Subject Guide: Art

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Art Exhibitions
2023  Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World Edited by Jeffrey Spier, Timothy Potts, and Sara E. Cole
2022  Cézanne : drawing by Jodi Hauptman and Samantha Friedman
2021  Mesopotamia : civilization begins, edited by Ariane Thomas and Timothy Potts
2020  Book of beasts : the bestiary in the medieval world, edited by Elizabeth Morison With Larisa Grollemond
2019  Nature's nation : American art and environment by Karl Kusserow and Alan Braddock
2018  Golden kingdoms : luxury arts in the ancient Americas, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, Timothy Potts, and Kim N. Richter; William Blake and the age of Aquarius by Stephen F. Eisenman, with contributions by Mark Crosby, Elizabeth Ferrell, Jacob Henry Leveton, W. J. T. Mitchell, and John P. Murphy (honorable mention)
2017  Cave temples of Dunhuang : Buddhist art on China's silk road, edited by Neville Agnew, Marcia Reed and Tevvy Ball; Degas : a strange new beauty by Jodi Hauptman (honorable mention); Hubert Robert by Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Yuriko Jackall (honorable mention); Jerusalem, 1000-1400 : every people under heaven, edited by Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holcomb (honorable mention)
2016  Power and pathos : bronze sculpture of the Hellenistic world, edited by Jens M. Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin; Kongo : power and majesty by Alisa LaGamma with contributions by Josiah Blackmore, Christine Giutini, James Green, Ellen G. Howe, Phyllis M. Martin, Adriana Rizzo, John K. Thornton, and Kristen Windmuller-Luna (honorable mention); Piero di Cosimo : the poetry of painting in Renaissance Florence by Gretchen A. Hirshauer and Dennis Geronimus with Virginia Brilliant, David Franklin, Alison Luchs, Serena Padovani, and Elizabeth Walmsley (honorable mention)
2015  Gauguin : metamorphoses by Starr Figura, Elizabeth Childs, Hal Foster and Erika Mosier; Carleton Watkins : the Stanford albums edited by Cantor Arts Center (honorable mention); Miguel Covarrubias by Georgia O’Keefe Museum (honorable mention)
2013  Home front : daily life in the Civil War North by Peter John Brownlee, Sarah Burns, Diane Dillon, Daniel Greene, and Scott Manning Stevens; First peoples of Canada : masterworks from the Canadian Museum of Civilization by Jean-Luc Pilon and Nicholette Prince ; with a foreword by Douglas Cardinal ; contributions by Ian Dyck, Andrea Laforet, and Eldon Yellowhorn (honorable mention); Magritte : the mystery of the ordinary, 1926-1938 by Anne Umland with essays by Stephanie D’Alessandro, Michael Draguet and Claude Goormans, and Josef Helfenstein (honorable mention)

Arts/Art History & Criticism/Art Technique
2023  The Villa Farnesina Palace of Venus in Renaissance Rome by James Grantham Turner
2022  Women artists, their patrons, and their publics in early modern Bologna by Babette Bohn
2021  A history of Arab graphic design by Bahia Shehab and Haytham Nawar
2020  Leonardo da Vinci rediscovered by Carmen C. Bambach
2019  Orientalist lives : western artists in the Middle East, 1830–1920 by James Parry
2018  The architecture of the Christian Holy Land : reception from late antiquity through the Renaissance by Kathryn Blair Moore; Ethiopia : the living churches of an ancient kingdom by Mary Anne Fitzgerald and Philip Marsden (honorable mention)
2017  Bosch and Bruegel : from enemy painting to everyday life by Joseph Leo Koerner; Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise : humanism, history, and artistic philosophy in the Italian Renaissance by Amy R. Bloch (honorable mention); The apparently marginal activities of Marcel Duchamp by Elena Filipovic (honorable mention)
2016  Art and risk in Ancient Yoruba : Ife history, power, and identity, c. 1300 by Suzanne Preston Blier; Art and vision in the Inca Empire : Andeans and Europeans at Cajamarca by Adam Herring (honorable mention); Skies of parchment, seas of ink : Jewish illuminated manuscripts, edited by Marc Michael Epstein; The miracle of analogy, or The history of photography, Part 1 by Kaja Silverman (honorable mention)
2015  The life within : classic Maya and the matter of permanence by Stephen Houston; Kurt Schwitters : space, image, exile by Megan R. Luke; The image of the Black in Western art by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; The mystic ark : Hugh of Saint Victor, art, and thought in the twelfth century by Conrad Rudolph
2013  The Gothic screen : space, sculpture, and community in the cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200-1400 by Jacqueline E. Jung; Mexico and American modernism by Ellen G. Landau (honorable mention)
2012  Inventing abstraction, 1910-1925 : how a radical idea changed modern art by Leah Dickerman; Gustav Klimt : the magic of line by Marian Bisanz-Prakken ; translated by Steven Lindberg (honorable mention); Venice from the water : architecture and myth in an early modern city by Daniel Savoy; An audience of artists : Dada, Neo-Dada, and the emergence of abstract expressionism by Catherine Craft (honorable mention)
2011  de Kooning : a retrospective by James Coddington; Tradigital blender : a CG animator's guide to applying the classic principles of animation by Roland Hess; Artists' magazines : an alternative space for art by Gwen Allen (honorable mention); Between Raphael and Galileo : Mutio Oddi and the mathematical culture of late Renaissance Italy by Alexander Marr (honorable mention); The controversy of Renaissance art by Alexander Nagel (honorable mention)
2010  The moment of Caravaggio by Michael Fried; The VES handbook of visual effects : industry standard VFX practices and procedures by Jeffrey Okun & Susan Zwerman; Contemporary Chinese art : primary documents, edited by Wu Hung with Peggy Wang (honorable mention); The experimental group : Ilya Kabakov, Moscow conceptualism, Soviet avant-gardes by Matthew Jesse Jackson (honorable mention)
2009  The gargoyles of Notre-Dame : medievalism and the monsters of modernity by Michael Camille; Bauhaus 1919-1933 : workshops for modernity by Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman (honorable mention); Sculpture and enlightenment by Erika Naginski (honorable mention); Drawn to life : 20 golden years of Disney master classes by Walt Stanchfield (honorable mention)
2008  Chinese calligraphy by Zhongshi Ouyang, Wen C. Fong, et al; Daring to look : Dorothea Lange’s photographs and reports from the field by Anne Whiston Spirn (honorable mention); Enchanted objects, enchanted lives : American women collectors and the making of culture, 1800-1940 by Dianne Sachko Macleod (honorable mention); The language of the muses : the dialogue between Roman and Greek sculpture by Miranda Marvin (honorable mention)
2007  Dynamic splendor : the wall mosaics in the Cathedral of Eufrasius at Poreč by Ann Terry and Henry Maguire; Stuart Davis : a catalogue raisonné by Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski (honorable mention)
2006  Pictures of nothing : abstract art since Pollock by Kurt Varnedoe; Other icons : art and power in Byzantine secular culture by Henry Maguire and Eunice Dauterman-Maguire (honorable mention)
2005  Antiquity and photography : early views of ancient Mediterranean sites by Claire L. Lyons, John K. Papadoulous, Lindsey S. Stewart, and Andrew Szegedy-Maszak; Alice Aycock : sculpture and projects by Robert Hobbs
2004  Christopher Wilmarth : light and gravity by Steven Henry Madoff; Cézanne in the studio : still life in watercolors by Carol Armstrong and Deborah Gribbon (honorable mention)
2003  The history of Japanese photography by Anne Wilkes Tucker, and others; Julia Margaret Cameron : the complete photographs by Julian Cox and Colin Ford
2002  Copper and bronze in art by David A. Scott; Monastic visions : wall paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea by Elizabeth S. Bolman (honorable mention)
2001  The Parthenon frieze by Jenifer Neils
2000  Piano roles : three hundred years of life with the piano by James Parakilas; The photographic art of William Henry Fox Talbot by Larry J. Schaaf (honorable mention)
1999  A descriptive catalogue of the music of Charles Ives by James B. Sinclair
1998  Image and memory : photography from Latin America, 1866-1994 : FotoFest, edited by Wendy Watriss and Lois Parkinson Zamora
1996  The shape of the holy : early Islamic Jerusalem by Oleg Grabar
1995  The romantic generation by Charles Rosen
1994  Alongshore by John R. Stilgoe
1993  The Oxford guide to classical mythology in the arts, 1300-1990s by Jane Davidson Reid
1992  International encyclopedia of linguistics, William Bright, editor-in-chief (2d ed. (2003) here)
1991  American genre painting : the politics of everyday life by Elizabeth Johns

The Charles C. Eldredge Prize is awarded annually by the Smithsonian American Art Museum to outstanding works of scholarship in the field of American art that provide new insight into works of art, the artists who made them, or aspects of history and theory that enrich our understanding of America's artistic heritage. Click Charles C. Eldredge Prize for more information.

2022  Against our will : sexual trauma in American art since 1970 by Vivien Green Fryd
2021  Michael Ray Charles : a retrospective by Cherise Smith
2020  Race experts : sculpture, anthropology, and the American public in Malvina Hoffman's Races of mankind by Linda Kim
2019  The synthetic proposition : conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art by Nizan Nizan Shaked
2018  The American school : artists and status in the late colonial and early national era by Susan Rather
2017  Transporting visions : the movement of images in early America by Jennifer L. Roberts
2016  John Sloan : drawing on illustration by Michael Lobel
2015  Isamu Noguchi's Modernism : negotiating race, labor, and nation, 1930–1950 by Amy Lyford
2014  Citizen spectator : art, illusion, and visual perception in early national America by Wendy Bellion
2013  Thomas Hart Benton and the American sound by Leo Mazow
2012  Slaves waiting for sale : abolitionist art and the American slave trade by Maurie D. McInnis
2011  The modern eye : Stieglitz, MoMA, and the art of exhibition, 1925–1934 by Kristina Wilson
2010  Monument wars : Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the transformation of the memorial landscape by Kirk Savage
2009  Pop L.A. : art and the city in the 1960s by Cécile Whiting
2008  Pre-modernism : art-world change and American culture from the Civil War to the Armory Show by J. M. Mancini
2007   Picturing the city : urban vision and the Ashcan School by Rebecca Zurier
2006  Art in a season of revolution : painters, artisans, and patrons in early America by Margaretta M. Lovell
2005  Winslow Homer : the nature of observation by Elizabeth Johns
2004  Shooting Kennedy : JFK and the culture of images by David M. Lubin
2003  Outlaw representation : censorship and homosexuality in twentieth-century American art by Richard Meyer
2002  Picturing Chinatown : art and orientalism in San Francisco by Anthony W. Lee
2001  Joseph Cornell : stargazing in the cinema by Jodi Hauptman
2000  The great American thing : modern art and national identity, 1915-1935 by Wanda M. Corn
1999  Machine in the studio : constructing the postwar American artist by Caroline A. Jones
1998  Inventing the modern artist : art and culture in Gilded Age America by Sarah Burns
1997  Creating picturesque America : monument to the natural and cultural landscape by Sue Rainey
1996  Reframing abstract expressionism : subjectivity and painting in the 1940s by Michael Leja
1995  The empire of the eye : landscape representation and American cultural politics, 1825–1875 by Angela L. Miller
1994  Spiritual spectacles : vision and image in mid-nineteenth century Shakerism by Sally M. Promey
1993  Benton, Pollock, and the politics of modernism : from regionalism to abstract expressionism by Erika Doss
1992  Hiram Powers : Vermont sculptor, 1805–1873 by Richard P. Wunder
1991  Public sculpture and the civic ideal in New York City, 1890–1930 by Michele Bogart
1990  Realism, writing, disfiguration : on Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane by Michael Fried; Reading American photographs : images as history : Mathew Brady to Walker Evans by Alan Trachtenberg
1989  Views and visions : American landscape before 1830 by Edward J. Nygren, Bruce Robertson, Amy Meyers, Theresa O'Malley, and John Stilgoe

The Robert Motherwell Book Award is given annually and carries a prize of $20,000 awarded to the author of an outstanding publication in the history and criticism of modernism in the arts—including the visual arts, literature, music and the performing arts. Nominations are normally made by publishers and the winner is chosen by a panel of distinguished scholars and writers. Click Dedalus Foundation for more information about the sponsors of this award.

2023  Queer behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art by David J. Getsy
2022  Object lessons : case studies in minimal art - the Guggenheim Panza Collection Initiative by Francesca Esmay, Ted Mann, and Jeffrey Weiss2021  Heritage and debt : art in globalization by David Joselit
2020  Picasso's Demoiselles : the untold origins of a modern masterpiece by Suzanne Preston Blier
2019  Cezanne's gravity by Carol Armstrong; Eugenics in the garden by Fabiola López-Durán
2018  FRAY : art and textile politics by Julia Bryan-Wilson
2017  Radicalism in the wilderness : international contemporaneity and 1960s art in Japan by Reiko Tomii
2016  Paul Klee : the visible and the legible by Annie Bourneuf
2015  Kurt Schwitters : space, image, exile by Megan R. Luke
2014  Novelty : a history of the new by Michael North
2013  Machine art, 1934 by Jennifer Jane Marshall
2012  The book as instrument : Stéphane Mallarmé, the artist's book, and the transformation of print culture by Anna Sigrídur Arnar (MSUM author); Honorable Mention: Gutai : decentering modernism by Ming Tiampo
2011  The experimental group : Ilya Kabakov, Moscow conceptualism, Soviet avant-gardes by Matthew Jesse Jackson
2010  Cézanne's other : the portraits of Hortense by Susan Sidlauskas
2009  Harmony + dissent : film and avant-garde art movements in the early twentieth century by R. Bruce Elder
2008  Vitebsk : the life of art by Aleksandra Shatskikh
2007  Russian modernism between East and West : Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow avant-garde by Jane Ashton Sharp
2006  Revisiting The waste land and The annotated waste land with Eliot's contemporary prose by Lawrence Rainey
2005  Ovid and the moderns by Theodore Ziolkowski
2004  Orientalist aesthetics : art, colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880–1930 by Roger Benjamin
2003  History of the Surrealist movement by Gérard Durozoi
2002  Anselm Kiefer by Daniel Arasse