Art and Architecture

From climate change forecasts and pandemic maps to Lego sets and Ancestry algorithms, models encompass our world and our lives. In her thought-provoking new book, Annabel Wharton begins with a definition drawn from the quantitative sciences and the philosophy of science but holds that history and... More

In 1971 a small group of Aboriginal artists from Australia’s remote Central and Western Deserts changed the face of global art history. The township of Papunya was founded in 1959 as a settlement for Aboriginal people who were relocated from their homelands. Living in cramped conditions, the... More

Much of twentieth-century design was animated by the creative tension of its essential duality: is design an art or a science? In the postwar era, American architects sought to calibrate architectural practice to evolving scientific knowledge about humans and environments, thus elevating the... More

The COVID-19 pandemic has re-ignited discussions of how architects, landscapes, and urban planners can shape the environment in response to disease. This challenge is both a timely topic and one with an illuminating history. In The Topography of Wellness, Sara Jensen Carr offers a chronological... More

Over his eight-decade career, John Clemmer (1921–2014) captivated curators, collectors, and casual art lovers alike with his paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures. Clemmer was active in a community of artists—centered on the Arts and Crafts Club of New Orleans—whose work came to define... More

Every Sunday from late August to Father’s Day, a second line parade snakes through the neighborhoods and backstreets of New Orleans. The parades are hosted by social aid and pleasure clubs (SAPCs), civic organizations that have been fixtures in Black New Orleans since the nineteenth century. Born... More

As Eudora Welty observed, "One place understood helps us know all places better." Nowhere is this more apropos than in her home state of Mississippi. Although accounts of its architecture have long conjured visions of white-columned antebellum mansions, its towns, buildings, and landscapes are... More

Despite their peaceful, bucolic appearance, the tree-lined streets of South African suburbia were no refuge from the racial tensions and indignities of apartheid’s most repressive years. In At Home with Apartheid, Rebecca Ginsburg provides an intimate examination of the cultural landscapes of... More

Enrique Alférez was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, but for almost seventy years, he worked in New Orleans, where he left a lasting imprint through his figurative sculptures, monuments, and fountains. Katie Bowler Young has gained unprecedented access to Alférez’s personal and family holdings and has... More

The man who envisioned and realized such landmark buildings as the Salk Institute, the Kimbell Art Museum, and the National Assembly complex in Bangladesh, Louis Kahn was born in what is now Estonia, immigrated to America, and became one of the towering figures in his adopted country’s built world... More

For six months in 1974, two young photographers, fresh out of art school in Chicago, traveled through Cajun country, documenting the people, festivals, material culture, and haunting landscapes of Acadiana and its coastal outposts. Never before published or exhibited as a group, the 163 black-and-... More

The American landscape is host to numerous works of religious architecture, sometimes questionable in taste and large, if not titanic, in scale. In her lively study of satire and religious architecture, Margaret Grubiak challenges how we typically view such sites by shifting the focus from... More

Early to mid-twentieth-century America was the heyday of a car culture that has been called an "automobile utopia." In American Autopia, Gabrielle Esperdy examines how the automobile influenced architectural and urban discourse in the United States from the earliest days of the auto industry to the... More

As it churns toward its terminus in southeastern Louisiana, the Mississippi River becomes a wide, muddy superhighway of activity, matched in might only by the megastructures of heavy industry that line its banks. The section of the river from Baton Rouge to New Orleans doubles as one of the most... More

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[Book description not available]

From Dallas–Fort Worth to El Paso, Goodnight to Marfa to Langtry, and scores of places in between, the second of two towering volumes assembled by Gerald Moorhead and a team of dedicated authors offers readers a definitive guide to the architecture of the Lone Star State. Canvassing Spanish and... More

Human beings in the 21st century hunger, often unconsciously, for places to live that are more than efficient, economical machines. Inhabiting the Sacred offers sound and innovative guidance to both citizens and planning professionals who seek to transform public spaces into sites that answer not... More

For roughly a century, the log cabin occupied a central and indispensable role in the rapidly growing United States. Although it largely disappeared as a living space, it lived on as a symbol of the settling of the nation. In her thought-provoking and generously illustrated new book, Alison... More

Cars, single-family houses, fallout shelters, air-conditioned malls—these are only some of the many interiors making up the landscape of American suburbia. Indoor America explores the history of suburbanization through the emergence of such spaces in the postwar years, examining their design, use,... More

Mount Vernon, despite its importance as the estate of George Washington, is subject to the same threats of time as any property and has required considerable resources and organization to endure as a historic site and house. This book provides a window into the broad scope of preservation work... More

Contemporary art, interdisciplinary research, traditional Appalachian culture, and advanced technology converge in The Mountain Lake Symposium and Workshop: Artists in Locale. Published to coincide with the exhibition of the same name, the book showcases the collaborative creative works that... More

Fish Town is an inspired documentary project focused on preserving, through photography and oral history recordings, the cultural and environmental remains of southeastern Louisiana’s fishing communities. Owing to a dying wild-caught seafood industry and a rapidly vanishing coastline, the places... More

St. Mary’s County is where colonial Maryland began, with the establishment of St. Mary’s City on the site of an ancient Yaocomico village as Maryland’s first capital in 1634. Southern Maryland has been home to human occupation for at least 12,000 years, and since 1634 the area has seen myriad... More

This collection of essays by leading scholars and practitioners addresses a timely and essential question: How can we design, plan, and sustain built environments that will foster health and healing? With a salutogenic (health-promoting) focus, Healthy Environments, Healing Spaces addresses a range... More