There was a photo essay in the NY Times online, detailing the Cai Guo-Qiang show at the Guggenheim and another in the LA Times online about the installation of a Richard Serra piece at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. Both got me thinking. I'd like to read a book about the people who move and install art like this. I mean, what does the trucker loading a Serra on the back of his trailer think about it all? What about the Japanese fisherman who are flown to NY to hand assemble an ancient fishing vessel in the Guggenheim gallery?... I hope someone would think of something better, but perhaps the book would be called Moving Art.

ArtBooks_MysteryReadersInternational73.xls

73 art mysteries, mentioned or reviewed in two special "art issues" of the Mystery Readers Journal, Spring 2005, and Summer 2005.

How about a Hol Edition of the works of William Blake? I have the Thames & Hudson book with facsimiles of all his Illuminated Books, and have often thought that, although it's mostly excellent, an edition with the retyped text appearing next to the orginal engraved pages (rather than in an appendix) would be more helpful. If someone were willing to write a concordance explaining the arcane references, you'd have the most accessible version of Blake's works yet. The images could come from the Blake Archive website, which is comprehensive, and a few of his writings have already been typed out on Wikisource.

ArtBooks_NBCCAward23.xls
23 books about art that were National Book Critics Circle Award winners or finalists, 1977-Present.

ArtBooks_NYTimes207.xls
207 books about art that have appeared in The New York Times. Roughly 1911-17, 1949-63, 1980s, 1996-2000.

Higher Than the Sky, the 1954 autobiography of
Frances Cranmer Greenman. Although it would have been ideal to publish it this fall, if at all, given this show at the Minnesota Museum of American Art.

The Missing Criticism: Photography

I'd like to see an English translation of Dietmar Elger's Gerhard Richter, Maler (Cologne, DuMont, 2002). Elger is a former assistant of Richter's and now runs the Gerhard Richter Archive in Dresden. His is the only biography of the artist.

Kate thought The Two Art Histories: The Museum and the University, edited by Charles Haxthausen, might be of interest.

Check out www.ArtDaily.com They have a really wonderful global snapshot of shows and related books which change a few times a week. Could be a great place for ideas for Hol Art Books. So glad you started this!

I think it would be interesting to do a book on popular western European/American artists and writers (so maybe two books) who fell out of cultural favor as sympathizers of Nazism. You hear about artists in this or that resistance (something more proletariat or communist) but rarely about artists who embraced Nazism. Who were they? And why? I specifcally think of Kees van Dongen but there must have been others...?

Joe told me "I always thought someone should do a series on visual art like Continuum's great 33 1/3 series on music."

Colin suggested Walter Pater's, The Renaissance.

Someone should do a book on museum docents. It would be called The Water Lilies and the cover would be a photograph of a string of pearls and a Monet Water Lilies scarf resting on top an semi-ornate dressing table.