Books

An expert's guide to Tutankhamun: five must-read books on the Egyptian pharaoh

All you ever wanted to know about King Tut, from CT scans and DNA studies to the perfect book for “any little pharaohs that you might know”—selected by the biographer and journalist Garry Shaw

Book Clubinterview

Q&A | Hettie Judah on how galleries, museums and art schools treat artist mothers

A new publication unpicks how becoming a parent can detrimentally affect an artist’s career and suggests ways the art world can do better

Booksreview

Listed works and unlawful removals: what owners can and cannot do with their art and heritage

A brisk but dense guide to the complex rules surrounding the removal of art from public and private spaces

Booksreview

A new way of understanding India’s Modern and contemporary art laid out in new book

An idiosyncratic Desert Island Discs of works, selected by 54 contributors, considers the role of “memory sites” in making sense of Indian output since 1900

Book Clubfeature

Four things you probably didn’t know about Tutankhamun’s mask

To mark 100 years since its discovery, Garry Shaw, the author of a new biography of the Egyptian Boy King, reveals some little-known facts about the world’s most famous death mask

Booksreview

England’s late-Georgian churches—long dismissed as 'mere preaching boxes'—are reappraised in new book

Built for a booming population, their architecture has been unfairly maligned, argues this survey

Booksreview

How England's Civil War laid waste to the country's grandest private house

Book tells tale of how Oliver Cromwell wiped Basing House—which provided shelter to the famous classical architect Inigo Jones—off the map

Booksreview

Animal, vegetable, mineral: Swedish ironmaster dynasty's collection captures the natural world

Objects and documentation collected by the Timm family offer a unique insight into a past world

Book Clubfeature

Susan Sontag's influential 1977 book On Photography is reissued

New version published by The Folio Society includes new insights from curator Mia Fineman who has selected key accompanying images

Trigger Warning: a new column on censorship in art today, from must-read books to which algorithms are policing creative content

Our chief contributing editor Gareth Harris will examine attacks on freedom of artistic expression and issues like ‘cancel culture’, providing valuable insights and context

Scholar finds sketch of Michelangelo in margin of book

Fifteenth-century edition of The Divine Comedy includes witty drawing of Renaissance master at work on a sculpture, claims James Hall

Booksreview

New publication brings Norwegian medieval wooden church—an art history Sleeping Beauty—to ravishing life

It may lie in a remote fjord but the Viking-built stave structure sits within a far wider context

Booksreview

Innovative or elitist? A new book takes a close look at Latin American Modernism

A study of four 20th-century artists concentrates on close examination of works and intentions, rather than grand simplifying narratives.

Book Clubfeature

Tate collection's dalliance with the occult is explored in new book

A new publication picks out art, artefacts and ephemera from the institution's collection that deal with occult themes, many of which have never been seen publicly. Here, the book’s author selects some of the highlights

‘This show was in some way my own wake’: Solange Knowles on her Venice Biennale performance, the focus of a new book

The artist, musician and performer discusses ‘In Past Pupils and Smiles’, a performance she staged in Venice in 2019 that is chronicled in a new book

How partition divided a centuries-old manuscript between India and Pakistan—and continues to plague the region's heritage

Research on the Chandayan of Mulla Da’ud has suffered ever since 24 folios narrating the love story were split up across the border in 1947

Who is Octavia Butler and why is the art world obsessed with her writing?

The late author’s sci-fi stories have inspired artists such as Alberta Whittle, Candice Breitz, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Precious Okoyomon

Booksreview

Stolen by the Nazis and a talking point in Cold War Poland: the strange journey of Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine

Eden Collinsworth tells a breathless, flowery tale of the celebrated Cecilia Gallerani portrait

The best art books for summer 2022—as recommended by artists, curators, museum directors and dealers

From artist biographies and essay collections to a dystopian novel, surf culture and a rock’n’roll autobiography

Compiled by José da Silva and Gareth Harris
Booksinterview

Brendan Fernandes on the afterlives of dance performances that breathe new meanings into sculptures

The artist’s new book—the seventh in his career—chronicles his recent dance and sculpture-based projects at the Noguchi Museum, the Graham Foundation and the Whitney

Booksreview

Tales of tragedy and heroism: book of photographs bring England’s shipwrecks to vivid life

Volume comprises superb black-and-white images of 68 shipwrecks off the notoriously treacherous south-west coast, beginning in 1871

Book Clubfeature

The sensory language of paint, from Matisse banishing blue to Rococo’s love affair with pink

In her new book, Chloë Ashby explores the power of colour in art. Here, she takes us on a whirlwind tour and recommends four other fascinating new books on colour

Booksreview

Adam Dant’s on-the-nose political maps are delightfully vulgar—and merit a ‘Partygate’ update

New book collects the illustrator’s maps that range from UK political sleaze to the renaming of American states using cockney rhyming slang

An expert's guide to Raphael: five must-read books on the Italian Old Master

All you ever wanted to know about Raphael, from a page-turner monograph to a tome of his “irresistible” drawings—selected by the art historian David Ekserdjian

Booksreview

New book reveals how women artists in the 'Age of Revolutions' confound stereotypes

This statistics-driven investigation shows that many of the hundreds of women exhibiting in London and Paris between 1760 and 1830 eschewed the still-life