Art History Book List · 
Featured Title
Bessie Potter Vonnoh
Sculptor of Women
In the Gilded Age, when most sculptors aspired to produce monuments, Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872–1955) made significant contributions to small bronze sculpture and garden statuary designed for the embellishment of the home.…
Art History titles sorted by release date (or by book title):
Midwest Modern
The Color Woodcuts of Mabel Hewit
Edited by Jane Glaubinger
Midwest Modern: The Color Woodcuts of Mabel Hewit is the first book showcasing the work of an important modernist printmaker.An Ohio artist, Hewit (1903-1984), who came of age in the 1920s, was well aware of European modernism and other contemporary trends and worked in both representational and abstract styles.…
Philena’s Friendship Quilt
A Quaker Farewell to Ohio
Chenoweth’s research to discover the story behind a Quaker signature quilt made in Columbiana County, Ohio, in 1853 revealed not only the identity of the quilt recipient and details of her life and community, but also a striking feature of the quilt itself—a “hidden” design element created by the deliberate placement of names on the quilt’s surface. In Philena’s Friendship Quilt, Lynda Salter Chenoweth reveals the value of signature quilts as historic and social documents waiting to be read.
Bessie Potter Vonnoh
Sculptor of Women
In the Gilded Age, when most sculptors aspired to produce monuments, Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872–1955) made significant contributions to small bronze sculpture and garden statuary designed for the embellishment of the home.…
Rookwood and the American Indian
Masterpieces of American Art Pottery from the James J. Gardner Collection
By Anita J. Ellis and Susan Labry Meyn
The nation’s premier private collection of Rookwood art pottery featuring American Indian portraiture is on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum from October 2007 to January 2008.…
Paris on the Potomac
The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C.
Edited by Cynthia R. Field, Isabelle Gournay and Thomas P. Somma
In 1910 John Merven Carrère, a Paris-trained American architect, wrote, “Learning from Paris made Washington outstanding among American cities.” The five essays in Paris on the Potomac explore aspects of this influence on the artistic and architectural environment of Washington, D.…
The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin
In 1877 the thirty-year-old artist Mary Louise McLaughlin wrote China Painting, the first manual on the subject in the United States written by a woman for women. Extremely successful, it is now accepted as the book that launched the china painting movement in America.…
Art As Image
Prints and Promotion in Cincinnati, Ohio
Edited by Alice M. Cornell
Cincinnati was a major printing and publishing center from the earliest days of the Old Northwest Territory. The spectacular technological and artistic developments in the 19th-century printing trade nationally were reflected in the Cincinnati printmakers' achievements, many of which were promotional in nature.…
Rookwood and the Industry of Art
Women, Culture, and Commerce, 1880-1913
Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati--the largest, longest-lasting, and arguably most important American Art Pottery--reflected the country's cultural and commercial milieux in the production, marketing, and consumption of its own products.…
West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers
Echoes from the Hills
Tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, preserved for generations, handmade bed quilts are windows into the past. In 1983, three West Virginia county extension agents discussed the need to locate and document their state's historic quilts.…
Art and the Reformation in Germany
The Reformation had considerable impact upon the world of art in sixteenth-century Germany, but that impact was not everywhere a uniform one. Some early Protestant leaders reacted to what they viewed as the idolatrous misuse of visual imagery in late medieval Catholicism with a demand for total abolition of paintings and figurative sculpture from the churches.…
