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Much of the literature engaging the repatriation of museum collections has focused on claims made by postcolonial nation-states, or by Indigenous communities in settler-colonial contexts such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Latin America, specifically, has been relatively absent from these debates because of the enduring legacies of Indigenism as a key politics of nation making, justifying the appropriation of Indigenous cultural production in favor of the nation. The very few instances of repatriation in the region have been negotiated between specific museums and private collectors, who have returned objects to countries of origin, rather than through… Full Review

In recent decades scholars of Latin American cultures have extensively examined the complexities of nation building from multiple disciplinary viewpoints. Natalia Majluf’s Inventing Indigenism: Francisco Laso’s Image of Modern Peru expands this discussion, focusing on Peru as an emerging nation tangled within the development of Indigeneity. She establishes a core premise of the book with the opening statement: “Throughout this book the term Indian refers fundamentally to the object of indigenist discourse, an abstraction that must be distinguished from the indigenous populations that the term purportedly designates” (n.p.). Subsequent pages present a broad range of information and theoretical perspectives on… Full Review

The term “autotheory” first caught my eye in late 2019, if I am remembering pre-pandemic time correctly. I had just finished Heather Christle’s lyrical The Crying Book (Catapult, 2019) during a particularly rough and emotional period in my life, when I often found myself weeping or full-on crying in the kitchen, what Christle named “the best—I mean the saddest—room for tears.” At the time, I was a senior fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, simultaneously working through personal loss while generating new words around Hannah Wilke’s performance art from the 1970s. Working on Wilke necessitates recognition of the deep… Full Review

In one of the first descriptions of Indigenous arts of the Americas, in the late fifteenth century, Fray Ramón Pané recognized that sculptures in what is now Hispaniola were not like those he knew in Europe. Inspired by environmental forces of deities and ancestors—known to the Taínos as zemís (or cemís)—rulers and sculptors collaborated to embody specific identities in three-dimensional forms that were then activated in ceremonies to become vital, oracular agents in their communities. Their extraordinary, volumetric forms and complex imagery confounded Pané, especially the faces of the zemí beings. They were grimacing as if… Full Review

Why talk about sculpture and the decorative arts together? A number of scholars, such as Penelope Curtis, Martina Droth, and Claire Jones (the latter coedited both the volumes reviewed here), as well as the exhibitions Taking Shape: Finding Sculpture in the Decorative Arts (Henry Moore Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008–09) and Sculpture Victorious: Art in an Age of Invention, 1837–1901 (Victoria & Albert Museum and Yale Center for British Art, 2014–15), have convincingly made the case for doing so. The fact that this approach still feels novel more than a decade after the question was first put forward… Full Review

In the final passages of Art for People’s Sake, Rebecca Zorach offers a remarkable reading of a photograph of a young man using shaving cream to write “Black Power” at the intersection of Homan and Madison on Chicago’s West Side. The photograph, taken by journalist Kenneth Lovette, was published in the Chicago Sun-Times to document the rioting that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968. For Zorach, however, it also documents an event in the history of African American art. “With brilliant creativity,” Zorach writes, the young man “captions the entire experience of the riots, making… Full Review

Islam and Heritage in Europe is based on a workshop held in 2019 at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), founded and directed by Sharon Macdonald at the Humboldt University of Berlin. The volume’s twelve contributions reflect a strong connection to the CARMAH group and its anthropological focus, but they also address a larger range of fields where Islamic heritage in Europe is relevant. Interestingly, the disciplines and specializations of the authors are mostly located at the intersections of anthropology, art history, media studies, musicology, political science, and sociology. Islamic studies and (trans-)regional studies… Full Review

The edited volume Imaging and Imagining Palestine: Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens, 1918–1948 is an ambitious, complex book that makes significant contributions to the history of photography on a number of fronts, going well beyond the specific context of Palestinian photo history, compelling as that subject is. The book is part of a current research project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), “Crossroads: European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine (1920–1950); A Connecting History.” Other components of the research project have included an international scholarly workshop and a 2020 exhibition of the work of the… Full Review

An overwhelming display of selfish ambition, treachery, betrayal, and megalomania defines the art—from small works to large—commissioned by Ludovico Sforza and analyzed by Simon Hewitt in Leonardo da Vinci and the Book of Doom: Bianca Sforza, the Sforziada & Artful Propaganda in Renaissance Milan. A dedication to detail characterizes Hewitt’s chronicle, opening with synopses of the lives of those persons central to the volume, which are extremely helpful, given the historical complications of the text. Next, “Notes on Names” tracks the genealogy of the Sforza-Viscontis, identifying monikers so that readers will not be confused, as intricate genealogical connections are… Full Review

I intend to engage the book under review with the respect and sympathy its challenging, adventurous spirit requests. This encounter was, indeed, a transformative experience; Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages not only made me examine assumptions of my own positionality as a scholar of Byzantine art history, but also asked me to read more deeply—to listen in to—the writings of excellent scholars in the field of intersectional studies. Byzantine art history needs interventions such as this book. It is known as a field that has made small steps toward reckoning with contemporary trends in art… Full Review