A musical instrument that has played a vital role in Latin American music cultures—the harp—is the subject of this new work, the first study of its kind to be published in English. John Schechter presents a history of the harp in Spain, traces its introduction into colonial Latin America, and describes its modern roles in the diverse cultural centers of Mexico, Paraguay-Argentina-chile, Venezuela, and Peru. He then turns his focus to his own field research in the Quichua culture of northern highland Ecuador, an area that has receive considerably less scholarly attention than many of its Latin American neighbors. The reader will meet a community of harp maistrus on the slopes of Mt. Cotacachi and become familiar with their culture, their particular instrument and its tuning, and their performance practices. Numerous photographs, musical transcriptions, and diagrams illustrate and enliven the text. The Indispensable Harp is unique for its integration of aspects of music and cultural history, organology, and performance practice, treating in considerable depth both broadly established music-ethnographical practices. It speaks to the conclusion that the vital role of the harp in Latin American music history has now been properly acknowledged and documented.

Kenyon Cox (1856-1919) studied painting in Paris from the fall of 1877 to the fall of 1882. These edited letters, written to his parents in Ohio, describe Cox’s daily routine and explicate French art teaching both in the academic setting of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and in private ateliers, such as those of Emile Carolus-Duran and Rodolphe Julian. The letters are important for insight into this system and into Paris art student life in general. Cox was an academic, committed to learning traditional drawing and composition before establishing his own artistic identity. Most of the students who crowded the ateliers and academics of Paris shared this view, and Cox’s experiences and opinions, often pungently expressed, were thus more typical of this great majority than were those of experimenters such as the impressionists, who were gaining notice while Cox was in Paris. He commented frequently on current fads, fancies, and serious developments in the art world during this transitional period.

An Artist of the American Renaissance is a collection of Cox’s private correspondence from his years in New York City and the companion work to editor H. Wayne Morgan’s An American Art Student in Paris: The Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1877-1882 (Kent State University Press, 1986). These frank, engaging, and sometimes naïve and whimsical letters show Cox’s personal development as his career progressed. They offer valuable comments on the inner workings of the American art scene and describe how the artists around Cox lived and earned incomes. Travel, courtship of the student who became his wife, teaching, politics of art associations, the process of painting murals, the controversy surrounding the depiction of the nude, promotion of the new American art of his day, and his support of a modified classical ideal against the modernism that triumphed after the 1913 Armory Show are among the subjects he touched upon.

In this first biography, H. Wayne Morgan focuses on Cox’s development and personality, treating his art as an expression of his idealism. Cox was born in Warren, Ohio grew up in the Cincinnati area, and attended the McMicken School of Design there. His art training continued in Paris, where he studied for five years in the academic setting of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as well as in private ateliers, such as those of Emile Carolus-Duran, Rodolphe Julian, and Jean-Leon Gerome. An academic, Cox was committed to learning traditional drawing and composition before establishing his own artistic identity. Cox became well known as a muralist during the prosperous years from 1897 to the 1920s, providing works for the new state capitols of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, the Library of Congress, and several public buildings in New York City. His large allegorical decorations rested on a thorough knowledge of Italian renaissance masters, many of whose works he had seen as an impressionable student. In addition, Cox’s gift for pithy phrases and his obvious knowledge gained him considerable prominence as a critic and reviewer. Throughout his career, he emphasized the values of craftsmanship and of attachments to ongoing traditional ideals that emphasized harmony, order, and unity of artist and public.

The conflict between modern and traditional art is one of the best known episodes in American cultural history. The modernists on the war in the sense that their styles and attitudes of mind dominated the discussion and production of new art. But the traditionalists remained strong in the arenas of public opinion and taste. It is a testament to the importance of the ideas involved that the basic issues are not yet settled in the larger cultural world. Kenyon Cox, a painter as well as critic, revealed a steadfast devotion to the ideals of a high art tradition, derived in his later years chiefly from admiration for the Italian Renaissance. He knew western art history, surveyed the current art scene in many reviews and analytical essays, and wrote with careful attention to the canons of scholarship. Royals Cartissoz, the art editor of the New York Tribune for over fifty years, was an appreciator and connoisseur. His belief in “beauty” in a well-done and recognizable form left him open to more innovation than was the case with Cox. He based his views on a self-confessed ideal of common sense that left the art experience open to any sensitive person. He was well suited to speak to and for the growing middle class in the Progressive era. This viewpoint was equally adaptable, if more debatable intellectually, when modernism triumphed. The fact that he remained a significant figure in art circles long after his tastes ceased to be dominant, testified to the nature of the audience for whom and to whom he spoke. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., was the most realistic of these critics in estimating how art appealed in society. He knew a lot about many things and was concerned to see that the arts remained integrated in public esteem and thought. Mather took comfort from the history of art, which revealed to him that great works and their creators could survive time and criticism. This sense of historical process and his great need for the unifying power of art experience let Mather escape the bitterness that so affected Cox, and to a lesser extent Cortissoz, as tastes changed. The artist’s mission was to maintain and extend forms of art that promoted order and integration in society and in individual personalities. Society in turn had to see the artist as a harbinger of an intensified emotional life, but which accommodated changed perception in constructive ways. The chief fear of the traditionalists was that the new art, which seemed shocking in form and disruptive in intent, would separate artist and public to the detriment of both.

Village landmark churches are a unique legacy of the settlement of Ohio’s Western Reserve. The forty 19th century churches in Village Landmark Churches—still found today, although some now serve as solitary sentinels in disappearing villages and communities—were selected because they have significance in one or more of the following dimensions: architecture, history, or their dominant position in their setting.

Author Douglas R. Hoffman explores sacredness in houses of worship and examines the critical question of what architectural elements contribute to make sacred space. His underlying premise is that sacred space, while ephemeral, can be perceived and understood through a careful investigation of its architecture. After laying out the definition and architectural attributes of sacred space, Hoffman examines four contemporary American examples: the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, Adath Jeshurun Synagogue in Minnetonka, Minnesota, the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City, and Riverbend Church in Austin, Texas.

With absorbing prose and detailed images, Stephen Fliegel unlocks the secrets of these sacred objects and portrays medieval Christian believers as souls kindred to us—humans striving in their own time to discern and preserve religious meaning and decorum. Fliegel provides a rich, understanding of the allegorical images that helped the church to communicate to the faithful through visual narrative and also provides a rich, textured understanding of sacred art and architecture.

Resplendent Faith is a richly illustrated compendium of the typical objects found within medieval church treasuries and includes a discussion of their form and function and their significance in the medieval religious service. Fliegel places this survey of the medieval liturgical treasury within its broad historical framework and considers the art representative of the most significant sacral objects produced during the Middle Ages. Supported by exquisite illustrations as well as a glossary and bibliography, Resplendent Faith will appeal to art historians, those interested in the history of religion and liturgical practices, and nonspecialists who appreciate medieval art or religious icons and reliquaries.

In 1999, Lisa Moore, one of Funky’s friends and a main character, discovered she had breast cancer. Batiuk, unsure about dealing with such a serious subject on the funny pages, decided to go ahead with the story line. He approached the topic with the idea that mixing humor with serious and real themes heightens the reader’s interest. Lisa and husband Les faced the same physical, psychological, and social issues as anyone else dealing with the disease.