Waiting and Prepping

Well, Magnetic Woman has officially been out since December, but printing errors (most of the index missing, color plates out of order) caused the book to have to be reprinted, so I am still waiting to get author copies that will be acceptable to send to the various museums and others who helped along the way. It's just hard--bad enough to have my book come out during a pandemic, but then to have to pretty much pull it from circulation and reprint...!

Meanwhile, I've been asking some fellow writers for blurbs for In Search of the Magic Theater, which should be out next summer, and I've been putting together an author website through the Authors Guild. Plus also fiddling with new novels--some of which are close to done (I want to finish at least one this summer) and some of which are just in the formative stages. I can't do a whole lot with them during the semester since with the pandemic I'm doing a lot of extra work on my remote courses, but a little bit here and a little bit there eventually adds up to finished novels.

The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary

And another intriguing book comes to fruition! The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary: Art and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century, by Matthew Rampley, Markian Prokopovych, and Nóra Veszprémi, has just been published by Penn State University Press. This study of Austria-Hungary's public art museums considers them in the context of European museums and collecting, as well as looking at their place in the Empire's complex cultural politics. From the installation of imperial art collections in the Belvedere Palace in 1784 to the dissolution of Austria-Hungary after the First World War, and focusing on institutions in Vienna, Cracow, Prague, Zagreb, and Budapest, The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary traces museum culture over the long nineteenth century.

For more info, and to order a copy, click here.

Socially Engaged Art History and Beyond

I'm so very pleased to announce a volume edited by two of my friends from graduate school, Cindy Persinger and Azar Rejaie--Socially Engaged Art History and Beyond: Alternative Approaches to the Theory and Practice of Art History. With contributions from an international set of professors, curators, and arts organizers, this book asks "What is socially engaged art history?" and is the first full-length study to focus on the ideas of the growing number of art historians who seek to look beyond the academy in their art-historical praxis.

Presenting arguments for the benefits of community-engaged, applied, and socially engaged art history, the first two sections look at socially engaged art history from theoretical, pedagogical, and contextual perspectives. The concluding section offers case studies that highlight the work that is being done in this area, with the intention of inspiring further theoretical and practical work.

You can read more about it and order here.

Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office

Another intriguing book by a scholar of my acquaintance is Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office, by Jennifer Kaufmann-Buehler. Jennifer is a design historian and has long been fascinated by the utopian but now-despised open office. She " traces the history and evolution of the American open plan from the brightly-colored office landscapes of the 1960s and 1970s to the monochromatic cubicles of the 1980s and 1990s," and analyzes both the original architectural intentions and how workers have actually experienced these spaces. (I can affirm that working in a gray cubicle during much of my early adulthood was not a pleasant experience.)

I love her book cover! You can read more about the book and order it here.

Photofascism

Another new book of interest is Vanessa Rocco's Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, published by Bloomsbury. As the publisher points out,

"The 1930s provides a potent case study for every generation, and it is as urgent as ever in our global political environment to deeply understand the central role of visual imagery in what transpired. Photofascism demonstrates precisely how dictatorial regimes use photographic mass media, methodically and in combination with display, to persuade the public with often times highly destructive-even catastrophic-results."

This is an important study and should be of considerable interest to both scholars and the wider public, given the present rise of authoritarian-tending regimes in many parts of the world.

Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art

Returning to my shout-outs to interesting and important books by friends and colleagues, I must mention Marta Filipová's recent book Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art, published by Routledge in 2020 (it actually appeared in 2019, in a reversal of the more usual phenomenon of a book coming out after its copyright date).

While I have a review of Marta's excellent book forthcoming in Austrian History Yearbook, Cynthia Paces has written a much more in-depth review in the Journal of Art Historiography than I had space for, so please take a look at that!

It Was a Sad Day in US History

Yesterday's mob riot in Washington DC, which began with a peaceful but ill-informed protest by supporters of the current president, marks a tragic breakdown in social norms and shows the danger to our democracy that this president and would-be dictator has posed throughout his term of office. As others have noted, it is not a matter of rejoicing to have comparisons to the rise of Nazi Germany proved accurate. That Americans carrying Confederate flags and wearing clothing celebrating Auschwitz should break the Capitol windows to swarm in and threaten Congress, leave graffiti, and rummage through the desks of members of Congress, is a sad comment on our current situation but an unsurprising outcome of the lies and white-supremacist attitudes of this demagogue president and his enablers. These people left bombs for both Democrats and Republicans, and it is not surprising that one person was killed.

It is time to remove this president and heal our nation.