Since the publication in 1939 of Frank Lloyd Wright’s An Organic Architecture, Lund Humphries has been a leading publisher of illustrated art books. With our roots in British Modernism, our list today encompasses books for art specialists, professionals and enthusiasts across all periods and genres. We value high-quality design and reproduction, serious but accessible writing, and unique collections of reference material.
An additional recent stream of publishing on art business and art markets is aimed at art professionals, students and collectors and introduces readers at all levels to the workings of the art world. As a pioneer of museum co-publications in the 1980s, Lund Humphries still regularly collaborates with major museums and galleries around the world. We also regularly work in partnership with artists, estates, foundations and galleries to publish illustrated monographs and complete catalogues of modern and contemporary artists.
The Contemporary Art Museum examines museum design using international examples including examples from Western Europe, China, Brazil and the USA. Written accessibly, it examines complex ideas from political and economic theory and argues that the development of the art museum since the mid-1970s has involved the deliberate blurring of boundaries ......
Mary Watts (1849-1938) was a leading designer of the Arts & Crafts period, the founder of the Compton Pottery and the wife of the great Victorian painter George Frederic Watts (1817-1904). She was also an avid diarist and filled copious volumes - each known affectionately as 'Fatima' - with her musings on art and society and her ......
Edwardian domestic architecture was beautiful and varied in style, and was very often designed and built to an unprecedented level of sophistication. It was also astonishingly innovative, and provided new building types for weekends, sport and gardening, as well as fascinating insights into attitudes to historic architecture, health and ......
At a time where there are repeated claims of the impending demise of art criticism, The Ends of Art Criticism seeks to dispel these myths by arguing that the lack of a single dominant voice in criticism is not, as some believe, a weakness, but a strength, allowing previously marginalised voices and new global and political perspectives to ......
This book is the first, in any language, to provide a comprehensive study of the founders of the German Werkbund: the 12 artists and 12 firms represented at the establishment of the organization in 1907. Although these 24 were not always in agreement, they were committed to a common cause: strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, their ......
The Front Room: Diaspora Migrant Aesthetics in the Home, originally published in 2009, has become a beloved and much-praised source, providing fascinating revelations into the post-war British experience of immigrants, the decoration of their living spaces and their position in society in relation to decolonisation. The 'front room' (emanating ......
Contemporary Museum Architecture in China and the Arabian Peninsula
Karen Exell is Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL Qatar, and a consultant at Qatar Museums. She directed the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice at UCL Qatar from 2011-2015, after teaching museums studies and holding curatorial positions in university museums in the UK for several years.
The Great Exhibition of 1851, the first World's Fair, is generally thought of as a giant trade fair, a showcase for empires and industry. However, it was also conceived to address a deep-rooted problem with British taste, which favoured European art and design over British. Julius Bryant's richly illustrated new book, which draws on the vast ......
In the late 1960s, IBM was one of the world's pre-eminent corporations, employing over 250,000 people in 100 countries and producing some of the most advanced products on earth. IBM President Thomas J. Watson Jnr. sought to elevate the company's image by hiring world-renowned design consultants, including Eliot Noyes and Paul Rand. As well as ......
