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October 2019

Vol. 161 | No. 1399

Editorial

Powering down in Sydney

Sydney’s museums and art galleries are going through a period of upheaval. In August the Australian Museum, the oldest public museum in the country, closed for a year, principally to allow storage areas to be converted into new galleries for exhibitions. In early 2020 an even more venerable building, the convict barracks of 1811–19, which forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site on Macquarie Street, will reopen after a year’s closure during which the museum it houses is being transformed into ‘a new immersive visitor experience’.

 

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Exhibition Review

The Decorated Word: Writing and Picturing in Islamic Calligraphy. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Those unfamiliar with the breadth of Islamic art frequently assume that the importance of calligraphy derives from a broader prohibition against figural representation. However, as this remarkable exhibition shows, from the earliest Islamic period to the present, calligraphy has not replaced figures but operated alongside them and functioned as imagery. 

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  • Fountain, by Marcel Duchamp.

    Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’: the Baroness theory debunked

    By Bradley Bailey
  • Lidded container (‘hap’). Korea (Goryeo), thirteenth century

    Intertwined birds: Islamic artistic presence in Korean ceramics in the Goryeo period

    By In-Sung Kim Han
  • The funerary couch of An Jia

    The funerary couch of An Jia and the art of Sogdian immigrants in sixth-century China

  • Fall of man, by Hans Baldung Grien

    Identifying Hans Baldung Grien’s colour printer, c.1511–12

    By Elizabeth Savage
  • Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa driving his mail-coach in Nice, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s ‘Black countess’ identified

    By Oliver Wunsch
  • Portrait of Titus van Rijn, by Rembrandt

    All the Rembrandts – and more

    By Tico Seifert
  • Sharon Cather (1947–2019)

    Sharon Cather (1947–2019)

    By E. C. Fernie
  • Lapis and Gold: Exploring Chester Beatty’s Ruzbihan Qur’an. By Elaine Wright

    By Massumeh Farhad
  • St Paul’s Outside the Walls: A Roman Basilica, from Antiquity to the Modern Era. By Nicola Camerlenghi

    By Julian Gardner
  • Frame Work: Honour and Ornament in Italian Renaissance Art. By Alison Wright

    By Beth Williamson
  • Allegories and Subjects from Literature (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, 12). By Nils Büttner

    By Lisa Rosenthal
  • Precious Indian Weapons and Other Princely Accoutrements. By Salam Kaoukji; Rajput Arms & Armour: The Rathores & Their Armoury at Jodhpur Fort. By Robert Elgood

    By Arthur Bijl
  • La peinture religieuse à Douai sous l’Ancien Régime. By Françoise Baligand

    By François Marandet
  • Longford Castle: The Treasures and the Collectors. By Amelia Smith

    By Stephen Lloyd
  • The Global Flows of Early Scottish Photography: Encounters in Scotland, Canada, and China. By Anthony W. Lee

    By Lisa Stein
  • British Art for Australia, 1860–1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries. By Matthew C. Potter

    By Margot Osborne
  • Art and Emergency: Modernism in Twentieth-Century India. By Emilia Terracciano

    By Rattanamol Singh Johal