(Princeton Architectural Press, May 2024)
A beautiful, smart, entertaining new art book from New Yorker cartoonist and author Bob Eckstein that is a love letter to museums and museum-goers, filled with lush and whimsical illustrations paired with stories and anecdotes from curators, museum workers, museum visitors, and more.
Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums is a collection of the greatest and most beloved museums of North America, illustrated and explored through fun and fascinating anecdotes. Curated by Bob Eckstein, author of the New York Times bestseller Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores, this delightful twist on an art history book shows these institutes in a way not seen before, illustrated in a lush and idealized style.
The 75+ museums featured include the biggest and boldest names (MoMA, the Whitney) and the more offbeat (Museum of Bad Art, the Museum of Jurassic Technology). They span the US, Canada, and Mexico and include those specializing in art, natural history, academia and science, and more. The 155 original pieces of artwork illustrate a story about the museum or showcase a particular work of art in its collection.
Featured museums include:
The Field Museum, Chicago
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA
The National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC
La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Museum of Motherhood, St. Petersburg, Florida
Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City, Mexico
American Museum of Natural History, New York
And many more
A perfect gift for artists, art lovers, students, travelers, and adventurers of all ages, this collection of funny, heartfelt, and quirky profiles is a thought-provoking, inspiring celebration of museums, why we go to them, and why we love them so much.
Bob Eckstein is an award-winning illustrator, writer, and cartoonist for the New Yorker, New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian Magazine, Atlas Obscura, and many others. His Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores was a New York Times bestseller and made many “Best Of” 2016 lists and continues to be an “Amazon Most Wished for Title” years later. A postcard set based on that book was published in 2018. He is also the author of The History of the Snowman, The Illustrated History of the Snowman, and The Complete Book of Cat Names (That Your Cat Won’t Answer to Anyway). He was editor for The Ultimate Cartoon Book of Book Cartoons series and is contributing editor for Writer’s Digest. He lives in New York City. For more on Bob please visit his website.