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Thames & Hudson is to steer art aficionados through the museums and galleries of great cities in a new series of illustrated travel guides.
The Art Guide series will begin this spring with two titles focusing on New York and London. Each book is organised by era: Early Art, Western Tradition and Modern Art, and each era by genre of art available in each city.
Each genre then receives a brief history and a guide to where the best works of art are available to be viewed. Each book also offers profile pieces on individual artists, including J M W Turner in the London title and Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol in the New York version, in addition to maps and indexes of artists, museums and galleries.
Thames & Hudson m.d. Jamie Camplin said: “The average travel guide to a city is bewildering: how do you find what you are interested in? At T&H we like to do things differently, and to my knowledge there are no guides like this.”
He explained the titles were also being aimed at two very different demographics, firstly the “Saga generation”. Camplin said: “Unlike everyone else in the country they have money to spend and they want to travel but don’t want to sit on a beach—they want to continue their education. The other end of the age spectrum is the 15-25 years [bracket], either they are studying art or caught by the great explosion of the last 20 years. Art has become a very sexy subject in a way it wasn’t [before].”
He also described the books’ appeal as “little mini art histories” in a “multifunctional handy format”. Each title will be a £12.95 flexibound paperback, including over 200 illustrations.
T&H is expecting “strong press coverage” and marketing plans include branded Oyster card wallets for the London title, plus a cultural treasure hunt in London art and travel booksellers in April. Other plans include advertising in art press, co-marketing with cultural travel companies, mailings to secondary school art teachers and a sample Google Maps tour on www.thamesandhudson.com.
T&H will publish the two guides on 9th May, with more titles on different cities to follow.