Hammons' body prints, flags and found-object sculptures come together in this artist's book documenting his thought-provoking conceptual exhibition

This post-exhibition catalog revisits David Hammons’ 2019 show at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles. A singular book created entirely under the artist’s direction, this publication illustrates the most expansive exhibition of this legendary artist’s work to date.
Said critic Jonathan Griffin of the original exhibition, "Alongside finished artworks, including framed examples of Hammons’s sublime drawings made with bounced basketballs and powdered Kool-Aid, there are plenty of apparently ad hoc, readymade interventions, installations in which it is unclear where one ends and the next begins. … Hammons, it seems, wants his viewers to relax, historiography be damned."
Born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, David Hammons moved to Los Angeles in 1963 at the age of 20 and began making his body prints several years later. He studied at Otis Art Institute with Charles White and became part of a younger generation of Black avant-garde artists loosely associated with the Black Arts Movement. In Los Angeles, Hammons was a cofounder of Studio Z, a group which included Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger, Joe Ray and others. Hammons has lived in New York since 1978.

Through paintings, sculptures, drawings and more, John Wilson's work foregrounds the human experience and refuses invisibility

American artist John Wilson was not only a master draftsman, printmaker, painter and sculptor active for over seven decades, but he was also a keen observer and social activist. In his representations of Black Americans in particular, he sought to pay homage to the beauty and truths of ordinary Black people in such a way that all viewers, across race and culture, might see themselves reflected. His multidisciplinary works include unflinching representations of racial violence and war, tender family portraits, monumental bronze heads and landmark commissions such as the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., which stands in the United States Capitol.
The first major retrospective of the artist’s work, Witnessing Humanity sheds light on Wilson’s life and artistic evolution. Reproductions of artworks and photographs accompany critical essays and personal reflections, including analyses by art historians, interviews with Wilson’s peers, remembrances from fellow Black creatives and a full chronology by the late artist’s gallerist. The varied voices which resonate through this catalog illustrate that it is long past time to recognize Wilson’s art―to celebrate his lifelong dedication to depicting what he described as the "reality of being Black in this impossible world."
John Woodrow Wilson (1922–2015) was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University. He lived in Mexico for five years and became a friend and colleague of artist Elizabeth Catlett. Wilson taught fine art at Boston University from 1964 until 1986.

A full facsimile reproduction of the era-defining queer magazine that documented Chicago’s Black nightlife scene of the early ’90s

Started in 1989 by designer and writer Robert Ford, THING magazine was the voice of Chicago’s queer Black music and arts scene in the early 1990s. Ford and his editors were part of the burgeoning house music scene, which originated in Chicago’s queer underground, and some of the top DJs and musicians from that time were featured in the magazine, including Frankie Knuckles and RuPaul. THING published 10 issues from 1989 to 1993, before it was cut short by Ford’s death from HIV/AIDS-related causes.
While THING primarily focused on music, it also opened its pages to a wide range of subjects: poetry and gossip, fiction and art, interviews and polemics. The AIDS crisis loomed large in its contents, particularly in the personal reflections and practical resources that it published. In a moment when the gay community was besieged by the AIDS crisis and a wantonly cruel government, the influence and significance of this cheaply produced newsprint magazine vastly exceeded its humble means, presenting a beautiful portrait of the ball and club cultures that existed in Chicago with deep intellectual reflections. THING was a publication by and for its community, and understood the fleetingness of its moment.
To reencounter this work today is to reinstate the Black voices who were so central to the history of AIDS activism and queer and club culture, but which were often sidelined by white queer discourse. This volume collects all 10 editions of this iconic magazine.

PRE-ORDER.  ON SALE DATE: May 27, 2025

This exploration of Black dandy fashion and its representation in art and literature highlights the vibrant, complicated legacy of a recognizable yet constantly shifting style, from its origins in Enlightenment Europe to the contemporary art and fashion worlds
 
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style traces the complex and vibrant legacy of menswear across three centuries of Black culture—from today’s hip-hop aesthetic and popular street trends, through its use during the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement as a symbol of creative and political agency, to its surprising origins as an imposed uniform for servants and enslaved people. Organized by key characteristics of dandyism that resonate across time, including presence, distinction, disguise, and respectability, this fresh interpretation of a centuries-old aesthetic draws on prominent Black voices in fashion, literature, and art—among them, Dandy Wellington, Amy Sherald, Iké Udé, and André 3000. Self-described dandies and high-fashion models feature in a stunning photo essay by artist Tyler Mitchell, who also contributes evocative new photography of garments by contemporary designers such as Virgil Abloh, Pharrell Williams, and Grace Wales Bonner. These works are shown alongside historical attire worn by Black luminaries including Frederick Douglass, Alexandre Dumas père, Muhammad Ali, and André Leon Talley. Scholar Monica L. Miller contextualizes these objects in her text and shows how the evolution of dandy style inspired new visions of Black masculinity that use the power of clothing and dress as a means of self-expression.
 
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(May 10–October 26, 2025)

Catalogue design by Pacific (Elizabeth Karp-Evans and Adam Turnbull)

A primer on contemporary artist Lauren Halsey’s latest site-specific installation, outlining her process, past work, and influences drawn from Afrofuturism, ancient Egyptian iconography, and Los Angeles
 
Lauren Halsey is known for her sculptures, mixed media works, and site-specific installations that remix (or, as Halsey says, “funkify”) history by combining signs, symbols, and architecture from the past, present, and future. In her new installation for The Met’s Roof Garden Commission series, she brings together ancient Egyptian–inspired iconography and sculpture with signage and texts drawn from the artist’s local community in South Central Los Angeles. Accompanied by new photography and unpublished sketches from Halsey’s studio, this compact volume contains an insightful essay by curator Abraham Thomas that examines Halsey’s artistic process and considers this installation in the context of her past work. In a revealing interview with poet Douglas Kearney, the artist discusses her diverse influences—which include ancient Egyptian relief carving, funk music, Afrofuturism, and the architecture of L.A.— and elaborates on the importance of community building and engagement in the spaces she creates.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press  

Exhibition Schedule:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(April 18–October 22, 2023)

A rich and layered photographic exploration of the people and places that influenced Raven Jackson’s directorial debut film, Stories From a Place Where All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the companion book features lyrical writing, evocative photos, and contributions from voices that speak to the film’s quiet yet powerful themes and the rural Southern setting. Also includes the full script and incredible photography captured during the production. Includes a foreword by Kasi Lemmons; poetry by Alice Walker, Tracy K. Smith, Lucille Clifton, and Reginald Helms Jr.; essays and words by Sheila Atim, Kiese Laymon, Charleen McClure, Pamela Shepard, and many others; and an afterword by Marwa Helal.

‘I may pay rent to a friend for my place in Greensboro, but the South’s my landlord; and I’m trapped in its stomach trying to get to its brain. Here, I see butterflies with Confederate flag-grown wings and minstrel vestiges of Daddy Rice collecting dough. I can’t move because I’m stuck in Aunt Jemima’s syrup.’ Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body is the highly anticipated first book by artist, filmmaker, and writer RaMell Ross. Bringing together Ross’s large-format photographs, sculptures, conceptual works, and selected films, together with illuminating texts by Ross and a host of writers, this ambitious publication presents a chronicle of the American South that is both mysterious and quotidian, a historical document and a radical imagining of the future. The book opens with a series of illuminating colour photographs from Hale County, Alabama, Ross’s adoptive home and the setting of his Academy Award-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018). It then moves through a series of photographic and mixed-media works and writings that examine, deconstruct, and rewrite visual representations of the South. Amidst these works, at the book’s heart, is Ross’s film Return to Origin, a remarkable conceptual work in which Ross freight ships himself in a 4x8-foot box – a nod to Henry Brown who shipped himself to freedom in 1849. With Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body, Ross creates a new visual narrative of the South, freed from its iconic meanings to reveal the earth, dirt, soil, and land beneath. With texts by RaMell Ross, Tracy K. Smith, Richard McCabe, and Scott Matthews

With a foreword by Frank Ocean, Barry Jenkins’s and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Academy Award–winning screenplay is accompanied by an essay by Hilton Als and acceptance speeches from Moonlight’s historic Oscars night.

How an eighteenth-century engraving of a slave ship became a cultural icon of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance

One of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what it really was―shocking, immoral, barbaric, unimaginable. Printed as handbills and broadsides, the image Cheryl Finley has termed the "slave ship icon" was easily reproduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was circulating by the tens of thousands around the Atlantic rim. Committed to Memory provides the first in-depth look at how this artifact of the fight against slavery became an enduring symbol of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance.

Finley traces how the slave ship icon became a powerful tool in the hands of British and American abolitionists, and how its radical potential was rediscovered in the twentieth century by Black artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and curators. Finley offers provocative new insights into the works of Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, Betye Saar, and many others. She demonstrates how the icon was transformed into poetry, literature, visual art, sculpture, performance, and film―and became a medium through which diasporic Africans have reasserted their common identity and memorialized their ancestors.

Beautifully illustrated, Committed to Memory features works from around the world, taking readers from the United States and England to West Africa and the Caribbean. It shows how contemporary Black artists and their allies have used this iconic eighteenth-century engraving to reflect on the trauma of slavery and come to terms with its legacy.

A loving and powerful photobook following the lineage of one Black family, interrogating the semiotics of family portraiture

This profoundly moving and visually ravishing photobook, the first major monograph by American photographer Nydia Blas (born 1981), is an exploration of one Ithaca-based Black family and its community across many generations. The book is also a formally rigorous examination of the taxonomy and syntax of family portraiture.
Blas’ contemporary works are integrated with selections from her historical family albums in order to tell an extended intergenerational story, and to bring forward the evolving and recurring nature of the portrait photograph throughout the medium’s history. Deploying doubling, repetition and more subtle echoing and mirroring, Love, You Came from Greatness builds a powerful line of feeling and thought across generations and photographic tropes and styles. It features an illustrated discussion among Blas, curator Kate Addleman-Frankel and Cornell art historian Cheryl Finley. The volume concludes with the republication of bell hooks’ seminal 1995 essay "In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life," a deeply personal text that expands on crucial themes of family, photography, and Black identity and community.

A 50th-anniversary tribute to one of America’s first racially integrated exhibitions

In August 1971 Peter Bradley mounted the landmark exhibition The De Luxe Show at the legendary DeLUXE theater in Houston's Fifth Ward. The De Luxe Show was a milestone in civil rights history, as one of the first racially integrated shows in the United States. Curated by Bradley with the backing of collector and philanthropist John de Menil, the exhibition featured emerging and established abstract modern painters and sculptors of the time, including Darby Bannard, Peter Bradley, Anthony Caro, Dan Christensen, Ed Clark, Frank Davis, Sam Gilliam, Robert Gordon, Richard Hunt, Virginia Jaramillo, Daniel Johnson, Craig Kauffman, Alvin Loving, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Michael Steiner, William T. Williams and James Wolfe.

In August 2021, for its 50th anniversary, Karma and Parker Gallery staged a contemporary bicoastal tribute to The De Luxe Show. The tribute honors the long, pioneering legacies of the artists of The De Luxe Show, and continues the dialogue between these innovators in the field of abstraction that began 50 years ago. This fully illustrated catalog includes texts and installation images from the original 1971 catalog, as well as a newly commissioned text by Amber Jamilla Musser and a text by Bridget R. Cooks that expands upon her 2013 essay in Gulf Coast.

Combining representation and abstraction, Abney's vibrant works reference gender, sexuality and pop culture

Committed to sharing social realities through fantastic, expansive forms, Nina Chanel Abney is an artist possessed of an iconic style and wit. Through stylized, cubistic and highly charged painterly symbols, she references radical traditions of graphic design and street art to communicate urgent political and cultural realities with immediacy to the largest possible audience. Abney’s paintings and collages use dynamic color and form to draw viewers into complex narratives.
Big Butch Energy/Synergy features Abney’s recent exhibitions at ICA Miami and moCa Cleveland. In these works, Abney mines cinematic and media representations of student Greek life to explore how gender perception and performance is inspired by the legacies of social ritual and visual culture. The complex compositions reference scenes from popular slapstick comedy films such as National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and Porky’s (1981), while citing traditions of Baroque portraiture and fraternity composites. Inspired by her experience as a masculine-of-center woman, with this body of work Abney asks how viewers gender a figure in a work of art.
Nina Chanel Abney was born in 1982 in Harvey, Illinois, and is based in New York, where she attended Parsons School of Design. Abney’s work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Bronx Museum, New York; the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, among others.

This book was published in conjunction with Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami/Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

"The Chicago-born artist Charles White (1918–79) was celebrated during his lifetime for depictions of African-American men, women and children that acquired the name “images of dignity. White’s draftsmanship, his direct address of the social and political concerns of his time, and his commitment to media that gave his art wide circulation established him as a major artist, and one with significant influence both on his contemporaries and on later generations.

Beginning with White’s early days as an artist in the Chicago of the 1930s and ’40s, moving through his time spent developing his craft in New York in the late 1940s and ’50s, and closing with his final decades as a revered figure in Los Angeles, Charles White: Black Pope explores the artist’s practice and strategies through consideration of key works. It devotes particularly close examination to his late masterwork "Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man)," in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. By creating visually compelling, ideologically complex works that engage audiences on many levels, White established himself as a key figure of his time, one whose work continues to resonate today."

The second book in a three-volume series on Black American artists, featuring work from the 1950s to the 1970s that responded to the cultural, political, and social concerns of the era

During the turbulent 1950s to 1970s, Black American artists, responding to increasing civil rights activism, challenged inequities in the art world. Artists created works that celebrated their racial identity, connected with Black audiences, and participated in the struggle for political, economic, and social equality. The establishment of artist collectives, such as Spiral, and museums devoted to Black art, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, alongside the emergence of art historians and critics such as David Driskell and Linda Goode Bryant, marked early steps to bring Black art into broader artistic discourse.
 
The book features 140 color illustrations of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by such celebrated artists as Romare Bearden, Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Howardena Pindell, and Alma Thomas, as well as by under-recognized artists. Essays provide an overview of the period and in-depth examinations of James A. Porter, an artist and art historian credited with establishing the field of African American art history, and Merton D. Simpson, an abstract painter, member of the Spiral group, and one of the most important dealers of African art in the United States.

Published in association with the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

Exhibition Schedule:

Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis
(October 22, 2023–January 14, 2024)
 
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
(February 4–May 19, 2024)

Considered the foremost exponent of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra mastered a wide array of styles that spanned jazz, R&B, experimental, and chamber works. In his 45-year recording career, he issued an epic number of albums and was one of the first Black musicians to own an independent label, which he named Saturn, after the planet on which he claimed to have been born. The covers of Saturn LPs, issued from 1957 to 1988, are iconic―some rolled off commercial printing presses but many were hand-crafted and were sold at concerts, club dates, and by mail order. As collectibles, original handmade Saturn covers sell for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars. More than just packaging for a slab of vinyl, they are works of art in their own right. Sun Ra: Art on Saturn is the first comprehensive collection of all Saturn printed covers, along with hundreds of the best hand-designed, one-of-a-kind sleeves and disc labels, decorated by Ra himself and members of his Arkestra. Essays by Ra preservationist Irwin Chusid, noted Ra scholar John Corbett, and Glenn Jones, who signed Ra to a distribution deal that put countless homemade covers into circulation, add insights into the interplanetary life and work of Sun Ra and his Saturn partner Alton Abraham.

In association with an international touring exhibition and coinciding with what would have been Bob Marley’s eightieth birthday, Dennis Morris marks the first full-career retrospective for this groundbreaking photographer.

Dennis Morris: Music + Life is the first in-depth career retrospective of the trailblazing photographer, designer, and art director. Although Dennis Morris is celebrated for his iconic portraits of reggae superstar Bob Marley, this monograph also shines a light on Morris's documentary work, which explores questions of race and cultural identity as it draws on his experiences as a Black teenager in 1970s Britain. Supported by an international touring exhibition, Dennis Morris unveils a trove of previously unseen images, offering new insight into the image-maker's visual language.

Jamaican-born Morris moved to East London when he was just five years old. His passion for photography was ignited when he joined a local church's camera club. A rebellious thirteen-year-old, Morris skipped school to meet―and photograph―Marley, an encounter that would catapult him into a whirlwind tour with Marley and, subsequently, the Sex Pistols as their official photographer. His adventures in the reggae and punk scenes of the 1970s laid the groundwork for a multidecade career spanning photography, art direction, design, and music.

The book unfolds in two symbiotic parts: the first captures Morris's unapologetic lens on race, culture, and identity in 1970s Britain, while the second surveys his collaborations with music legends, including―in addition to Marley―Lee "Scratch" Perry, Gregory Isaacs, and Marianne Faithfull. Featuring an original contribution from Sean O'Hagan and an essay by the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall, this publication promises to delight both photography aficionados and music lovers alike.

200 illustrations, 75 in color

This stunning children’s book from the photographer behind the Instagram sensation Brown Girls Do Ballet, combines irresistible photos of young ballerinas of color with inspirational text that empowers all children to express their true selves through movement and music.

When TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian went to enroll her three-year-old daughter into her first ballet class, she immediately noticed the lack of diversity of backgrounds and abilities among the students pictured on the school's website. In response, TaKiyah, a photographer, began taking pictures of young dancers of color and launched an Instagram called Brown Girls Do Ballet. The Instagram was an instant sensation, drawing a community of dancers of all ages. A nonprofit organization, that provides resources, mentoring, and inspiration worldwide followed soon after.

Takiyah’s first children’s book is full of gorgeous photographs of irresistible young BIPOC ballerinas of all levels -- from beginners to more experienced dancers. Writer JaNay Brown-Wood's poetic text, inspired by the dancer's graceful poses and powerful leaps, encourages young readers be proud of who they are and empowers them to take center stage. Brown Girls Do Ballet will inspire all readers to pursue their dreams no matter what barriers are put in front of them.

This classic iconic study of black images in American motion pictures has been updated and revised, as Donald Bogle continues to enlighten us with his historical and social reflections on the relationship between African Americans and Hollywood. He notes the remarkable shifts that have come about in the new millennium when such filmmakers as Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and Ava DuVernay (Selma) examined America's turbulent racial history and the particular dilemma of black actresses in Hollywood, including Halle Berry, Lupita Nyong'o, Octavia Spencer, Jennifer Hudson, and Viola Davis. Bogle also looks at the ongoing careers of such stars as Denzel Washington and Will Smith and such directors as Spike Lee and John Singleton, observing that questions of diversity in the film industry continue. From The Birth of a Nation, the 1934 Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, and Carmen Jones to Shaft, Do the Right Thing, and Boyz N the Hood to Training Day, Dreamgirls, The Help, Django Unchained, and Straight Outta Compton, Donald Bogle compellingly reveals the way in which the images of blacks in American movies have significantly changed-and also the shocking way in which those images have often remained the same.

As featured in The Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Holiday Gift Books: Fine Art

The definitive monograph of Sam Gilliam one of the great innovators in post-war American painting

An African American artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Sam Gilliam blazed a trail with his singular artistic vision. Gilliam emerged from the Washington, DC art scene in the mid 1960s with works that disrupted established artistic norms and styles.

Relentlessly experimental and inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, Gilliam’s lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.

This book, made in close collaboration with the Sam Gilliam Foundation, is the first to comprehensively survey the breadth of his extraordinary career, and features never-before-seen archival materials an insightful newly commissioned texts that shine light on the artist, his life, and his work, together with examples of Gilliam's work spanning five decades.

Originally published in 1971, Gordon Parks’ Born Black was the first book to unite his writing and his photography. It was also the first to provide a focused survey of Parks’ documentation of a crucial time for the civil rights and Black Power movements. Today, more than 50 years later, this expanded edition of Born Black illuminates Parks’ vision for the book and offers deeper insight into the series within it. The original publication featured nine articles commissioned by Life magazine from 1963 to 1970―some never-before published―supplemented with later commentary by Parks and presented as his personal account of these important historical moments. Born Black includes the original text and images, as well as additional photographs from each series, spreads from the 1971 book, early correspondence, reproductions of related Life articles, and new scholarly essays. The nine series selected by Parks for Born Black―a rare glimpse inside San Quentin State Prison; extensive documentation of the Black Muslim movement and the Black Panthers; his commentaries on the deaths of civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.; intimate portrait studies of Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver; and a narrative of the daily life of the impoverished Fontenelle family in Harlem―have come to define his legendary career as a photographer and activist. This reimagined, comprehensive edition of Born Black highlights the lasting legacy of these projects and their importance to our understanding of critical years in American history. Co-published with The Gordon Parks Foundation

A deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression, curated by the acclaimed London-based designer

This volume, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm―Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, is an artist’s book created by the acclaimed London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Through an extraordinary selection of nearly 80 works from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and archives, this unique volume draws multisensory connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Photographs, scores and films by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Lorna Simpson and Ming Smith, among others, are juxtaposed with signal texts by Black authors spanning the past century, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Jean Toomer, Quincy Troupe and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner―Spirit Movers, this resplendent publication is a deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression that echoes Wales Bonner’s own vibrant, virtuosic designs.
Grace Wales Bonner (born 1990) is the founder and artistic director of Wales Bonner. While she sees herself primarily as a researcher, her practice extends to curation, filmmaking and publishing. In 2019 she curated her first institutional exhibition, A Time for New Dreams, at the Serpentine Gallery, London. She has received numerous awards, including the LVMH Young Designer Prize (2016) and the CFDA International Men’s Designer of the Year (2021). She has also collaborated with brands including Adidas and Dior.

Celebrating the storied career of a beloved letterpress printer whose posters spread messages of racial justice

Detroit-based letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. is celebrated for his type-driven messages of social justice and Black power, emblazoned in rhythmically layered and boldly inked posters made for the masses. Citizen Printer tells Kennedy’s inspiring story and contextualizes his important work―and offers readers tools for lifting their voices, too. A vital monograph on a trailblazing contemporary Black artist, Citizen Printer features 800 reproductions representing the breadth of Kennedy’s posters and prints, plus original portraiture of the artist at work, a powerful artist statement and a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Austin Kleon, all presented in a dynamic type-forward design from American Institute of Graphic Arts medalist Gail Anderson and Joe Newton.
Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. (born 1948) was working a corporate job for AT&T when, at the age of 40, he discovered the art of letterpress printing on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg. Kennedy then devoted himself to the craft, earning an MFA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaching at Indiana University. He now operates Kennedy Prints!, a communal letterpress center in Detroit. Borrowing words from social justice heroes Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and others, Kennedy layers bold statements on race, capitalism, history and politics in exuberant, colorful and one-of-a-kind posters. Kennedy has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine and the Economist, and his work has been exhibited by the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and other institutions through the US. He was the subject of a 2012 feature-length documentary, Proceed and Be Bold!

A definitive celebration of the distinctive art of poster and flyer design in the highly influential culture of Jamaican dancehall music, by one of the best-known voices in the genre.

Combining the energy and vibrancy of vernacular Jamaican art with the cultural insight that only original ephemera can bring, the flyers and posters collected in this book are testament to the creativity and spirit behind one of the most influential and enduring cultures in contemporary music.

Originating in Jamaica in the late 1970s, dancehall music is a club-friendly offshoot of reggae. The genre initially found particular resonance in the Jamaican diaspora and defined the soundsystem cultures that rose to prominence in New York and London in the 1980s and 1990s, which would influence the origins of hip hop. In much the same way that graffiti and paste-ups would for hip hop, the unique style of the artwork, coloring, and lettering of handmade flyers for dancehall nights became a visual language of the culture.

Drawing on unrivaled private collections from Jamaica, London, New York, and Tokyo, this book is a window onto the colorful and effervescent world of dancehall—at once celebrating the ingenuity and beauty of the DIY flyers themselves, and chronicling the evolution of DJs, records, and venues that made the genre into the musical and cultural phenomenon that continues to captivate audiences to this day.

A stunning visual homage to Black bookstores around the country along with profiles and essays that celebrate the history, community, activism, and culture these spaces embody, featuring an original foreword by Nikki Giovanni.

Black literature is perhaps the most powerful, polarizing force in the modern American zeitgeist. Today—as Black novels draw authoritarian ire, as Black memoirs shape public debates, as Black polemics inspire protest petitions—it’s more important than ever to highlight the places that center these stories: Black bookstores.

Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People explores these spaces, chronicling the Black bookstore's past and present lives. Combining narrative prose, eye-catching photography, one-on-one interviews, original essays, and specially curated poetry, Prose to the People is a reader’s road trip companion to the world of Black books.

Thoughtfully curated by writer and Black bookstore owner Katie Mitchell, Prose to the People is a must-have addition to the shelves of anyone who loves book culture and Black history. A visually rich tribute, this dynamic book centers profiles of over fifty Black bookstores from the Northeast to the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West Coast, complete with stunning original and archival photography.

Interspersed throughout are essays, poems, and interviews by New York Times bestsellers Kiese Laymon, Rio Cortez, Pearl Cleage, and many more journalists, activists, authors, academics, and poets that offer deeper perspectives on these bookstores' role throughout the diaspora. Complete with a foreword by world-renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, Prose to the People is a beautiful tribute to these vital pillars of the Black community.

Polish up on the latest nail art styles with this globe-spanning book that collects the work of some of today's most creative manicurists.

Getting a fresh set of nails means different things for every customer, but these days, it's a form of self-expression like no other - and the styles continue to evolve. This book travels the world to put today's most inspired nail art at your fingertips. It features profiles of 35 professionals who are carving out a name for themselves on the streets of cities like New York, LA, Vancouver, London, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Punjab, Melbourne/Naarm, and more. New York magazine writer and beauty expert Tembe Denton-Hurst describes each nail-tech, discussing their process, aesthetic, and biggest inspirations, accompanied by photos of their work and firsthand commentary. Her engaging introduction sets the tone, mapping the rich, long history of nail art; there's also a glossary of terms to help readers understand the variety of techniques that are used. From kawaai street style to Mexican folk art, chic runway looks to over-the-top 3D sculpture, glimmering gems, slimy insects, hand painted dreamy moonscapes, and more, Fresh Sets celebrates diversity, individuality, and the limitless possibilities for making a bold statement on a tiny canvas.

This striking exhibition catalog celebrates the late artist whose deeply emotional works intermingled realism with abstraction to address complex themes of identity, race, and community. American artist Noah Davis (1983–2015) believed ‘painting does something to your soul that nothing else can. It is visceral and immediate.’ Drawing on art history, personal archives, anonymous photography found in Los Angeles’ flea markets, and his own imagination, he compiled a ravishing body of figurative paintings that explore a range of Black life. Alongside his celebrated paintings, Davis made drawings, collages, and sculptures, and co-founded the Underground Museum. This elegantly designed volume documents the span of Davis’s career and attends to his commitment to representation in the art world and community engagement at the Underground Museum. Alongside new scholarship from writers, artists, and musicians like Tina M. Campt, Claudia Rankine, Marlene Dumas and Jason Moran, this catalog features high-quality reproductions of Davis’s more widely-known works as well as previously unseen archival material. A vital resource for understanding the depth and significance of his practice, this beautiful publication reveals how humanity, humor, imagination, and above all, people, were the epicenter of Davis’s work.

Amy Sherald’s work, life, and significance for American art, as revealed in her powerful figurative paintings of Black subjects
 
Bringing together nearly all of her artwork to date, this lavishly illustrated volume situates the work of Amy Sherald (b. 1973) within the context of American realist and figurative painting. Encompassing the full arc of her career, from her poetic early works to the distinctive figure paintings and portraits that have become her hallmark, Amy Sherald: American Sublime unfolds her method of selecting individuals she meets on the street and using facial expression, body language, and clothing choices to create paintings that transcend portraiture and expand the canon of American art. Essays by curators Sarah Roberts and Rhea Combs; poet and writer Elizabeth Alexander; artist Dario Calmese; and renowned scholar Deborah Willis contextualize and illuminate Sherald’s creation of a new form of imaginative portraiture. Often depicting her subjects’ skin in gray monochrome, surrounded by few markers of place, time, or context beyond the clothes they wear, Sherald challenges the assumption that Black life is inextricably bound with struggle, creating images that engage in more expansive thinking about race and representation and the wide-open possibilities and complexities of every individual. Whether a passerby or the former first lady Michelle Obama, Sherald’s subjects are at ease with themselves, the world, and one another.
 
Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(November 16, 2024–March 9, 2025)
 
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
(April 9–August 3, 2025)
 
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
(September 2025–January 2026)

Pennsylvania State Senator Nikil Saval tells the story of an unlikely partnership between June Jordan and R. Buckminster Fuller, and their attempt to reimagine Harlem in the wake of the 1964 riots.

In the tense days leading up to the 2020 American elections, then-candidate for Pennsylvania State Senate Nikil Saval addressed a virtual audience at the Harvard GSD to tell a story about Black feminist writer June Jordan and a little-known project that resulted from the aftermath of the 1964 Harlem riot. The events of police brutality and community grieving made a lasting impression on Jordan, who, while known for her work as a poet, playwright, and activist, responded with a proposal for a multiple-tower housing design. Through an unlikely partnership with R. Buckminster Fuller, Jordan’s “Skyrise for Harlem” project offered a Futuristic vision for Harlem that argued for environmental redesign: “it is architecture, conceived of in its fullest meaning as the creation of environment, which may actually determine the pace, pattern, and quality of living experience.”
 
Jordan was not an architect in the conventional sense, Saval says. “But in the understanding of someone who sought to propose and build interventions in public space, she was.”

Examining aesthetic connections between the works of more than 50 Black artists from throughout the global diaspora

This book was born out of frustration with art histories that emphasize Black artists’ resilience over the aesthetic impact of their work. The experiences of oppression Black people endure are inconceivable, yet this focus on resilience often overwhelms critical attention to Black artists’ ideas, innovations or use of materials. Imagining Black Diasporas defines “diaspora’’ more broadly, understanding it as a dynamic term that evolves with Black experience. Through four themes, the book illuminates aesthetic connections among established and emerging US–based artists in dialogue with artists working in Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Europe.
Artists include: Mark Bradford, Lorna Simpson, Calida Rawles, El Anatsui, Josué Azor, Isaac Julien, Frida Orupabo, Theaster Gates, Yinka Shonibare, Wangechi Mutu.

Referencing everything from Erykah Badu to ancient Egyptian deities, Jamea Richmond-Edwards creates a brilliant multimedia panorama of Black history

Detroit–based artist Jamea Richmond-Edwards (born 1982) creates work in dialogue with Afrofuturism, mythology, history and Black fashion. Her vibrantly colored canvases take inspiration from the AfriCOBRA collective and are layered with collage and portraiture. This catalog follows her largest solo museum exhibition to date, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and features a monumental painting, several large-scale paintings and a newly commissioned film. Using glitter, fabric and soft sculpture, these paintings depict the artist and her family reimagined as Egyptian deities, encountering dragons and paying homage to Indigenous leaders. The film Ancient Future uses a majorette performance superimposed against the cosmos activated by an experimental jazz soundtrack in collaboration with Richmond-Edwards’ son. The catalog features a selection of stills from the film and a gatefold of the new monumental work.

The latest in the World Stage series of portraits by Kehinde Wiley (born 1977), this volume presents 13 new paintings, the result of the artist's trip to Haiti―a nation that is often presented as a place of chronic poverty, corruption and deprivation. In Haiti Wiley actively went looking for beauty, staging pageants to cast his portrait subjects and advertising with open calls on the radio and posters put up in the streets of Jacmel, Jalouise and Port-au-Prince. Wiley worked within the tradition of pageant culture native to the Caribbean but also subverted it, choosing his winners at random. The paintings draw on the artistic traditions of France and Spain (the colonial rulers of Haiti before the Haitian Revolution), as well as Haiti's varied religious traditions and local crafts, creating a composite portrait of contemporary Haiti through its people, history and culture.

A masterpiece of identity horror and a dark reflection on America’s past and present, Us presents chilly atmospherics, psychological torment and old-world suspense-building plot twists. Whereas Get Out was considered more a mixture of drama and suspense, Peele leaned fully into the horror genre with his sophomore film, using urban legends such as doppelgangers to tease out the uniquely American perceptions of xenophobia and “othering.” Critic Monica Castillo wrote of the film: “Us is another thrilling exploration of the past and oppression this country is still too afraid to bring up. Peele wants us to talk, and he’s given audiences the material to think, to feel our way through some of the darker sides of the human condition.”
Published in conjunction with the fifth anniversary of the critically acclaimed film’s release, this companion paperback features Oscar®-winning director Jordan Peele’s screenplay, alternate endings and deleted scenes, and is richly illustrated with over 150 stills from the motion picture. Specially commissioned annotations by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Jamieson Webster, Jared Sexton, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond and Leila Taylor present a cosmology of images, definitions and inspirations that extend the themes of the film. Continuing in the legacy of 1960s paperbacks that documented the era’s most significant avant-garde films―such as Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Godard’s Masculin Féminin and Antonioni’s L’Avventura―Us is an indispensable guide to a deeper understanding of this important film.
Jordan Peele (born 1979) is a writer, actor and filmmaker who rose to fame as half of the comedy duo Key & Peele. He has written and directed three feature films: Get Out (2017), Us (2019) and Nope (2022). He was the first Black screenwriter to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.