Recently, I’ve run across a couple of great holiday gifts for the art enthusiast in your life. The first is a profound film based on book that has been re-airing on WFYI over the last several weeks. The Rape of Europa, based on the book by Lynn H. Nicholas, documents the pillaging of art in Europe during WWII. The images are breathtaking and the individuals who were on the front lines of war with a mission to protect art, brave and inspiring. The recovery of this art continues today. If you work in the art world or love art or history, it’s a must-see or must-read.

The book Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thorton is another excellent find. “A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton’s entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture,” according to the book’s publisher. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s at the top of my wish-list. Read a review from The Washington Post.

Those are my two finds. I’m leaving the rest up to you. Your prime shopping date: Friday, December 5 – “First Friday” offers your best bet to buy art at the local galleries. Share your finds below…

Ernest Hemingway once said that there are two kinds of writers—those who want to write and those who want to have written. Most would-be writers fall into the latter category—they want what they suppose to be the glory of holding a newly finished manuscript or hot-off-the-presses book. And they assume there’s nothing to it, as if writing a book is akin to painting a wall. They’re the ones who, when they find out I’m a writer, start talking about the book they’ve been meaning to write, as soon as they get some free time. Like it’s something anyone can do while on vacation.

Believe me, writing a book is no day at the beach. From the moment you move from the what- a-good-idea-for-a-book stage to the put-your-butt-in-chair-and-crank-out-the-pages stage, creating a book is much more about grinding it out than it is about experiencing the joy of creativity. When it comes to writing a book, inspiration is highly overrated—usually by those who haven’t written one. A book is a chore. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two types of books in the world—those that writers choose to write for themselves (and with the hope, of course, that someone will publish them) and those that writers are commissioned to write. I was commissioned to write Every Way Possible, the first published history of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Or rather, to help write it, since it was far too big a job for a single writer to tackle, at least in the time allotted to do it—which was less than two years.

Okay, two years probably seems like plenty of time if you’ve never written an institutional history before. But the truth is, two years is barely enough time if what you’re trying to do is provide a reasonably comprehensive look at 125 years in the life of a major museum, which is what those of us involved in the Every Way Possible project were charged with doing. And by two years, what I mean is that at the end of that time, there would be printed and bound books in hand—which meant, working backwards from that point, we actually had about 16 months (one year + four months, for those of you keeping score at home) in which to research, write and edit a 300-page book (as well as find, identify and write captions for more than 100 photographs). The rest of the time was dedicated to designing the book (no easy task in itself), then getting it printed, bound and delivered. Read the rest of this entry »