated with excellent photographs by Reha Günay, himself an authority on… Full Review

Samuel Palmer, 1805–1881: Vision and Landscape is much more than a handsome catalogue for a splendid exhibition of the same name. It is a significant contribution to the steadily growing literature about the artist. Essays by eight different scholars place Palmer within his historical context, while detailed entries about each of the 164 exhibited works—these pictures and more, all excellently reproduced in color—give the catalogue a refreshingly visual focus. That so many authors have been asked to contribute to the publication speaks to several important characteristics of the artist’s career. Contrary to the familiar image of Palmer as… Full Review

In the final section of Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), Hans Belting discusses the crisis of the cult image in the early modern period when holy images of the past lost their power due to new aesthetic criteria that promoted the cult of art and the emerging role of the artist. While monumental in its scope and methodology, Belting’s text and specifically his characterization of the “era of art” have not remained without critical response. The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance… Full Review