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Vanessa Taylor’s “Seven Rivers” tells the story of the Nile, Danube, Niger, Mississippi, Ganges, Yangtze and the Thames.
At its heart are the empire-builders of the Chinese dynasties, Romans and Hindus and their river gods, the Habsburgs and Ottomans, Mughal emperors, the people of the Niger from Mali’s golden age to today, struggles of life and death on the Mississippi, and the dethroning of the British on the rivers of their unruly imperial subjects.
In the heyday of Islamic art collecting around the turn of the 20th century, thousands of premodern ceramic objects circulated on the international antiquities market.
“Invisible Hands” tells the story of how traditional craft skills of the Islamic world, often thought to have died out with the advent of industrialization, were redirected toward a thriving new market in the colonial era: the fabrication and fictionalizing of antiquities, especially ceramics.
In this stunning work of art history, Margaret Graves shakes the foundations of the discipline, challenging us to reconsider what is and is not art.
