Faculty Books – Department of the History of Art

The Woven Image: The Making of Mongol Art in the Yuan Empire
2026, Yale University Press
Yong Cho, author

East Asia’s Yuan Empire (1271–1368), led by the nomadic Mongol people and Qubilai Khan (1215–1294), was marked by cross-cultural exchange and significant developments in trade, technology, and infrastructure. The Mongol visual culture, however, has often been ignored or dismissed as insignificant in the operations of the Mongols’ own empire. The Woven Image: The Making of Mongol Art in the Yuan Empire highlights Yuan tapestries and fabric images to demonstrate Mongol visual culture’s impact on the history of Chinese and East Asian art.

Yong Cho gives medieval Mongols historical agency in constructing new forms of cultural expression and visual knowledge, correcting the misperception that members of the Mongol court primarily played a passive role in the realm of the arts. Cho argues that Mongol rulers oversaw radical experimentations with the artform, facilitating trans-Eurasian movement and interactions of artists and techniques, which led to woven tapestries becoming unprecedented objects of political and sacral power. Using the Vajrabhairava mandala—the best-preserved example of woven image produced during the Yuan—as an anchor, the book examines the Mongol court’s weaving as a reflection of the court itself, including the changing hierarchy of art within the court, politics of patronage, ritual function, and the construction of textiles.

Der Kreis der Poesie: Friedrich Schlegel entwirft ein Universum des Wissens. (The Circle of Poetry: Friedrich Schlegel Outlines a Universe of Knowledge)
2025, Frankfurt/Main: Deutsches Romantik-Museum
Johannes Endres

Our gaze falls on a circle in the middle of a sheet of paper belonging to the broader context of a collection of notes for which their author, Friedrich Schlegel, considered using the title “Philosophical Apprenticeship.” The circle is a sketch in the dual sense of the word of being both a draft and a pictorial representation. It is therefore a complex form of secondary text that is linked to other textual elements on the same sheet, as well as referring to other texts by Schlegel.

Ich liebe Deine Liebe. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Friedrich Schlegel und Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis). Eine Ausstellung im Deutschen Romantik-Museum, 26. April -28. August 2022. Katalog
(The Correspondence of Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich von Hardenberg. An Exhibition at the German Museum for Romanticism, Catalogue)
2022, FRANKFURT/MAIN: FREIES DEUTSCHES HOCHSTIFT
Johannes Endres, co-authored with Nicholas Saul

“I love your love”, writes Friedrich Schlegel in 1797 to his friend Friedrich von Hardenberg, known later also as “Novalis”. That is a new and unheard-of tone for a correspondence, even for a literary correspondence among poets. What had happened that made such a tone possible? The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition of Schlegel’s and Hardenberg’s epistolary manuscripts at the new German Romanticism Museum in Frankfurt attempts to answer that question by foregrounding the cultural and intellectual dimension of the relationship between both men and the friendship circle around them

From Museums to the Internet: Collecting in the Twenty-First Century

2022, Rochester: Camden House

Johannes Endres, co-edited with Christoph Zeller

Seminal to the rise of human cultures, the practice of collecting is an expression of individual and societal self-understanding. Through collections, cultures learn and grow. The introduction of digital technology has accelerated this process and at the same time changed how, what, and whywe collect. Ever-expanding storage capacities and the accumulation of unprecedented amounts of data are part of a highly complex information economy in which collecting has become even more important for the formation of the past, present, and future. Museums, libraries, and archives have adapted to the requirements of a digital environment, as has anyone who browses the internet and stores information on hard drives or cloud servers. In turn, companies follow the digital footprint we leave behind. Today, collecting includes not only physical objects but also the binary code that allows for their virtual representation on screen. Collecting in the Twenty-First Centuryidentifies the impact of technology, both new and old, on the cultural practice of collecting as well as the challenges and opportunities of collecting in the digital era. Scholars from German Studies, Media Studies, Museum Studies, Sound Studies, Information Technology, and Art History as well as librarians and preservationists offer insights into the most recent developments in collecting practices.

Käthe Kollwitz in Los Angeles 1937: Eine Ausstellung zwischen antiquarischen Büchern und der Hollywood Anti-Nazi League
2022, DEUTSCH FORUM FÜR KUNSTGESCHICHTE, DFK PARIS
Françoise Forster-Hahn, author

In June 1937, Jacob Zeitlin opened an exhibition of graphics by Käthe Kollwitz in his bookstore gallery in Los Angeles. It was the first exhibition of Kollwitz’s work in Southern California. The exhibition and the glamorous vernissage were co-sponsored by the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy. The evening’s speakers were German writer and activist Ernst Toller and American composer George Antheil. Among the illustrious guests were Fritz Lang, Richard Neutra, Arnold Schönberg, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill and other celebrities from the film industry and the German-Austrian exile community. The Kollwitz exhibition became the focal point of the city’s central areas of conflict: it was not just a cultural event in Zeitlin’s bookstore gallery, but above all a targeted political action by the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. Kollwitz’s work was thus caught in the crossfire of the conflict between the anti-fascist struggle of the Anti-Nazi League and the violent actions of National Socialist groups in Los Angeles. In this political tension, Käthe Kollwitz was perceived as an “anti-Nazi artist” and her exhibition was ascribed an active role in the fight against Hitler. The chapters of the book trace how the exhibition became the crossroads of four biographies: Käthe Kollwitz, Jacob Zeitlin, Ernst Toller and George Antheil.

Sculpture Collections in Europe and the United States, 1500-1930
2021, Brill, in association with The Frick Collection
Malcolm Baker, co-editor

Exploring the variety of forms taken by collections of sculpture, this volume presents new research by twelve internationally recognized scholars. The essays delve into the motivations of different collectors, the modes of display, and the aesthetics of viewing sculpture, bringing to light much new archival material. The book underscores the ambiguous nature of sculpture collections, variously understood as decorative components of interiors or gardens, as objects of desire in cabinets of curiosity, or as autonomous works of art in private and public collections. Emphasizing the collections and the ways in which these were viewed and described, this book addresses a significant but neglected aspect of art collecting and contributes to the literature on this branch of art and cultural history.

This book evolved from a symposium “Sculpture Collecting and Display, 1600-2000,” organized by the Center for the History of Collecting, that was held at The Frick Collection on May 19 and 20, 2017. Both the book and the symposium were made possible through the generous support of the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation.