MetPublications

Reframing medieval art through the lens of queer theory, this pioneering volume sharpens our understanding of conceptions of gender, the body, and eroticism

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum's collection. Highlights of volume 59 include new discoveries with regard to unexpectedly playful facade sculptures on a 16th-century English merchant's house; a study of small devotional paintings on copper made in Mexico by Nicolás Enríquez for the private use of a Spanish merchant; and the rich story of an Ottoman prayer rug, the restoration of which was overseen by previously overlooked 20th-century tastemaker Robert-Sadia Pardo.

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection. Highlights of volume 58 include an investigation of how boldly colored orange glass and enamels were produced at Qing imperial workshops; a rare portrait of Joanna de Silva, an Indian servant, by British artist William Wood in 1792; and the extraordinary discovery of a hoard of German silver cups and tankards hidden for more than two hundred years.

Medieval art history has long emphasized the glories of the Byzantine Empire, but less known are the profound artistic contributions of Nubia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and other powerful African kingdoms whose pivotal interactions with Byzantium had an indelible impact on the medieval Mediterranean world. Bringing together more than 170 masterworks in a range of media and techniques—from mosaic, sculpture, pottery, and metalwork to luxury objects, panel paintings, and religious manuscripts—Africa and Byzantium recounts Africa’s centrality in transcontinental networks of trade and cultural exchange. With incisive scholarship and new photography of works rarely or never before seen in public, this long-overdue publication sheds new light on the staggering artistic achievements of late antique Africa. It reconsiders northern and eastern Africa’s contributions to the development of the premodern world and offers a more complete history of the region as a vibrant, multiethnic society of diverse languages and faiths that played a crucial role in the artistic, economic, and cultural life of Byzantium and beyond.

Every two years the fall issue of The Met's quarterly Bulletin celebrates notable recent acquisitions and gifts to the collection. Highlights of Recent Acquisitions 2020–2022 include the Mantuan Roundel by Gian Marco Cavalli, a recently rediscovered tour de force from the early Renaissance; the archive of photographer James Van Der Zee, one of the most celebrated chroniclers of Black life in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance; a pair of sculptures by the renowned contemporary American artist Robert Gober; Thomas Sully’s magisterial portrait of Queen Victoria; and Poussin’s Agony in the Garden, one of only two accepted works by the artist in oil on copper. This publication also honors the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of The Met collection.

This latest volume in The Metropolitan Museum of Art symposia series reprises The Met's blockbuster exhibition Armenia! (2018–19)—the first major exhibition on the art of this highly influential culture at the crossroads of the eastern and western worlds. Building on the pioneering work of those who first established Armenian studies in America, these essays by a new generation of scholars address Armenia's roles in facilitating exchange with the Mongol, Ottoman, and Persian empires to the East and with Byzantium and European Crusader states to the West. Contributors explore the effects of this tension in the history of Armenian art and how those histories persist into the present, as Armenia continues to grapple with the legacy of genocide and counters new threats to its sovereignty, integrity, and culture.

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection. Highlights of volume 56 include an investigation into the politics that governed dispersal of a pair of Sèvres elephant-head vases during the French Revolution, a consideration of imagery used in a rare seventeenth-century Ethiopian prayer book, and a critique of the Museum’s early collecting of ancient art of the Americas.

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection. Highlights of volume 56 include an investigation into the politics that governed dispersal of a pair of Sèvres elephant-head vases during the French Revolution, a consideration of imagery used in a rare seventeenth-century Ethiopian prayer book, and a critique of the Museum’s early collecting of ancient art of the Americas.