Blythe House in London, originally built in 1903 for the Post Office Savings Bank, has for more than 40 years been the store for three national museums, the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, holding millions of historical objects.

The collections have now been moved to purpose-built sites, and Blythe House’s closure has been marked by specially commissioned photographs of its architecture, collections and occupants, along with personal testimonies. Memory Bank takes you behind the scenes to reveal one building’s hidden history and its unique place in British cultural and social life.

In Autumn 2019 a spectacular suite of new Medicine galleries is due to open at the Science Museum in London, representing the biggest and most ambitious project that the Museum has ever undertaken. This permanent exhibition will include the historic collection of Henry Wellcome, whose personal treasure trove has been on long-term loan to the Museum for over 40 years, as well as the Science Museum’s own medical holdings. Medicine: An Imperfect Science is formed of stand-alone but connected chapters, generously illustrated, within which a rich history of medicine collecting can be found.

Contents:
Director’s Foreword; Funders’ Forewords; Preface;
Chapter 1: Collecting Medicine; Chapter 2: Prostheses at the Science Museum; Chapter 3: The Problematic Body; Chapter 4: The Child in the Iron Lung; Chapter 5: Created through Conflict; Chapter 6: Preventing Cervical Cancer; Chapter 7: Hearing Distant Voices; Chapter 8: The Pharmacy Shop; Chapter 9: Modelling Life; Chapter 10: Emotional Objects; Notes; Further Reading; Index; Author Biographies; Acknowledgements and Illustration Credits.

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection has a unique mandate to celebrate the art of Canada, which it does within a great building in beautiful grounds overlooking the Humber River Valley.

Originally a home completed in 1954 for entrepreneur Robert McMichael and his wife Signe, the building became an unofficial gallery when they began allowing passers-by and school parties inside to view their art collection. In 1965 they took the visionary step of donating their home, collection and land to the Province of Ontario and in 1966 the McMichael officially opened to the public.

The permanent collection now consists of over 6,400 artworks. The iconic Canadian landscape artist Tom Thomson (1877-1917) features prominently, as do his colleagues the Group of Seven and their contemporaries. Historic and contemporary Indigenous art accounts for over a third of the total collection and is celebrated in the Gallery’s dynamic exhibition program.

Here, Ian Dejardin’s personal selection of highlights offers a revelatory opportunity to engage with the essence of Canada as portrayed in the luminous works of its artists.

During the Gilded Age of the late 1880s through the 1910s the era of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt American millionaires displayed their prosperity by building and decorating impressive homes. In 1893 Richmond-born financier James Henry Dooley and his wife, Sallie May Dooley, added to those prestigious residences with their 100-acre country estate, Maymont. The Dooleys spent three decades filling its sumptuous interiors with treasures from around the world and establishing Maymont’s magnificent gardens, landscape, and architecture. They bequeathed Maymont, completely intact, to the City of Richmond for its use as a public museum and park. Today, Maymont stands out as an unusually complete example of a Gilded Age estate. The residence, gardens, and grounds remain very much as they were during the Dooleys years, while the restored servant areas present the upstairs-downstairs lifestyle of the times.

This lavishly illustrated and elegantly designed volume introduces the opulent estate of Maymont to all those who are interested in the history and grandeur of the Gilded Age in the United States.

Mathematics is not just the product of lone geniuses dreaming up ideas remote from everyday life: real social, political and cultural problems drive developments in the subject, and the work of mathematical practitioners surrounds us everywhere we look. This lavishly illustrated book accompanies the Science Museum’s landmark new Mathematics: The Winton Gallery, due to open in December 2016. It includes an absorbing series of essays by world-leading experts in the history and modern practice of mathematics, alongside vivid accounts of mathematical work underpinning some of our most fundamental human concerns, from life and death to war and peace, money, trade, beauty and our attempts to control nature’s most elemental forces. Mathematics uses the world-class collections of the Science Museum to offer a vivid vision of the people behind 400 years of mathematical practice, driven by problems that affect us all.

The Meadows Museum in Texas is famed for its collection of Spanish art. This new series documents exceptional loans from other American collections, offering audiences the singular opportunity to view them within the context of Meadows’s permanent collection. The Frick’s magnificent ‘King Philip IV of Spain’ by Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) is the subject of this volume.

Celebrating masterpieces of Spanish art in US collections, each book in this exciting new series focuses on a single work of art on the occasion of its exhibition at the Meadows Museum in Dallas, TX. An in-depth essay by a contemporary scholar illuminates the work, along with detailed photography of the object featured in a lively design. 

Written by Peter Cherry and full of sumptuous illustrations, this inaugural volume of the Masterpiece in Residence series highlights the stunning painting Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber (c. 1602) by Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560–1627) from the San Diego Museum of Art. 

Manchester Museum, part of the University of Manchester, has completed its most ambitious transformation in a generation. 

This beautiful guidebook is a tour and souvenir of the new museum, featuring spectacular objects and stories that inspire curiosity, learning and imagination. It also explores how the museum works to build understanding, empathy and compassion for our world and each other. 

It is a perfect keepsake for visitors and those wishing to understand more about the museum’s extraordinary collections and mission. 

Making a Life in Photography: Rollie McKenna is the first career survey of prolific American photographer Rosalie (Rollie) Thorne McKenna (1918–2003). After graduating from Vassar College in 1940, McKenna worked independently as a sought-after architectural and portrait photographer, making unique yet underrecognised contributions to American modernism and documentary photography. McKenna’s work was published in numerous books and magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Fortune. The Museum of Modern Art’s 1955 landmark exhibition Latin American Modernism Since 1945 featured her architectural photographs. She made iconic portraits of artists and writers, including W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Alexander Calder, Truman Capote, T. S. Eliot, Laura Gilpin, Henry Moore, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, Anne Sexton, Dylan Thomas, and Eudora Welty. McKenna’s story as a queer woman would be lost if not for her dedication to preserving her own legacy. She embraced photography to explore the complexities of human experience — including her own.

Visitors to Louvre Abu Dhabi usually discover the exceptional architecture of the museum first, in particular its iconic dome. They then discover the universal message of the museum through its collections, exhibitions and unique narrative. Visiting Louvre Abu Dhabi is an invitation to navigate across time, geography and civilisations through its different buildings and pavilions.

On the occasion of the museum’s 5th anniversary, this book serves as a celebration of this institution in all its dimensions: its architecture, its rich collections, its interactive programmes, its diverse visitors and the staff who give the museum life. The quotations found in the book are a small selection of those displayed throughout the galleries; here, they invite readers to look at the museum from a different perspective.

Text in English, French and Arabic.

The Lobkowicz Collections, housed in Prague, rank among the oldest and largest privately owned collections of art, music and archival documents in Central Europe. The Music Archive, comprising some 5,000 items, was assembled over three centuries by family members who were not only patrons, but also enthusiastic collectors and performers. The personal affinities and tastes of these aristocratic amateurs are reflected in such musical treasures as 18th-century lute tablatures; oratorios and operas in manuscript and early prints; performing parts for symphonies and quartets by Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart. All of these objects preserve a history of devotion to music, and cultivation of a vibrant music culture. This book offers an introduction to the rich musical traditions of the Lobkowicz family, and to highlights from its music collections.