Collections: American Art:
American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum: Artists Born by 1876

American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum: Artists Born by 1876 is the recipient of the Association of Art Museum Curators Award for Excellence as the "Outstanding Catalogue Based on a Permanent Collection" published during 2006. "We seek to recognize great achievement in curatorial practice nationwide," stated George T. M. Shackelford, AAMC President, who is also Chair, Art of Europe, and Solomon Curator of Modern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; "The AAMC Awards for Excellence are the only cross-disciplinary awards in which curators honor their colleagues. This year saw an unprecedented number of nominations from across North America." The award was formally announced at the AAMC Sixth Annual Meeting, held on May 14, 2007, at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

The 1,152-page two-volume set authored by Teresa A. Carbone, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum, with contributions by Barbara Dayer Gallati and Linda S. Ferber, surveys works from the colonial period to the early twentieth century. It was published in May 2006 by the London-based firm D Giles Ltd in association with the Brooklyn Museum.

American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum received the Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award from the College Art Association. Established in 1980 and named after the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, the Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award is given each year to an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art published in any language under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. The award was presented to Dr. Carbone on Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at the Convocation of the annual meeting of the College Art Association at the Hilton New York hotel in Manhattan. Members of the Barr Award committee this year included Alan Wallach, The College of William and Mary; Elizabeth Childs, Washington University; Beth Holman, Bard Graduate Center; and Susan Huntington, Ohio State University. In announcing the award, the College Art Association said that "this beautifully produced two-volume set" is "destined to become a classic reference work.... At a time when museums are increasingly putting resources into splashy blockbuster exhibitions, American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum serves as a powerful reminder of the centrality of the permanent collection to the museum's mission and of the need for rigorous and necessarily time-consuming research to deepen public and scholarly understanding of its collections."

Fifteen years in preparation, American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum documents one of the world's premier collections of American paintings, remarkable for its scope, depth, and quality. Nearly 700 paintings by 340 artists are included, with 160 of the paintings reproduced in color on full pages. The catalogue also provides a two-part critical history of the growth and development of the Brooklyn Museum's American painting collection and detailed biographical information on each artist. Each painting is accompanied by an interpretive entry with provenance, exhibition history, and technical information based on firsthand analysis by a conservator.