All Things Bright and Beautiful (2008) Catalog No. 58

All Things Bright & Beautiful: California Impressionist Paintings from The Irvine Museum 

Impressionism found fertile ground in California during the first decades of the twentieth century.  Emerging some thirty years after Monet painted Impression: Sunrise (1872), the canvas that gave the school its name, California’s plein-air movement can justly be called Impressionism’s Indian summer, remarkable not only for its belatedness, but also for its fervor.  The companion book to a traveling exhibition, All Things Bright & Beautiful includes 69 color illustrations, along with four essays by leading authorities, which chronicle the course of Impressionist painting in California, its relationship to earlier and contemporaneous schools, and the importance of artistic interchange among artists who moved in a out of the state.  

202 pages

Price: $25.00 each

Under the Radar: Leslie Lerner (2008) Catalog No. 57

Under the Radar: Leslie Lerner

Under the Radar, a series of exhibitions that showcase the work of late-career artists who have yet to receive appropriate attention, debuted with work by Leslie Lerner, who came to artistic maturity in the counter-culture of 1960s San Francisco.  Part science fiction, part psychedelic apparition, the paintings in this exhibition are ultimately meditations on Lerner’s California experience.

The catalogue includes a curatorial essay by KMA Executive Director Neil Watson and a contributing essay by independent curator, essayist, and critic Lilly Wei.

31 pages

Price: $15.00 each

Here's the Thing:The Single Object Still Life (2008) Catalog No. 55

The catalog includes a curatorial essay by acclaimed artist Robert Cottingham and 40 postcards with images from the exhibition.

Price: $25.00 each

Shattering Glass: New Perspectives (2007) Catalog No. 55

Shattering Glass: New Perspectives intended to shatter peoples expectations of glass: what it is, what it looks like, how it functions, and its perceived limitations of scale, texture, and malleability.  It showcased stained, cast, cut, sandblasted, etched, slumped, and blown glass, as well as found, crystal, neon, mosaic, and mirrored glass.  The 22 featured artists reflect a wide range of aesthetic sensibilities and offer novel approaches to an ancient art form.

Price: $20.00 each

Children Should Be Seen (2007) - Catalog No. 54

Children Should Be Seen: The Image of the Child in American Picture-Book Art presents original illustration art by 83 artists in a comprehensive survey of the best children’s book art of the last 10 years. Organized by the Katonah Museum of Art and The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, the exhibition focuses on the changing image of the child in picture books and thus in contemporary culture.

Price: $30.00 each

Steinunn Thorarinsdottir: Horizons (2007) - Brochure No. 53

Steinunn: Horizons is a site-specific installation by Icelandic artist Steinunn Thorarinsdottir, made up of 12 life-size cast iron and glass figures standing precariously among the trees. The figures appear and disappear from behind the trees as you stroll through the Sculpture Garden. The rough surface of these sculptures echoes the texture of the tree trunks, while horizontal bands of transparent glass allow the daylight to show through their lean bodies. 

Four-page brochure

Price: $0.00 each

Ancient Art of the Cyclades (2006) - Catalog No. 52

This exhibition celebrates the much-admired works of art created during the third millennium B.C. by craftsmen of the Cycladic islands of the Aegean Sea.  Early Cycladic objects, once viewed as archaeological curiosities, are today a source of widespread fascination and appeal.  Their simple lines and spare elegance inspired such modern artists as Brancusi, Modigliani, and Picasso.

Knowledge of Cycladic civilization has been fathomed through its artifacts, since there was no written language to help archaeologists.  Curator Dr. Pat Getz-Gentle, an author and scholar who has devoted her professional life to the field, has written the essay for the comprehensive catalogue in which she puts forth the latest findings and her own theories on Early Cycladic culture. 64 pp.

$30 Non-Members

Price: $25.00 each