• Best Books on the Art Museum - The Art Museum: From Boullee to Bilbao by Andrew McClellan
  • Best Books on the Art Museum - A View from the Pacific: Re-Envisioning the Art Museum by Michael Govan
  • Best Books on the Art Museum - Anti-Museum by Adrian Franklin
  • Best Books on the Art Museum - Closed on Mondays: Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Dinah Casson
  • Best Books on the Art Museum - Living Museums: Conversations with Leading Museum Directors by Donatien Grau

Best Books on the Art Museum, recommended by Charles Saumarez Smith

How has the architecture, vision, financing and public role of art museums around the world been transformed in the last century? And what does the history of art museums presage for their future as contested sites of cultural significance in the context of the pandemic’s challenge to public gathering places? Charles Saumarez Smith, one of the UK’s leading museum figures, brings us five books that reveal both the historic, civic humanist mission of the art museum, and its antithesis in the face of twenty first century challenges.

  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Emil and the Detectives by Eileen Hall (translator) & Erich Kästner
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Private View: The Lively World of British Art by Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), Bryan Robertson & John Russell
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - A Free House!: Or, The Artist as Craftsman by Walter Richard Sickert
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Memoirs of the Life of John Constable: Composed Chiefly of His Letters by C.R. Leslie
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Nollekens and his Times: Comprehending A Life Of That Celebrated Sculptor, And Memoirs Of Several Contemporary Artists

The best books on Lucian Freud, recommended by William Feaver

Though ferociously private, Lucian Freud spoke about painting, the art world and his life and loves to his confidante and frequent collaborator, William Feaver, on the phone most weeks for many years. Feaver’s transcript forms the core of his definitive two-volume biography. He speaks with us about the best books for understanding the life and work of this renowned painter, and the very particular collaboration that led to this magisterial account of one of the finest painters of the last century.

  • The best books on John Ruskin - The Life of John Ruskin by W. G. Collingwood
  • The best books on John Ruskin - Ruskin Today by Kenneth Clark
  • The best books on John Ruskin - John Ruskin: A Life in Pictures by James S. Dearden
  • The best books on John Ruskin - Effie in Venice by Mary Lutyens
  • The best books on John Ruskin - The Correspondence of John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton by Charles Eliot Norton

The best books on John Ruskin, recommended by Michael Glover

As a believer in the humanising nature of proper work, the virtues of sustained attention and the value of aesthetics as the keystone to ideals for a truly prosperous society, John Ruskin’s abiding concerns are still very much with us today. On the bicentenary of this eminent Victorian’s birth, Michael Glover, author of the idiosyncratic Ruskin Dictionary, explains why we should still be reading Ruskin closely in the twenty first century.

  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - Turner: Imagination and Reality by Lawrence Gowing
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers by T J Clark
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable by Ronald Paulson
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston by Musa Mayer
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - Neglected Genius: The Diaries of Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1808–1846 by Benjamin Robert Haydon

Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books

Art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon takes us through his favourite art books, one of which is the best thing he has ever read about art. He contends that Monet is a follower of Turner, reflects on how the purpose of history of art has changed, and introduces us to the diaries of an “astonishingly bad” painter which reveal him to be one of the nineteenth century’s greatest prose writers.

  • The best books on The Renaissance - Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy by Michael Baxandall
  • The best books on The Renaissance - Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt
  • The best books on The Renaissance - Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance by Lisa Jardine
  • The best books on The Renaissance - The Printing Press as an Agent of Change by Elizabeth L Eisenstein
  • The best books on The Renaissance - The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch

The best books on The Renaissance, recommended by Jerry Brotton

A century-and-a-half ago the Swiss art historian, Jacob Burckhardt, popularized the idea of a ‘Renaissance’ in 14th century Italy. For most people, the term still conjures up works of art by the likes of Michelangelo or Leonardo. But there is much, much more to it than that. Professor of Renaissance studies, Jerry Brotton, picks the best books to read for a more complete understanding of the Renaissance.

  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art by Joseph Leo Koerner
  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - The Self-Aware Image: An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting by Victor Stoichita
  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - On Photography by Susan Sontag
  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - Just Kids by Patti Smith

The best books on The Lives of Artists, recommended by Maria Loh

We live in an age obsessed with self-image. Technology has made the ‘selfie’ a ubiquitous form of social currency. Renaissance means may have been very different, but celebrity artists in Medici Florence dealt with many of the issues relating to identity and authorship that we grapple with today. Maria Loh, author of Still Lives: Death, Desire, and the Portrait of the Old Master, talks to Five Books about the curated self.

  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces by Philip Steadman
  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Il Libro dell'Arte by Cennino Cennini
  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Vision and Art by Margaret Livingstone
  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Letters on Cézanne by Rainer Maria Rilke

The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method, recommended by Jane Jelley

Painting is not what it used to be. With materials and photography close to hand, it’s easy to forget the sheer labour involved in producing an Old Master canvas. What does studio method – the making of masterpieces – tell us about artistic genius, then and now? Painter Jane Jelley considers the question using Johannes Vermeer as her starting point.