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The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has been at the forefront in presenting pre-Columbian artifacts as part of art history rather than in the context of natural history or archaeology. The artworks featured in this volume exemplify the aesthetics and supreme craftsmanship of the peoples of the ancient Americas in pictorial pottery, sumptuous gold body adornments, and luxury textiles.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is home to an important collection of artworks from South Asia that spans a large geographical area - comprising India and the countries that surround it - and more than four millennia. Among these objects are expressive figures in bronze and stone, dazzlingly intricate miniature paintings, luxury textiles and exquisite metalwork. Arranged thematically around dualities of art and craft, sacred and secular, Hindu and Muslim, real and ideal, male and female, and local and foreign - reflecting and challenging the dualistic thinking often applied to South Asian art - these works of art reveal the richness and depth of South Asian art and culture.

Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch is Head of the Arts of Africa and Oceania, and Teel Curator of African and Oceanic Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The world-renowned collection of European decorative arts from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is full of sumptuous surprises. Some delicate and some divine, the objects range from an opulent automaton to a richly wrought crosier, and vary in scale from a salt cellar in the form of a crustacean to the fine wood panelling of an entire dining room. Their dates of manufacture span more than a thousand years--the earliest made shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire and the most recent in the computer age. They reach across space as well as time, bearing evidence not only of cultural exchange among European countries, such as England and France, but also of the revival of ancient motifs and of contemporary trade with India and China. Presented here with an introduction to the topic and individual texts on each piece, these diverse works are organized chronologically and by stylistic movements to highlight the hidden histories of these works.

A new addition to the MFA Highlights series.

New in the MFA HIGHLIGHTS series, which presents the best of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's collections accessibly and affordably.

Presents the best of the collection of early European painting and sculpture held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Edited by Christine Kondoleon. Text by Richard Grossmann, Jennifer L. Heuser.