The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the...

"American Impressionist: Childe Hassam and the Isles of Shoals traces Hassam's artistic exploration of Appledore Island, the largest island of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire, where he traveled nearly every summer for thirty years"--