By Donna Tennant
Sister Wendy’s American Collection
By Sister Wendy Beckett
British nun and art historian Sister Wendy Beckett has achieved worldwide fame through her popular art appreciation books and PBS television specials. In her latest work, she travels to the United States to explore the collections of six top museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, TX, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Never content to stick with one style or medium, Sister Wendy discusses a wide range of artworks from around the world, from ancient Chinese ceramics to medieval art to 20th-century Japanese fashions. Artists featured include Georgia O’Keeffe, Dale Chihuly, Albert Bierstadt, and John Singer Sargent. A companion six-part television series will air on PBS stations this spring. 2000 HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 288 pages, 399 color photographs, $40 hardbound (ISBN 0-06-019556-8)
In The Traces: Railroad Paintings of Ted Rose
Introduction by Thomas H. Garver
For more than 50 years Santa Fe artist Ted Rose has been documenting the changing face of America’s railways. His watercolors capture the beauty of life along the rails, such as workers loading supplies or making repairs and passengers waiting for the next train to arrive. The stars of his paintings are the locomotives themselves, either at rest in a railway station or plowing across snow-covered fields. In the Traces: Railroad Paintings of Ted Rose presents 60 works by Rose along with comments by the artist about each piece. “I work to have my paintings take on a life of their own,” Rose explains. “I think of them as small fictions, part of a narrative, set in place and time, with my own sense of reality to bring them off. If I’m able to set the contextual stage well enough, viewers can see the play or experience my reality as akin to their own.” 2000 Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 152 pages, 60 color illustrations, $49.95 hardbound (ISBN 0-253-33769-0)
Understanding Northwest Coast Art: A Guide to Crests, Beings, and Symbols
By Cheryl Shearar
This new book by Cheryl Shearar, owner of Salmonberry Gallery in Toronto, explores the many facets of artwork by Native tribes of the Northwest Coast. Designed as a reference tool, the book features a dictionary-style guide to symbols, crests, and figures commonly found on totem poles, masks, prints, basketry, and weavings. The author also describes the differences in art styles among the various tribes and explains the role of art, myth, and ceremony in their culture. The book is illustrated throughout with archival photographs and contemporary artwork.2000 University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 192 pages, 70 black-and-white illustrations, $17.95 softbound (ISBN 0-295-97973-9).
Featured in March 2001