Together with important First Nations material, the Thomson Canadian Collection is the largest of all private holdings of Canadian art. There are rare and incomparable examples of Northwest Coast Aboriginal art. Krieghoff’s inspired accounts of life in the Canadas, prior to Confederation, bring the light and atmosphere of history fully into the present. A staggering power to capture the fleeting and the fugitive in paint still distinguishes the work of the early 20th-century painter Morrice.

Ken Thomson was no mere trophy gatherer. A man of passionate commitment and of wide-ranging cultural curiosity, the late Lord Thomson of Fleet (1923–2006) began a half-century of collecting in 1953 and continued to the very end of his life. The most important private art collection in Canada, it has drawn the respect of museum curators worldwide.

To celebrate the recent opening of the Thomson Collection galleries at the transformed Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto--redesigned by Canadian architect Frank Gehry--five new books recording Ken Thomson's historic donation of 2,000 superb works of art have been published by Skylet in association with the AGO. All five jacketed paperbacks are available in a box set.

The 1876 United States Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was not only the United States' first important world's fair, it signaled significant changes in the very shape of knowledge. Quarrels between participants in the exhibition represented a greater conflict as the world transitioned between two different kinds of modernity--the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the High Modern period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.At the center of this movement was a shift in the perceived relationship between seeing and knowing and in the perception of what makes an object valuable--its usefulness as a subject of study and learning versus its ability to be bought and sold on the market. Arguments over design of the Centennial reflected these opposing viewpoints. Initial plans were rigidly structured, dividing the exhibits by country and type. But as some exhibitors became more interested in the preferences of their audience, they adopted a more modern stance. Objects traditionally displayed in isolated glass boxes were placed in fictive context -- the necklace draped over a mannequin, the vase set on a table in a model room. As a result, the audience could more easily perceive these items as commodities suitable for their own environments and the fair as a place to find ideas for a material lifestyle.Designing the Centennial is a vital first look at the design process and the nature of the display. Bruno Giberti uses official reports of the U.S. Centennial Commission and photographs of the Centennial Photographic Company, as well as the ephemera of the exhibition and literary accounts in books, magazines, and newspapers to illuminate how the 1876 fair revealed changes to come: in future world's fairs, museums, department stores, and in the nature of display itself.

Early Celtic art' - typified by the iconic shields, swords, torcs and chariot gear we can see in places such as the British Museum - has been studied in isolation from the rest of the evidence from the Iron Age. This book reintegrates the art with the archaeology, placing the finds in the context of our latest ideas about Iron Age and Romano-British society. The contributions move beyond the traditional concerns with artistic styles and continental links, to consider the material nature of objects, their social effects and their role in practices such as exchange and burial. The aesthetic impact of decorated metalwork, metal composition and manufacturing, dating and regional differences within Britain all receive coverage. The book gives us a new understanding of some of the most ornate and complex objects ever found in Britain, artefacts that condense and embody many histories.

This stimulating collection of essays analyzes the music of films ranging from mainstream and subcultural American films through case studies of those from China, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria, Latin American, and the Caribbean, and includes a variety of key films, periods, and studio practices. The focus of the essays is the social and cultural meanings of film music, not just composers' careers and the musical support of storyline and psychology that are the center of most film music studies. Global Soundtracks is the first anthology to suggest methods for understanding how the conventions of standard film music became localized and expanded around the world in many different periods and cinema systems, and to suggest comparative approaches of analysis. Contributors include: ABDALLA UBA ADAMU, B. BALASUBRAHMANIYAN, BRENDA BERRIAN, GREG BOOTH, ERIC A. GALM, JOSEPH GETTER, MARILYN MILLER, MARTIN STOKES, SUMARSAM, and SUE M.C. TUOHY.

"Listening to the Beat of the Bomb" UPK author Charles Wolfe discusses his work and his new book Country Music Goes to War in the NEW YORK TIMES. While Toby Keith suggests that Americans should unite in support of the president, the Dixie Chicks assert their right to criticize the current administration and its military pursuits. Country songs about war are nearly as old as the genre itself, and the first gold record in country music went to the 1942 war song "There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere" by Elton Britt. The essays in Country Music Goes to War demonstrate that country musicians' engagement with significant political and military issues is not strictly a twenty-first-century phenomenon. The contributors examine the output of country musicians responding to America's large-scale confrontation in recent history: World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the cold war, September 11, and both conflicts in the Persian Gulf. They address the ways in which country songs and artists have energized public discourse, captured hearts, and inspired millions of minds. Charles K. Wolfe, professor of English and folklore at Middle Tennessee State University, is the author of numerous books and articles on music. James E. Akenson, professor of curriculum and instruction at Tennessee Technological University, is the founder of the International Country Music Conference. Together they have edited the collections The Women of Country Music, Country Music Annual 2000, Country Music Annual 2001, and Country Music Annual 2002.

In the late 1980s, the major conservative Christian groups suffered a series of public setbacks. In Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars, Thomas R. Lindlof asserts that the Christian right realigned itself and tried to solidify its self-appointed role as moral regulator of the entertainment industry in response to Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. The film, which was banned from release at some theaters and publicly protested at many others, became a tipping point for the American culture wars. At stake was the freedom of artistic expression from government and religious intervention. The Last Temptation of Christ did not simply alienate audiences of the Christian right but incited them. Lindlof chronicles the many setbacks the filmmakers experienced, from production problems to the uproar following the film's release and the launch of a crisis control plan at the studio. Lindlof conducted interviews with major players behind the movie -- including Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Willem Dafoe, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael Ovitz -- and explores the film's effect on the American cultural and political landscape. Combined film study, studio history, and cultural analysis, Hollywood Under Siege closely examines the film that jeopardized and reenergized Martin Scorsese's career and served as flash point for the ongoing ideological conflicts between Hollywood and the religious right.

Founder and long-time director of the Opera Company of Boston and the first woman to conduct the Metropolitan Opera, Sarah Caldwell was one of America's best known and most adventurous conductors and opera directors. Her career spanned her wildly successful and innovative productions of classical operas such as Offenbach's Voyage to the Moon, Don Quixote, and Madama Butterfly to projects like "Making Music Together," which in 1988 brought together musicians and composers from the Soviet Union and the United States. Caldwell's work earned her many honorary degrees and she received the National Medal for the Arts from President Clinton in 1997. Challenges is based on a series of interviews Rebecca Matlock conducted over a period of three years before Caldwell's death in 2006. This intimate memoir gives us Caldwell's perceptions in her own unique, indomitable voice.

This book makes a powerful case that film can be as valuable a tool as primary documents for improving our understanding of the causes and consequences of war. Why We Fought: America's Wars in Film and History is a comprehensive look at war films, from depictions of the American Revolution to portrayals of September 11 and its aftermath. The volume contrasts recognized history and historical fiction with the versions appearing on the big screen. The text considers a selection of the pivotal war films of all time, including All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Why We Fought reveals how film depictions of the country's wars have shaped our values, politics, and culture, and it offers a unique understanding of American history.

South Africa is recognized as a site of both political turmoil and natural beauty, and yet little work has been done in connecting these defining national characteristics. Washed with Sun achieves this conjunction in its multidisciplinary study of South Africa as a space at once natural and constructed. Weaving together practical, aesthetic, and ideological analyses, Jeremy Foster examines the role of landscape in forming the cultural iconographies and spatialities that shaped the imaginary geography of emerging nationhood. Looking in particular at the years following the British victory in the second Boer War, from 1902 to 1930, Foster discusses the influence of painting, writing, architecture, and photography on the construction of a shared, romanticized landscape subjectivity that was perceived as inseparable from \u201cbeing South African,\u201d and thus helped forge the imagined community of white South Africa. In its innovative approach to South Africa's history, Washed with Sun breaks important new ground, combining the persuasive theory of cultural geography with the material specificity of landscape history.

MTV Networks is the undisputed international music video gatekeeper, with stations from Australia to India, Russia to Brazil. Canada is one of the few countries to resist its global reach. Although the network has launched "MTV Canada" with an affiliate, that station limits its offerings primarily to talk shows and lifestyle programming. Many Canadians regard the Toronto-based MuchMusic as the nation's important domestic source of music videos-substantially different from, and superior to, American-based MTV. In her new study of the two music channels and their different cultures, Kip Pegley compares the musical and extra-musical content of MuchMusic and MTV, and examines how the stations construct their two distinct identities. Moving beyond analysis of individual videos, Pegley looks at the overall programming of each station, uncovers the well-hidden matrixes of power that dictate both which performers appear and what genres get the most airtime, and delves into how ideas of gender and race serve to "naturalize" distinct and complex nationalist ideologies. In so doing, she discovers why Canadians feel so protective of their music video station, and why they successfully have withstood the MTV invasion.

The Dancer Within is a collection of photographic portraits and short essays based on confessional interviews with forty dancers and entertainers, many of them world-famous. Well-known on the concert stage, on Broadway, in Hollywood musicals, and on television, the personalities featured in this book speak with extraordinary candor about all stages of the dancer's life-from their first dance class to their signature performances and their days of reflection on the artist's life. The Dancer Within reveals how these artists triumphed, but also how they overcame adversity, including self-doubt, injuries, and aging. Most of all, this book is about the courage, commitment, love, and passion of these performers in their quest for artistic excellence. The reader will quickly realize that "the dancer within" is a metaphor of the human spirit.

In addition to the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, sports offer a versatile arena for discussion of class, race, gender, sexuality, and other social facets. All-Stars and Movie Stars: Sports in Film and History examines the interplay between sports films and the defining characteristics of the cultures from which they emerge. This important and unique collection will serve scholars of film, popular culture, and American history.

This Futurist opera was presented in snowy Petrograd in December 1913 to a riotous audience. The atonal music composed by Mikhail Matiushin accompanied the alogical libretto by Aleksei Kruchenykh, the action taking place in the 10th Land where "the windows of houses all face inside" and "all the paths go up to the earth", while the hands of a clock "both go backwards immediately before dinner". The cardboard costumes by Kazimir Malevich were surfaces lit by his roving coloured spotlights, the characters bigger than life. This first English translation by Dr. Evgeny Steiner is accompanied by the Russian facsimile, followed by what is known of the musical score by Mikhail Matiushin, and a selection of Malevich's Cubist costume designs. Contemporary documents, from statements by the artists and photographs, to press reviews complete the contents of Vol. 1. Vol. 2 is a collection of scholarly essays on the Russian Futurist arts of language, music and performance, with Kruchenykh's own contribution to the "New Ways of the Word" first published in 1913. Together, this two volume collection of Victory Over the Sun presents Russian Futurism in all its guises. It is a tool for study, while it invites recreations of it today by theatre groups and those interested in the arts of language.