This overdue investigation of George Grosz’s (1893–1959) most compelling paintings, drawings, prints, and collages offers a reassessment of the celebrated German Expressionist during his years in Berlin—from his earliest artistic endeavors to the trenchant satirical images and searing depictions of moral decay between the World Wars for which he is known today. Menacing street scenes, rowdy cabarets, corrupt politicians, wounded soldiers, greedy war profiteers, and other symbols of Berlin’s interwar decline all met with the artist’s relentless gaze, which exposed the core social issues that eventually led to Germany’s extreme nationalist politics. Featuring masterpieces as well as rarely published works, this book provides further insight into the artist’s creative pinnacle, reached during this critical and ominous period in German history.

Over the past three decades, Ralph T. Coe has traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada to assemble this collection of Native American art, one of the finest in private hands today. Immersed in the cultures of Native America, he has come to know artists and artisans, traders, dealers, and shop proprietors, selecting the very best they have to offer. This catalogue tells the stories of nearly two hundred of these objects, combining art history with personal reminiscence. As director of the Nelson Gallery of Art (now the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), Kansas City, and as curator of two landmark exhibitions, "Sacred Circles: Two Thousand Years of North American Indian Art," in 1976, and "Lost and Found Traditions: Native American Art 1965–1985," in 1986, Coe helped to create in the art-museum world a climate conducive to exhibitions of Native American art in which work was recognized and presented as art rather than as ethnology or anthropology, as it generally has been in the past. The Ralph T. Coe Collection includes representative pieces from most Native American geographic regions and historical periods, beginning with objects dating back to the fourth millennium B.C. Many examples—men's shirts with ermine fringe, weapons, and button blankets—evoke the heroic lifestyle of the past, while small objects, such as tipi and kayak models, dolls, and tiny moccasins, speak to a more intimate significance. Ritual objects imbued with spiritual meaning—masks and katsinas, tablitas and medicine bundles—as well as utilitarian objects, such as pottery and baskets, also have a strong presence. Notably, several works by living artists are represented, the most recent made in 2001. An area that has often been ignored in private collecting is what Coe has termed Indian fancies, cross-cultural objects that illustrate the influence, beginning in the eighteenth century, of European taste on Native American art. Cumulatively, the collection provides and overview of the cultures of the American Indian. The catalogue begins with an absorbing autobiographical essay by the collector that recounts his early years in Cleveland, growing up in a highly cultured family surrounded by Impressionist and early modern paintings, and continues through his career as museum director and his life in the Southwest as an art collector. Also included are essays on the aesthetic appreciation of American Indian art. J. C. H. King of the British Museum writes a history of collecting; Judith Ostrowitz focuses on Native American art in the context of theory and text. In his foreword, Eugene V. Thaw writes about Coe as his friend and fellow collector and the role Coe has played in the awareness of the artistic heritage of Native America.

Florence and Herbert Irving Associate Chief Librarian Tony White discusses some of the "cool books" acquired by Thomas J. Watson Library in 2017.

Watson Library Manager Dana Hart discusses the legacy of the French printing firm Firmin-Didot.

An investigation into materials used by Thornton Dial sheds new light on the artist's practice and the symbolism of his work.

Ashira Loike and Beth Edelstein highlight the Department of Objects Conservation's recent collaboration with students from the Rochester Institute of Technology, which resulted in three digital games based on objects from the Museum's collection.

Curator Beth Saunders explores two of Adolf de Meyer's great muses: the arts and culture of Japan, and his wife, Olga.

Senior Library Associate for Systems Daisy Paul discusses Watson Library's extensive collection of books on knitting.

Published 50 years after Christian Dior's "New Look" of 1947, and accompanying an exhibition at The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this book presents a chronology of Dior's creations. They are drawn chiefly from The Costume Institute's collections, which include an extensive record of the designer's achievement as recognized by his New York clients of the 1940s and 1950s. Among the illustrations are extravagant evening wear, chic accessories, and details of Dior tailoring, as well as documentary photographs from the Dior Archives, Paris. The text places Dior's achievement in the cultural perspective of postwar renewal: the desire for optimism, the return to innocence, and the reclaiming of the pleasures of fine clothing and other sumptuary arts. Analyzing the "New Look," the authors set out to demonstrate the abiding impact of Dior's formulation of an icon for fashion's postwar renaissance.

Conservator Lucretia Kargère describes her public conservation of the tomb effigy of Jean d'Alluye at The Cloisters.