In 2015, the U.S. News & World Report raved that the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum “houses one of the most distinguished university collections in the country.” Spotlights: Collected by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum commemorates the museum’s ten-year anniversary in its new building at Washington University in St. Louis. Accompanying a major reinstallation of the illustrious permanent collection, this volume gathers fifty “spotlight” essays exploring individual works from the thirteenth to the twenty-first century.

Illuminating both famous and lesser known works by a range of artists—from Dürer to Rembrandt, Pollock to de Kooning—this book departs from conventional “masterpieces” or period approaches to present a sampling of ongoing and new research from a variety of scholarly voices. Approximately forty contributors offer perspectives on works of their own choosing from the museum’s collection, which has been growing since 1881. More than a catalog, this book is a vivid celebration of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum’s storied history of collecting and scholarship.