Toasting a Master

Eleanor H. Gustafson Books

Whether you know him personally or just by reputation, there’s no question that Jonathan Leo Fairbanks is a lion in the worlds of American decorative arts and craft. Recently, to toast him on his retirement as director of the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, the museum published American History, Art, and Culture: Writings in Honor of Jonathan Leo Fairbanks.

Art Deco in the Toddlin’ Town

Sammy Dalati Books

Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America, distributed for the Chicago Art Deco Society by Yale University Press, provides an occasion for examining the city’s art deco history. Through five scholarly essays and 101 notable objects and buildings, Art Deco Chicago reevaluates art deco’s and Chicago’s cultural and economic contributions to the United States during the Machine Age.

A new book on the art and life of sculptor Daniel Chester French

Bruce Weber Books

The most in-depth biography of the pre-eminent American sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850-1931) is now out. French—whose works include the statues of the Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts, and Alma Mater at Columbia University in New York—has long deserved a comprehensive exploration, and historian Harold Holzer’s Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French (Princeton Architectural Press, $35) has been eagerly anticipated.