As the New York Yankees' star centre fielder from 1936 to 1951, Joe DiMaggio is enshrined in America's memory as the epitome in sports of grace, dignity, and that ineffable quality called "class". But his career after retirement, starting with his ni...

The work of Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), one of Russia's great modern poets, has been the subject of much study and debate. His life, too, is the stuff of legend, from his survival of the siege of Leningrad in early childhood to his expulsion from the...

The pioneering conceptual artist John Baldessari (b. 1931) began his career as a painter in the 1950s, but in the subsequent decades he expanded his practice in a new and groundbreaking direction by juxtaposing texts with found photography or appropr...

Though little known in the English-speaking world, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) was one of the most important and influential European baroque architects. The buildings that he designed for the emperor of Austria and his courtiers r...

Joe Louis defended his heavyweight boxing title an astonishing twenty-five times and reigned as world champion for more than eleven years. He got more column inches of newspaper coverage in the 1930s than FDR did. His racially and politically charged...

A true eclectic in her personal life, her professional pursuits, and her creative expression, Marie Zimmermann has proven an elusive character for historians. But her skill as a designer and prodigious output of extraordinary jewellery and metalwork...

The 18th-century painter Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) was an astute observer of the many social circles in which he functioned as an artist over the course of his long career. This catalogue investigates his sharp wit, shrewd political appraisal, and pe...

Since his early work was first embraced by Alfred Stieglitz, John Marin (1870-1953) has been recognized as one of America's foremost watercolourists. During the last two decades of Marin's career, however, oil painting played a greater role in his st...

Lawyer, judge, banker, classics professor, and councilman, Thomas Mellon greatly influenced the fortunes of his hometown, Pittsburgh, throughout the nineteenth century. In the process, he became one of the city's most important business leaders, and...

Jean Fouquet was France's most important fifteenth-century artist, painting for the courts of Charles VII and Louis XI. His art synthesized the realistic style of Flemish artists like van Eyck with the monumentality of Florentines like Masaccio. Fouq...