Adolf Loos: A Private Portrait [Book Review]
Reviewed by Christopher Long
When Claire Beck married Adolf Loos in the summer of 1929, he was nearly 60 and in fading health, but still working. She was 24. Her father was adamantly opposed to the marriage and refused to give his blessing, but Claire persisted. The marriage was a disaster.
The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations / Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean World: Trade, Gift Exchange and Artistic Transfer [Book Review]
Reviewed by Alicia Walker
These volumes offer new understandings of the ways medieval and early modern cross-cultural artistic interaction operated, and how such relations shaped visual and material culture.
Bauhaus: Art as Life [Exhibition Review]
Reviewed by Catherine Moriarty
While exploring the School’s peculiarities, the exhibition at the Barbican, perhaps inadvertently, encourages the visitor to frame things in a wider cultural and political context.
The Administration of Things: A Genealogy
Ben Kafka
What does it mean to "replace the government of persons by the administration of things?" And what do we do about all this paperwork?
Notes from the Field
Preserving Value
Miriam ClavirIn the early 1980s, a few years after I began working as the first conservator at the UBC Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Canada, I was asked to agree to a loan of pieces that would be handled and worn in a very non-museum environment...
Spring 2013 Issue Coming Soon
Paul StirtonThe Spring 2013 issue of West 86th—our fifth—has just gone off to press and I would like to share with you a little of what you can expect in the mail or on JSTOR in the coming weeks.
Where Does the Digital Humanities Come From?
Jeffrey SchnappThe roots of computational work in the humanities stretch back to 1949 when the Jesuit scholar Roberto Busa, working in collaboration with IBM, undertook the creation of an automated approach to his vast Index Thomisticus...
Conservation Moments
Paul Stirton and Daniel LeeWe have invited conservators to think of a specific moment when their area of conservation underwent a radical change. This may have been due to a conference or publication, the development of new materials, the introduction of new equipment...
Painted Pomp: Art and Fashion in the Age of Shakespeare
Christine GriffithsPainted Pomp: Art and Fashion in the Age of Shakespeare
The Holburne Museum, Bath
26 January 2013–6 May 2013
