For decades, commentators have acknowledged Andy Warhol's phenomenal impact on contemporary art. Unlike the many existing books about the artist, Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years is the first full-scale exploration of his tremendous reach across several generations of artists who in key ways respond to his groundbreaking work. Examining in depth the nature of the Warhol sensibility, the book is organized around five significant themes in the artist's work: popular consumer culture and tabloid news; portraiture and the cult of celebrity; issues of sexual identity and gender; artistic practices such as seriality, abstraction, and appropriation; and the role of collaboration in Warhol's ventures into filmmaking, publishing, and the creation of environments and spectacles. Each theme is delineated with visual "dialogues" between prime examples of Warhol's works and works in various media by some sixty other artists, among them John Baldessari, Robert Gober, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, and Ryan Trecartin. These juxtapositions not only demonstrate Warhol's overt influence but also suggest how artists have either worked in parallel modes or developed his model in dynamic new directions. The volume includes a major essay by Mark Rosenthal, original interviews with a number of artists featured in the book, and a visual archive and extensive illustrated chronology that chart the "Warhol effect" over the past fifty years.

Assistant Curator James Doyle explores a house form on view in Design for Eternity: Architectural Models from the Ancient Americas thought to have served as a temporary dwelling for gods and goddesses in the human world.

Pietà—"pity" in Italian from the Latin word for "piety"—has come to signify images of the Virgin Mary grieving over the dead body of Christ, an image that was accorded an exalted place in the piety of the Late Gothic period. During that troubled time, the Pietà was, as the author tells us, "like a talisman in a storm," a compelling and uplifting symbol. The impassioned devotion that grew up around the Pietà inspired the wealth of depictions surveyed in this book, which traces the rise, spread, and significance of the image in French sculpture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The 167 Pietàs illustrated here reveal a diversity that will surprise those for whom Michelangelo's Pietà has become an overpowering icon. Most intriguing are the inventive portrayals of the Virgin's emotional state; often she is viewed as caught up in the horror of the moment, but she is also shown praying or even gazing into the distance, as if contemplating comforting memories or the reunion to come. Her demeanor ranges from youthful innocence—the Purity that Time cannot age—to careworn maturity—Our Lady of Sorrows. There are further variations caused by regional differences in style, facial features, and clothing. All of these characteristics are examined in depth in five chapters, each devoted to a particular French region. The author has arranged the sculptures within each chapter according to their relationship with each other and in sequences that suggest the evolution of the style. In addition to photographs, which include details and comparisons with other sculptures, each chapter has a map locating the Pietàs under discussion. The sixth chapter summarizes the influences that flowed hack and forth across France until a national style emerged, in response to the Italian Renaissance, and caused the regional variations to disappear. The catalogue provides summary information about more than 1,250 Pietàs, which are arranged alphabetically by location. "Some Written Sources of the Pietà" addresses the origins of the image and explores its references in mystical writings. References are supplied in most catalogue entries, and a substantial bibliography gives suggestions for further reading. William H. Forsyth, Curator Emeritus of Medieval Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, has researched the material for this book throughout the extent of his sixty-year career. He is the author of a similar volume, The Entombment of Christ: French Sculptures of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, co-published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harvard University Press in 1970.

The figure painter Li Kung-lin, who lived in China from about 1041 to 1106, was the leading exponent of the Northern Sung scholar-official aesthetic. One hundred seven of his works were recorded in the great government catalogue of the imperial collection of paintings a few years after his death. Sadly, today only three of his works still exist. The handscroll of the Hsiao-ching, or Classic of Filial Piety, a classic of the orthodox canon of Confucianism, is one of those three. It is among the preeminent monuments of Chinese cultural and art history. A slight volume composed of eighteen chapters, the Classic of Filial Piety takes the form of a dialogue between Confucius and his disciple Tseng-tzu on the meaning and application of filial piety in the affairs of the individual and of the state. The text dates to the period between 350 and 200 B.C., long after either Confucius or his immediate disciples lived, but its subject, the governing of relationships among men and the rules of conduct by which society is made secure, was for centuries before and for centuries to come the keystone of Chinese society. Before Li's time, the art of painting had been a public and imperial art, conveying the images, ideas, values, and propaganda of the imperial court, the powerful hereditary families, and the great temples. In the eleventh century, under the inspiration of Li Kung-lin and a few others, painting was transformed into a formal mode of expression, which, like poetry, could serve to convey the mind of the artist as well as the emblems of those who controlled his life. For Li, art was a tool, a moral vehicle that allowed him to set out his views of the institutions, ideas, and conflicts of his time. Richard M. Barnhart, Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, in his beautifully written text, guides the reader through the symbolic world of Li Kung-lin, elucidating the significance of the Classic of Filial Piety in the context of Chinese art and cultural history, providing an exegesis of each of the eighteen chapters and revealing the artist's beliefs, his thoughts and emotions. Professor Barnhart's contribution is augmented by a biography of the artist by Robert E. Harrist, Jr., Associate Professor of Art and East Asian Studies at Oberlin College; an analysis of Li Kung-lin's calligraphy by Hui-liang J. Chu, Assistant Curator of Painting and Calligraphy at the National Palace Museum, Taipei; and a detailed account of the handscroll's conservation and mounting by Sondra Castile and Tekemitsu Oba, both of the Department of Asian Art Conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Former High School Intern Helen introduces some of her favorite ceilings in the Metropolitan Museum.

Managing Museum Educator Jackie Terrassa outlines her group's activities across Panama City.

By around 3200 B.C., the largest settlement in southern Mesopotamia, if not the world, was Uruk: a true city dominated by monumental mud-brick buildings decorated with mosaics of painted clay cones embedded in the walls, and extraordinary works of art.

Electronic Resources and Instructional Services Librarian Deborah Vincelli explores 1917 New York City through digitized photo albums.