Highlighting the American 20th-century collection (1911-55) at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), this is the first catalog devoted solely to that important and substantial segment of AIC's collections. It contains 186 items that cross museum departmental lines: an elegant chrome-plated cocktail set designed by Bel Geddes and the streamlined armchair and desk created by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Johnson Wax Company share equal billing with more well-known paintings. Each entry is an essay in itself and is illustrated with a full-color image as well as several black-and-white comparative figures. This work is the companion piece to the 1999 title American Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (also by Barter). To enrich this resource further, the full exhibition and publication histories for each of the catalog objects (and AIC's entire holdings) are available from the excellent collections search section of the institute's web site. Verdict Well worth the cost (particularly when paired with the companion volume) as a survey of one of the most important American 20th-century collections.-Kraig Binkowski, Yale Ctr. for British Art, New Haven, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.