*please note Ryan Dennis and Assata Richards will no longer be moderating. 

Celebrate the first monograph dedicated to Rick Lowe's art practice! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Wednesday, May 22 at 7PM

Where: The Eldorado Ballroom (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to save your seat. RSVP WITH BOOK to get a copy of Rick Lowe's book. Limited books will be available onsite.

ABOUT THE BOOK

 
Houston-based artist Rick Lowe is widely known for his pioneering contributions to the development of “social practice art,” work that landed him a MacArthur fellowship in 2014. What few people realize is that he was originally trained as a landscape painter. In recent years, Lowe has increasingly turned back to painting, producing complex multi-panel and quasi-abstract images that are deeply rooted in thirty years of work creating “social sculptures,” recalling the urban fabric of cities around the world that have formed the backdrop of many of his community-based art projects. This book, which brilliantly reproduces Lowe’s paintings, is the first dedicated to the work of this important American artist, focusing on his painterly practice and its origins in his work in the public sphere.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Rick Lowe was born in 1961 in rural Russell County, Alabama, and lives and works in Houston. 

Collections include the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Menil Collection, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the UBS Art Collection. Solo exhibitions include Art League Houston (2020–21). He also participated in Documenta 14, Athens (2017). 

Among Lowe’s numerous community art projects are Project Row Houses, Houston (1993–2018); Watts House Project, Los Angeles (1996–2012); Borough Project (with Suzanne Lacy and Mary Jane Jacob), Charleston, SC (2003); Small Business/Big Change, Anyang Public Art Program, Korea (2010); Trans.lation, Dallas (2013); Victoria Square Project, Athens (2017–18); Greenwood Art Project, Tulsa, OK (2018–21); and Black Wall Street Journey, Chicago (2021–). 

In 2013 President Barack Obama appointed Lowe to the National Council on the Arts, and in 2014 he was named a Mac Arthur Fellow. Lowe was a Visiting Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society from 2019-2021. He is currently a professor of interdisciplinary practice at the University of Houston.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNERS

Ryan N. Dennis is Senior Curator and Director of Public Initiatives at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). Her recent projects include Leonardo Drew’s City in the Garden (2020), Betye Saar: Call & Response (2021), Dusti Bonge: Piercing the Inner Wall (2021), and organizing CAPE Artist-in-Resident Shani Peter’s Collective Care for Black Mothers and Caretakers with the local Jackson community. She is the co-curator of the critically acclaimed exhibition, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. Prior to joining the MMA, she served as the Cura­tor and Programs Director at Project Row Houses (PRH) in Houston, where she worked with over 100 BIPOC artists to exhibit their work in the shot-gun houses, she led the creation of the 2:2:2 Exchange Residency Program with the Hyde Park Art Center in Chi­cago and established Project/Site, a temporary, site-specific, commission-based public art program. In 2017, she launched the PRH Fellowship with the Center for Art and Social Engagement at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. Dennis earned her master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute with a focus in Curatorial Practice. Her writings have appeared in online and print catalogs, journals and publications nationally and internationally. She has been a visiting lecturer and critic at a number of art schools and institutions and has taught courses on community-based practices and contemporary art at the University of Houston. Most recently she was the co-curator of the 2021 Texas Biennial titled A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon (2021) and the guest art editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.

Assata Richards is a native of Houston, Texas and received much of her education in East Texas in the community known as “County Line”. After completing her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Houston, she earned a Master’s and PhD from Pennsylvania State University in Sociology with a concentration on political and community participation, research methods and mass incarceration. After serving as a faculty member at University of Pittsburgh, Assata returned to her community of Third Ward in Houston, Texas, where she is living and working with Project Row Houses and serving as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Houston. As a scholar and community organizer, she is fulfilling her lifelong commitment to social change and justice. Assata also serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of Commissioners for Houston Housing Authority, as a appointee of Mayor Annise Parker.

This one-of-a-kind treasure trove of Black cultural ephemera, from the entrepreneurs behind the vintage shop BLK MKT Vintage, expands on their mission to curate vintage objects that tell Black stories and celebrate the contributions Black people have made to our American consciousness.
 
Jannah Handy and Kiyanna Stewart have spent years scouring piles, stacks, bookshelves, and dilapidated boxes in search of themselves and their history, Black history. Through their Brooklyn brick-and-mortar BLK MKT Vintage and online shop, they have uncovered tens of thousands of items including vintage literature, vinyl records, clothing, art, decor, furniture and more.
 
BLK MKT Vintage: Reclaiming Objects and Curiosities That Tell Black Stories invites readers into Handy and Stewart’s work and partnership as they pick, collect, curate, design, and reimagine futures for the objects of the past. Brimming with more than 300 photographs of vintage pieces of ephemera, the book is a beautiful, ephemeral object itself calling to mind a scrapbook or family album that has a surprise on every page whether that’s 1972 celluloid pins from Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign, early 1800’s hand-drawn maps of the African continent, or 1920’s bound yearbooks from various HBCUs. The book also explores the various concepts that ground Handy and Stewart’s work; interviews with Black archivists, artists, memory workers and collectors – including a foreword from Spike Lee; a look into their private collection of thousands of items they have discovered over the years; an explanation of the different players in the antiques and vintage world; and tips and tricks on how to begin your own collection and curate physical spaces that reflect your identity and experience.

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—art, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that black creators are bringing forth today. The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics.

The Black Experience in Design spotlights teaching practices, research, stories, and conversations from a Black/African diasporic lens.

Excluded from traditional design history and educational canons that heavily favor European modernist influences, the work and experiences of Black designers have been systematically overlooked in the profession for decades. However, given the national focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the aftermath of the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, educators, practitioners, and students now have the opportunity—as well as the social and political momentum—to make long-term, systemic changes in design education, research, and practice, reclaiming the contributions of Black designers in the process.

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HIP-HOP (AND OTHER THINGS) is about, as it were, rap, but also some other things. It's a smart, fun, funny, insightful book that spends the entirety of its time celebrating what has become the most dominant form of music over the past two and a half decades.

*This item will ship or be ready for pick up in 7-10 business days

Black Interior Designers, Inc. (BID) presents the extraordinary work of 50 interior designers and offers a behind-the-scenes look as they share their inspirations, expertise, and thoughts on what it means to be a designer of color working in the industry today.

In 2010, Black Interior Designers, Inc. (BID) began to unite, connect, and promote Black designers, bringing their projects into the spotlight.

In Iconic Home: Interiors, Advice, and Stories from 50 Amazing Black Designers, author Ashley June Reese lends her thoughtful eye and powerful writing, weaving together inspiring interiors and the fascinating personal stories of each featured designer. Featuring 50 industry stars, with notable names such as Justina Blakeney, Faith Blakeney, Adair Curtis and Jason Bolden of JSN Studio, Bridgid Coulter, Corey Damen Jenkins, Forbes & Masters, General Judd, Keia McSwain, Brigette Romanek, the book tells their stories and shares their challenges and triumphs. Design philosophies and creative influences are brought to light and are illuminated with wonderfully designed spaces in a range of styles. The result is a behind-the-scenes look at what it means to be a designer of color creating work in the industry today.

An expanded edition of Parks’ classic account of race relations in America, with previously unpublished images and texts

This expanded edition of Gordon Parks: Segregation Story includes around 30 previously unpublished photographs, as well as enhanced reproductions created from Parks’ original color transparencies; newly discovered descriptions Parks wrote for the photographs; a manuscript of film-developing instructions and captions Parks authored with Samuel F. Yette; previously published texts by the late art historian Maurice Berger and the esteemed journalist and civil rights activist Charlayne Hunter-Gault; and a new essay by artist Dawoud Bey.
After the photographs were first presented in a 1956 issue of Life magazine, the bulk of Parks’ assignment was thought to be lost. In 2011, five years after Parks’ death, the Gordon Parks Foundation found more than 200 color transparencies belonging to the series. In 2014 the series was first published as a book, and since then new photographs have been uncovered.
In the summer of 1956, Life magazine sent Gordon Parks to Alabama to document the daily realities of African Americans living under Jim Crow laws in the rural South. The resulting color photographs are among Parks’ most powerful images, and, in the decades since, have become emblematic representations of race relations in America. Pursued at grave danger to the photographer himself, the project was an important chapter in Parks’ career-long endeavor to use the camera as a weapon for social change.
Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. An itinerant laborer, he worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself and becoming a photographer. He evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man, finding success as a film director, writer and composer. The first African American director to helm a major motion picture, he helped launch the blaxploitation genre with his film Shaft (1971). Parks died in 2006.

An illustrated edition of The 1619 Project, with newly commissioned artwork and archival images, The New York Times Magazine's award-winning reframing of the American founding and its contemporary echoes, placing slavery and resistance at the center of the American story.

Here, in these pages, Black art provides refuge. The marriage of beautiful, haunting and profound words and imagery creates an experience for the reader, a wanting to reflect, to sit in both the discomfort and the joy, to contemplate what a nation owes a people who have contributed so much and yet received so little, and maybe even, to act. --Nikole Hannah-Jones, from the Preface

Curated by the editors of The New York Times Magazine, led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, this illustrated edition of The 1619 Project features seven chapters from the original book that lend themselves to beautiful, engaging visuals, deepening the experience of the content. The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience offers the same revolutionary idea as the original book, an argument for a new national origin story that begins in late August of 1619, when a cargo ship of enslaved people from Africa arrived on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia. Only by reckoning with this difficult history and understanding its powerful influence on our present can we prepare ourselves for a more just future.

Filled with original art by thirteen Black artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles, Vitus Shell, Xaviera Simmons, on the themes of resistance and freedom, a brand-new photo essay about slave auction sites, vivid photos of Black Americans celebrating their own forms of patriotism, and a collection of archival images of Black families by Black photographers, this gorgeous volume offers readers a dynamic new way of experiencing the impact of The 1619 Project.

Complete with many of the powerful essays and vignettes from the original edition, written by some of the most brilliant journalists, scholars, and thinkers of our time, The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience brings to life a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of American history and culture.

Spike Lee is a world-renowned, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, a cultural icon, and one of the most prominent voices on race and racism for more than three decades. His prolific career has included over 35 films, including his directorial debut She's Gotta Have It (1986), his seminal masterpiece Do the Right Thing (1989), and more recently, his Oscar-winning film BlacKkKlansman (2018). Spike Lee's provocative feature films, documentaries, commercials, and music videos, have shone the spotlight on significant stories and have made an indelible mark in both cinematic history and in contemporary society.

This career-spanning monograph titled SPIKE is a visual celebration of his life and career to date. The custom bold, typographic design is inspired by the LOVE/HATE brass rings that Radio Raheem wore in Do the Right Thing and that Spike Lee wore at the 2019 Academy Awards. The gold foil deboss on SPIKE on the vibrant fuchsia front cover is a bold and beautiful, eye-catching design. Featuring hundreds of never-before-seen photographs by David Lee, Spike's brother and long-time still photographer, SPIKE the book, includes behind-the-scenes, insider images that underscore his creative process and his significant impact on the culture at large. From his critically acclaimed film Malcolm X (1992) starring Denzel Washington, to his recent film Da 5 Bloods (2020) featuring the late Chadwick Boseman, Spike Lee's work continues to resonate now more than ever. Also included here are his beloved commercials with Michael Jordan for Nike, which helped launch the billion-dollar Jordan brand product empire, as well as his music videos with Prince and Michael Jackson. This is a must-have collector's item and ideal gift for any cinephile and fan of one of the most prominent and influential filmmakers in history.

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In A Black Gaze, Tina Campt examines Black contemporary artists who are shifting the very nature of our interactions with the visual through their creation and curation of a distinctively Black gaze. Their work—from Deana Lawson’s disarmingly intimate portraits to Arthur Jafa’s videos of the everyday beauty and grit of the Black experience, from Khalil Joseph’s films and Dawoud Bey’s photographs to the embodied and multimedia artistic practice of Okwui Okpakwasili, Simone Leigh, and Luke Willis Thompson—requires viewers to do more than simply look; it solicits visceral responses to the visualization of Black precarity.

Celebrate the release of Where is Africa with author and curator, Anita N. Bateman!

EVENT DEETS

When: Tuesday, March 12, 2024 @ 6:30 PM 

Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, Houston, TX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP with Book to support the author and our programming. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

A multidisciplinary illustrated reader unpacking imperialist representations of Africa by promoting dialogue, memory and everyday practice, and reimagining cultural institutions and the arts—from museums to academia, from architecture to art

In 2017, curator and art historian Anita N. Bateman and architect and professor Emanuel Admassu initiated research on the traditional positioning and mispositioning of the arts across the African continent. Where Is Africa has been an extended set of exchanges with contemporary artists, curators, designers and academics who are actively engaged in representing the continent—both within and outside its geographic boundaries. By examining artist collectives, new currents in art history and the rise of contemporary art festivals in and about Africa from the past 10 years, the project unpacks the imperialist foundations of cultural institutions and their anthropological fascination with African objects, people and places.
The interviews in Where Is Africa examine African and African-diasporic identities and spaces through questions of positionality in relation to specific disciplinary, cultural and political contexts. The texts address Afro-diasporic aesthetic practices and the curatorial, museological and artistic matrices that confront epistemologies of dominance and exclusion. The commissioned essays and images offer concise methodologies that expand or complicate issues addressed by the interviewees.
Where Is Africa is a conceptual project that accompanies a conceptual place, driven by the desire to dislodge Africa from categorical fixity and the representational logics of nation-states. Africa can never be fully enclosed by the residue of colonial violence or the totalitarian gaze of neoliberalism; instead, it creates infinite malleability, where place and concept are untethered from each other.

Contributors include: Mikael Awake, Salome Asega, Tau Tavengwa, Anthony Bogues, Jay Simple, Eric Gottesman, Rebecca Corey, Aida Mulkozi, Rakeb Sile, Mesai Haileleul, Mpho Matsipa, Niama Safia Sandy, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Rehema Chachage, Robel Temesgen, Valerie Amani, Meskerem Assegued, Elias Sime, Olalekan Jeyifous, Amanda Williams, Germane Barnes and Mario Gooden.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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.

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In 2013, film and culture critic Zeba Blay was one of the first people to coin the viral term #carefreeblackgirls on Twitter. As she says, it was “a way to carve out a space of celebration and freedom for Black women online.”

In this collection of essays, Blay expands on this initial idea by delving into the work and lasting achievements of influential Black women in American culture--writers, artists, actresses, dancers, hip-hop stars--whose contributions often come in the face of bigotry, misogyny, and stereotypes. Blay celebrates the strength and fortitude of these Black women, while also examining the many stereotypes and rigid identities that have clung to them. In writing that is both luminous and sharp, expansive and intimate, Blay seeks a path forward to a culture and society in which Black women and their art are appreciated and celebrated.

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Equal parts stunning, photo-heavy look book and cultural commentary, Fly is the story of the undeniable intersection of high fashion and basketball. Organized by era, each section is broken down by the style of the time and the cultural influence surrounding it: beginning with the league’s inception in 1949, pre–civil rights movement—when the NBA was mostly white players who wore suits and skinny ties. From the years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the birth of funk and R&B when basketball fashion got flashier, with some players wearing fur coats and big hats (think Walt Clyde Frazier and Wilt Chamberlain), to the Michael Jordan era of the 80s and 90s, with big, oversize suits. And on to the epic Iverson or Hip-Hop Era, in the early 2000s, with the birth of the “tunnel walk.” Today, athletes are idealized not only as fashion icons but also social activists. We’re talking about the biggest names: Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Dwyane Wade, and Lebron James (who could forget his “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt). The conversationis no longer limited to athletic performance or what these athletes are wearing—they are expressing their fashion sense in what has become an important cultural moment.

In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In this com-plementary follow up, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. How does one approach the genius of writers like Melville, Dickens, or Twain? In The Elements of Fiction, Walter Mosley contemplates the answer.

In a series of instructive and conversational chapters, Mosley demonstrates how to master fiction's most essential elements: character and char-acter development, plot and story, voice and narrative, context and description, and more. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from the blank page to the first draft to rewriting, and rewriting again. Throughout, The Elements of Fiction is enriched by brilliant demonstrative examples that Mosley himself has written here for the first time.

Inspiring, accessible, and told in a voice both trustworthy and wise, The Elements of Fiction writing will intrigue and encourage writers and readers alike.

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2018 BY Esquire • PopSugar • The Huffington Post •  Buzzfeed • Publishers Weekly

A unique new guide to creativity from Questlove—inspirations, stories, and lessons on how to live your best creative life

Questlove—musician, bandleader, designer, producer, culinary entrepreneur, professor, and all-around cultural omnivore—shares his wisdom on the topics of inspiration and originality in a one-of-a-kind guide to living your best creative life. 

In Creative Quest, Questlove synthesizes all the creative philosophies, lessons, and stories he’s heard from the many creators and collaborators in his life, and reflects on his own experience, to advise readers and fans on how to consider creativity and where to find it. He addresses many topics—what it means to be creative, how to find a mentor and serve as an apprentice, the wisdom of maintaining a creative network, coping with critics and the foibles of success, and the specific pitfalls of contemporary culture—all in the service of guiding admirers who have followed his career and newcomers not yet acquainted with his story. 

Whether discussing his own life or channeling the lessons he’s learned from forefathers such as George Clinton, collaborators like D’Angelo, or like-minded artists including Ava DuVernay, David Byrne, Björk, and others, Questlove speaks with the candor and enthusiasm that fans have come to expect. Creative Quest is many things—above all, a wise and wide-ranging conversation around the eternal mystery of creativity.

Learn more about Brujería, the set of practices and rituals found in traditional Latin American mysticism with this mini guide.

Developed over centuries and influenced by Indigenous, Caribbean, African, Latin, and European culture, Brujería has a unique history. This beautifully illustrated introduction will outline the primary methods, practices, rituals, tools, and terms used in Brujería. Learn about limpias, mal de ojo, crystals, cleanses, astrology, and so much more in this enchanting guide.

Baldwin’s life and legacy as remembered by a pantheon of artists and writers: from Jamaica Kincaid and Barry Jenkins to Richard Avedon and Alice Neel

When author James Baldwin died in 1987, he left behind an extraordinary body of work: novels, poems, film scripts and, perhaps most indelibly, essays. A friend and supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, Baldwin was a critical voice in the civil rights movement. After reaching acclaim in his early career as a writer, he struggled to retain the author’s “I,” while taking on the “we” of the people.
Edited by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als and growing out of his landmark exhibition at David Zwirner in 2019, God Made My Face brings together an impressive assembly of contributors, ranging from Baldwin biographer David Leeming to novelist Jamaica Kincaid and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, to create a memorial mosaic: one that not only mirrors Baldwin’s various tones but also closely examines his singular contributions to cinema, theater, the essay and Black American critical studies. These essays are illustrated by artwork from modern and contemporary artists who were either personal contemporaries of Baldwin or directly inspired by his work. In each piece assembled here, the authors speak from a personal, informed perspective, illuminating Baldwin’s deeply anguished and enlightened voice and his belief that, ultimately—because we are human—we share the potential to love, connect and live together in all our glory.
Artists include: Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Don Bachardy, Alvin Baltrop, Anthony Barboza, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Beauford Delaney, Marlene Dumas, Glenn Ligon, George McCalman, Alice Neel, Elle Pérez, Cameron Rowland, Kara Walker, James Welling, Larry Wolhandler.
Authors include:Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, Darryl Pinckney.

• An exploration of ecological grief and its impacts

• Information for working with subtle body energy

• Tools for observing, identifying, foraging, and cultivating plants

• Methods for creating infusions, honeys, vinegars, and oils

• More than 80 seasonal and 40 plant monographs

A celebratory visual chronicle of the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves

Spanning over two centuries from around 1800 to the present day, Black American Portraits chronicles the ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves in their own eyes. Remembering Two Centuries of Black American Art, curated by David C. Driskell at LACMA 45 years ago, this book is a companion to the exhibition of the same name that reframes portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters and spaces. This selection of approximately 140 works from LACMA’s permanent collection highlights emancipation, scenes from the Harlem Renaissance, portraits from the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, multiculturalism of the 1990s and the spirit of Black Lives Matter.
Countering a visual culture that often demonizes Blackness and fetishizes the spectacle of Black pain, these images center love, abundance, family, community and exuberance. Black American Portraits depicts Black figures in a range of mediums such as painting, drawing, prints, photography, sculpture, mixed media and time-based media. In addition to work by artists of African descent, Black American Portraits includes several works by artists of other backgrounds who have exemplified a thoughtfulness about, sensitivity toward and commitment to Black artists, communities, histories and subjects.
Artists include: Alvin Baltrop, Edward Biberman, Bisa Butler, Jordan Casteel, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Bruce Davidson, Stan Douglas, rafa esparza, Shepard Fairey, Charles Gaines, Sargent Claude Johnson, Deana Lawson, Kerry James Marshall, Alice Neel, Lorraine O'Grady, Catherine Opie, Amy Sherald, Ming Smith, Henry Taylor, Tourmaline, Mickalene Thomas, James Van Der Zee, Carrie Mae Weems, Charles White, Kehinde Wiley and Deborah Willis.

An inspirational trove of film posters and ephemera, photographs, artwork and more from the collection of Spike Lee

For nearly four decades, Spike Lee has made movies that demand our attention. His extensive filmography reflects an unflinching critique of race relations in the United States, from the Student Academy Award®–winning short Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads and the ever-relevant Do the Right Thing to the more recent Oscar®-winning BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods. A lifelong cinephile and film scholar, Lee draws inspiration from other artists working across a range of eras, genres and global cinemas. He has also devoted much of his career to teaching the next generation of filmmakers.
Spike Lee: Director’s Inspiration presents Lee’s personal collection of original film posters and objects, photographs, artworks and more—many of these inscribed to Lee personally by filmmakers, stars, athletes, activists, musicians and others who have inspired his work in specific ways.
Straight from the walls of Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule production studio in Brooklyn, his faculty office at NYU and his Martha’s Vineyard home, these objects offer a glimpse into what shapes Lee’s signature filmmaking approach. Spike Lee: Director’s Inspiration also includes a conversation between Lee and Shaka King (Judas and the Black Messiah) and brief texts by some of the many artists Lee himself has inspired.
Spike Lee (born 1957) is a director, writer, actor, producer, author and artistic director of the graduate film program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he has taught since 1993.

“That is the archaeology I am unearthing: the specter of police violence and state control over the bodies of young Black and brown people all over the world.” –Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence features a new body of paintings and sculptures by American artist Kehinde Wiley confronting the legacies of colonialism through the visual language of the fallen figure. It expands on a subject the artist first explored in his 2008 series Down—a group of large-scale portraits of young Black men inspired by Wiley’s encounter with Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22) at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Holbein’s painting triggered an ongoing investigation into the iconography of death and sacrifice in Western art that Wiley traced across religious, mythological and historical subjects. An Archaeology of Silence extends these considerations to include men and women around the world whose senseless deaths, often unacknowledged or silenced, are transformed into a powerful elegy of global resistance against state-sanctioned violence. The resulting paintings of Black bodies struck down, wounded or dead, all referencing iconic historical paintings of slain heroes, martyrs or saints, offer a haunting meditation on the violence against Black and brown bodies through the lens of European art history.
Kehinde Wiley (born 1977) is a world-renowned visual artist. Working in the mediums of painting, sculpture and video, Wiley is best known for his vibrant portrayals of contemporary African American and African-diasporic individuals that subvert the hierarchies and conventions of European and American portraiture. Wiley became the first African American artist to paint an official US Presidential portrait for former US President Barack Obama. Wiley has held solo exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, and his works are included in the collections of over 40 public institutions worldwide. He lives and works in Beijing, Dakar and New York.

"Art as Social Action . . . is an essential guide to deepening social art practices and teaching them to students." —Laura Raicovich, president and executive director, Queens Museum

Art as Social Action is both a general introduction to and an illustrated, practical textbook for the field of social practice, an art medium that has been gaining popularity in the public sphere. With content arranged thematically around such topics as direct action, alternative organizing, urban imaginaries, anti-bias work, and collective learning, among others, Art as Social Action is a comprehensive manual for teachers about how to teach art as social practice.

Along with a series of introductions by leading social practice artists in the field, valuable lesson plans offer examples of pedagogical projects for instructors at both college and high school levels with contributions written by prominent social practice artists, teachers, and thinkers, including:

• Mary Jane Jacob
• Maureen Connor
• Brian Rosa
• Pablo Helguera
• Jen de los Reyes
• Jeanne van Heeswick
• Jaishri Abichandani
• Loraine Leeson
• Ala Plastica
• Daniel Tucker
• Fiona Whelan
• Bo Zheng
• Dipti Desai
• Noah Fischer

Lesson plans also reflect the ongoing pedagogical and art action work of Social Practice Queens (SPQ), a unique partnership between Queens College CUNY and the Queens Museum.