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The Significance of Small Things gathers essays written by a range of scholarsto pay tributeto a special intellect –Diana Fane, Curator Emerita, Department of the Americas, at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. The book acknowledges the importance of pursuing an object-based approach in art history, and celebrates the ability of objects to connect cultures, places, times and ideas. In accordance with Fane’s conviction that details deserve close inspection each author identifies, examines and interprets parts of an object that shed light on the whole work as well as on larger historical questions; some of these observations include an inscription on a box, the mysterious smile of a head on a vessel, a note in a photograph of an object, the hollowed trunk of an old tree, and a small man in the corner of a fresco, just to name a few observations highlighting the spirit of the unique person honored here. Fane continues in many capacities to work in the arts influencing colleagues and students.
