The Taft Museum

Notable among the nation's small museums, the Taft Museum in Cincinnati boasts a diversified collection emphasizing European and American painting, decorative arts and Chinese porcelains. Paintings by Whistler, Turner, Hals, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Corot are among the works reproduced here. But of equal interest are serendipitous finds such as French painter Felix Ziem's shimmering visions of Venice around 1860 or African American painter Robert Duncanson's mid-19th-century landscape mural cycle commissioned for the museum's walls. Decorative and interior arts are represented by Limoges enamels, by tapestries, fans, watches, ceramics, crystal, medieval religious sculpture and Early American furniture. Sullivan, chairman of New York University's fine arts department, and former Taft Museum director Meyer have assembled a team of art historians and curators who provide highly readable commentaries accompanying the more than 1000 reproductions (630 in color). (Sept.)