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)

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Filled with reproductions of Kehinde Wiley’s bold, colorful, and monumental work, this book encompasses the artist’s various series of paintings as well as his sculptural work—which boldly explore ideas about race, power, and tradition. Celebrated for his classically styled paintings that depict African American men in heroic poses, Kehinde Wiley is among the expanding ranks of prominent black artists—such as Sanford Biggers, Yinka Shonibare, Mickalene Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—who are reworking art history and questioning its depictions of people of color. Co-published with the Brooklyn Museum of Art for the major touring retrospective, this volume surveys Wiley’s career from 2001 to the present. It includes early portraits of the men Wiley observed on Harlem’s streets, and which laid the foundation for his acclaimed reworkings of Old Master paintings by Titian, van Dyke, Manet, and others, in which he replaces historical subjects with young African American men in contemporary attire: puffy jackets, sneakers, hoodies, and baseball caps. Also included is a generous selection from Wiley’s ongoing World Stage project; several of his enormous Down paintings; striking male portrait busts in bronze; and examples from the artist’s new series of stained glass windows. Accompanying the illustrations are essays that introduce readers to the arc of Wiley’s career, its critical reception, and ongoing evolution.

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From knitting expert Brandi Harper, a must-have pattern book for modern knitters, with essays on self-care and sourcing creativity

There is no such thing as being kind-of a knitter—the wobbly scarves and that oversized sweater you tried to shrink all count too. Each contribution that you make to the world through knitting is meaningful, but maybe you’ve slowed your commitment to this craft, or you can’t seem to find the time to be creative. There’s a lot to be distracted by, and the path forward isn’t always clear. Brandi Harper aims to bring those challenges to the forefront and help you unearth the immense benefits that knitting has to offer. In her debut book, Knitting for Radical Self-Care, Harper offers tips and suggestions for carving out time for creativity, alongside beautiful patterns to try yourself. The book includes ten original patterns inspired by revolutionary women of color, and Harper will speak to these women and their immense impact on her life and our world. The patterns include detailed instructions, alongside her original prose, all designed to inspire.

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From the dynamite husband-and-wife duo behind CreativeSoul Photography comes GLORY, a photography book that shatters the conventional standards of beauty for Black children.

With stunning images of natural hair and gorgeous, inventive visual storytelling, GLORY puts Black beauty front and center with more than 100 breathtaking photographs and a collection of powerful essays about the children. At its heart, it is a recognition and celebration of the versatility and innate beauty of Black hair, and Black beauty. The glorious coffee-table book pays homage to the story of our royal past, celebrates the glory of the here and now, and even dares to forecast the future.

Slices of Black American Life is a raw, electrifying yet polished articulation of Black America—its past, present, and future woven through Blaxploitation-inspired poetry and storytelling with cinematic flair.

It possesses a jazz rhythm in tone, MR. TOMONOSHi!’s words tap dance across the page—each syllable hitting like a beat, each line swinging with improvised brilliance.

Each piece offers a window into the fantastical worlds of Black American life, where reality and imagination collide—the characters breathe, move, speak, inviting you in, pulling you close, immersing you deep into the roots of the Black American experience.

A whimsical realness pulsates throughout its entirety.

This collection is more than homage—it’s an ode to the brilliance of Blaxploitation, capturing its bold aesthetics, fearless spirit, and unfiltered truth. Every poem, every story, cuts deep, speaks loud, and refuses to be forgotten.

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.

Portrayals of James Baldwin and others in his circle highlight the iconic writer’s activism

The American writer and activist James Baldwin (1924–87) considered himself a “witness” as he challenged perspectives on America and its history through his work. He was often recognized for speaking out against injustice when other like-minded artists, collaborators and organizers were overshadowed or silenced. By bringing together artworks that feature James Baldwin alongside portraits of other key figures who had an impact on his life, This Morning, This Evening, So Soon situates Baldwin among a pantheon of culture bearers who were instrumental in shaping his life and legacy, particularly in relationship to his advocacy for gay rights. The book accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, curated by the National Portrait Gallery's Director of Curatorial Affairs, Rhea L. Combs, in consultation with Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als. Well-known portraits by Beauford Delaney and Bernard Gotfryd are shown alongside paintings, photographs and films representing key figures in Baldwin’s circle. By viewing Baldwin in this context of community, readers will come to understand how Baldwin’s sexuality and faith, artistic curiosities and notions of masculinity―coupled with his involvement in the civil rights movement―helped shape his writing and long-lasting legacy.
The book relies on portraiture to explore the interwoven lives of Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry (writer and activist), Barbara Jordan (lawyer, educator and politician), Bayard Rustin (leader in social movements), Lyle Ashton Harris (artist), Essex Hemphill (poet and activist), Marlon Riggs (filmmaker, poet and activist) and Nina Simone (singer-songwriter, pianist and activist), among others.
Artists include: Richard Avedon, Glenn Ligon, Donald Moffett, Beauford Delaney, Bernard Gotfryd, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Jack Whitten.

Growing up in Seale, Alabama as a Black Queer kid, then attending the Rhode Island School of Design as an undergraduate, Jon Key hungered to see himself in the fields of Art and Design. But in lectures, critiques, and in the books he read, he struggled to see and learn about people who intersected with his identity or who GOT him. So he started asking himself questions:

What did it mean to be a graphic designer with his point of view? What did it mean to be a Black graphic designer? A Queer graphic designer? Someone from the South? Could his identity be communicated through a poster or a book? How could identity be archived in a design canon that has consistently erased contributions by designers who were not white, straight, and male?

In Black, Queer, & Untold, acclaimed designer and artist Jon Key answers these questions and manifests the book he and so many others wish they had when they were coming up. He pays tribute to the incredible designers, artists, and people who came before and provides them an enduring, reverential stage – and in so doing, gifts us a book that takes its place among the creative arts canon. 

How creativity makes its way through feeling—and what we can know and feel through the artistic work of Black women
 
Feeling is not feelin. As the poet, artist, and scholar Bettina Judd argues, feelin, in African American Vernacular English, is how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: internal and complex, entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy, and manifesting artistic production itself as the meaning of the work. Through interviews, close readings, and archival research, Judd draws on the fields of affect studies and Black studies to analyze the creative processes and contributions of Black women—from poet Lucille Clifton and musician Avery*Sunshine to visual artists Betye Saar, Joyce J. Scott, and Deana Lawson.
 
Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought makes a bold and vital intervention in critical theory’s trend toward disembodying feeling as knowledge. Instead, Judd revitalizes current debates in Black studies about the concept of the human and about Black life by considering how discourses on emotion as they are explored by Black women artists offer alternatives to the concept of the human. Judd expands the notions of Black women’s pleasure politics in Black feminist studies that include the erotic, the sexual, the painful, the joyful, the shameful, and the sensations and emotions that yet have no name. In its richly multidisciplinary approach, Feelin calls for the development of research methods that acknowledge creative and emotionally rigorous work as productive by incorporating visual art, narrative, and poetry.

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With iconic imagery and engrossing text, Black TV is the first book of its kind to celebrate the groundbreaking, influential, and often under-appreciated shows centered on Black people and their experiences from the last fifty years.
 
Over the past decade, television has seen an explosion of acclaimed and influential debut storytellers including Issa Rae (Insecure), Donald Glover (Atlanta), and Michaela Coel (I May Destroy You). This golden age of Black television would not be possible without the actors, showrunners, and writers that worked for decades to give voice to the Black experience in America.
 
Written by veteran TV reporter Bethonie Butler, Black TV tells the stories behind the pioneering series that led to this moment, celebrating the laughs, the drama, and the performances we’ve loved over the last fifty years. Beginning with Julia, the groundbreaking sitcom that made Diahann Carroll the first Black woman to lead a prime-time network series as something other than a servant, she explores the 1960s and 1970s as an era of unprecedented representation, with shows like Soul Train, Roots, and The Jeffersons. She unpacks the increasingly nuanced comedies of the 1980s from 227 to A Different World, and how they paved the way for the ’90s Black-sitcom boom that gave us The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Living Single. Butler also looks at the visionary comedians—from Flip Wilson to the Wayans siblings to Dave Chappelle—and connects all these achievements to the latest breakthroughs in television with showrunners like Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, and Quinta Brunson leading the charge.
 
With dozens of photographs reminding readers of memorable moments and scenes, Butler revisits breakout performances and important guest appearances, delivering some overdue accolades along the way. So, put on your Hillman sweatshirt, make some popcorn, and get ready for a dyn-o-mite retrospective of the most groundbreaking and entertaining shows in television history.

Photo albums from the archives of the iconic chronicler of New York's 1980s rap, hip-hop and Black culture

The influential Brooklyn-based photographer Jamel Shabazz has been making portraits of New Yorkers for more than 40 years, creating an archive of cultural shifts and struggles across the city. His portraits of different communities underscore the street as a space for self-presentation, whether through fashion or pose. In every instance Shabazz aims, in his words, to represent individuals and communities with “honor and dignity.” This book—awarded the Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize—presents, for the first time, Shabazz’s work from the 1970s to ’90s as it exists in his archive: small prints thematically grouped and sequenced in traditional family photo albums that function as portable portfolios.
Shabazz began making portraits in the mid-1970s in Brooklyn, Queens, the West Village and Harlem. His camera was also at his side while working as an officer at Rikers Island in the 1980s, where he took portraits of inmates. This book features selections from over a dozen albums, many previously unseen, and includes his earliest photographs as well as images taken inside Rikers Island, all accompanied by essays that situate Shabazz’s work within the broader history of photography.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Jamel Shabazz (born 1960) picked up his first camera at the age of 15 and began documenting his communities, inspired by photographers such as Leonard Freed, James Van Der Zee and Gordon Parks. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including those at the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Shabazz is the author of Back in the Days (2001) and Sights in the City (2017).

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A groundbreaking A-Z survey of the work of over 300 modern and contemporary artists born or based in Africa

Modern and Contemporary African art is at the forefront of the current curatorial and collector movement in today’s art scene. This groundbreaking new book, created in collaboration with a prestigious global advisory board, represents the most substantial appraisal of contemporary artists born or based in Africa available. Features the work of more than 300 artists, including El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, David Goldblatt, Lubaina Himid, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, and Robin Rhode, as well as lesser-known names from across Africa, with stunning and surprising examples of their art paired with insightful texts that demonstrate their contribution to the painting, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image, and performance art.

The overlooked yet vibrant history of Black participation in American film, from the beginning of cinema through the civil rights movement

From the dawn of the medium onward, Black filmmakers have helped define American cinema. Black performers, producers and directors—Bert Williams, Oscar Micheaux, Herb Jeffries, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee and William Greaves, to name just a few—had a vast and resounding impact. Black film artists not only developed an enduring independent tradition but also transformed mainstream Hollywood, fueled and reflected sociopolitical movements, captured Black experience in all its robust complexity, and influenced generations to come. As harrowing as it is beautiful, this history of Black cinema and its legacy is often overlooked.
Regeneration accompanies a first-of-its-kind exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures exploring seven decades of Black participation in American cinema. Amplifying this underrepresented history in colorful and striking detail, the book features an in-depth curatorial essay and scholarly case-study texts on topics such as early Black independent filmmaking, Black spectatorship during the Jim Crow era and home movies as an essential form of Black self-representation. The volume also makes meaningful connections to the present through interviews with award-winning contemporary Black filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins and Dawn Porter. An extensive filmography and chronology offer an essential resource for anyone interested in Black cinema, while images of contemporary visual artworks further illustrate the volume throughout.

Over the past two decades, Simone Leigh has created artwork that situates questions of Black femme-identified subjectivity at the center of contemporary art discourse. Her sculpture, video, installation and social practice explore ideas of race, beauty and community in visual and material culture. Leigh’s art addresses a wide swath of historical periods, geographies and traditions, with specific references to materials across the African diaspora, as well as forms traditionally associated with African art and architecture.This publication includes substantial new scholarship addressing Leigh’s work across mediums and topics. The volume, timed with the artist's first museum survey and national tour, includes contributions by her longtime collaborators, new scholars who add diverse insights and perspectives, and a conversation highlighting Leigh’s voice. Additionally, generous and lushly illustrated plates feature her critically acclaimed work for the 59th Venice Biennale and works made throughout her 20-year career. A special section featuring Leigh's research images gives access to Leigh’s research methodologies and encourages readers to fully engage with all aspects of Leigh’s work. This monograph provides a timely opportunity to gain a holistic understanding of the complex and profoundly moving work of this groundbreaking artist.

Born in Chicago in 1967, Simone Leigh received a BA in fine art with a minor in philosophy from Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, in 1990. In 2022, Leigh represented the United States at the 59th Venice Biennale with her critically acclaimed exhibition Sovereignty. She has had solo presentations at the Kitchen, New York (2012); Creative Time, New York (2014); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); and the High Line, New York (2019); among other venues. Leigh lives and works in Brooklyn.

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.

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In this powerful and hopeful account, arts writer, curator, and activist Kimberly Drew reminds us that the art world has space not just for the elite, but for everyone.

Featuring more than 100 artists, this landmark book charts the intricate connections between photography and the Black Arts Movement
 
The Black Arts Movement brought together writers, filmmakers, and visual artists who were exploring ways of using art to advance civil rights and Black self-determination. This book examines the vital role of photography in the evolution of the Black Arts Movement, revealing how photographs operated across art, community building, journalism, and political messaging to contribute to the development of a distinctly Black art and culture.
 
Works by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Kwame Brathwaite, Samuel Fosso, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Gordon Parks, Juan Sánchez, Robert A. Sengstacke, Lorna Simpson, Ming Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems, among dozens of other celebrated and underappreciated artists, span documentary and fashion photography, portraiture, collage, installation, performance, and video. Pictured luminaries include Miles Davis, Mahalia Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Malcolm X, and many more. The book’s essays by distinguished scholars focus on topics such as women and the movement, community, activism, and Black photojournalism. Taking an expansive approach, the authors consider the complex connections between American artists and the African diaspora and the dynamic interchange of pan-African ideas that propelled the movement. Authoritative and beautifully illustrated, this is the definitive volume on photography and the Black Arts Movement.
 
Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
(September 21, 2025–January 4, 2026)
 
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
(February 24–May 24, 2026)
 
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS
(July 25–November 1, 2026)

"A must for all who would more knowledgeably appreciate and better comprehend America's most popular music." — Langston Hughes

"The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music—through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music."

So says Amiri Baraka (previously known as LeRoi Jones) in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America—not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.

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.

In this poignant memoir, as candid and indelible as The Glass Castle and Memorial Drive, a writer takes on the conflict between the love that binds us to home and the desire to escape it for good.

On a highway in Houston, Texas, Sarah LaBrie’s mother was found screaming at passing cars, terrified she would be murdered by invisible assailants. The diagnosis of schizophrenia that followed compelled Sarah to rethink her childhood, marked at turns by violence and all-consuming closeness.

Digging into the events that led to her mother’s break, Sarah traces her family history of mental illness, from the dysphoria that plagued her great-grandmother, a granddaughter of slaves, to her own experience with depression as a scholarship student at Brown. At the same time, she navigates a decades-long fixation on a novel she can’t finish but can't abandon, her complicated feelings about her white partner, and a fraught friendship colored by betrayal.

Spanning the globe from Houston’s Third Ward to Paris to Tallinn and New York to Los Angeles, No One Gets to Fall Apart is an unflinching chronicle of one woman's attempt to forge a new future through a better understanding of the past.

A major survey chronicling Thomas’ vibrant, rhinestone-adorned paintings

New York–based artist Mickalene Thomas’ critically acclaimed and extensive body of work spans painting, collage, print, photography, video and immersive installations. With influences ranging from 19th-century painting to popular culture, Thomas’ art articulates a complex and empowering vision of womanhood while expanding on and subverting common definitions of beauty, sexuality, celebrity and politics. This major survey publication further affirms Thomas’ status as a key figure of contemporary art. It features notable works that are arranged in thematic chapters throughout the book.
The book also features an interview with the artist by Rachel Thomas, and is followed by essays from Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Darnell L. Moore, Claudia Rankine, Ed Schad, T.K. Smith and Christine Y. Kim, which cover her distinct visual vocabulary, drawing on themes of intergenerational female empowerment, autobiography, memory and tenets of Black feminist theory. In particular, they explore how Thomas subverts art history to reclaim the notions of repose, rest and leisure in works that celebrate self-expression and joy. For the artist, repose is a radical act, pointing to "what is able to happen once you have the agency."
Mickalene Thomas (born 1971) is an international, award-winning, multidisciplinary artist whose work has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. She is known for her elaborate portraits of Black women composed of rhinestones, acrylic and enamel.

After a century of racist whitewashing, country music is finally reckoning with its relationship to Black people. In this timely work—the first book on Black country music by a Black writer—Francesca Royster uncovers the Black performers and fans, including herself, who are exploring the pleasures and possibilities of the genre.

Informed by queer theory and Black feminist scholarship, Royster’s book elucidates the roots of the current moment found in records like Tina Turner’s first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On! She reckons with Black “bros” Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, then chases ghosts into the future with Valerie June. Indeed, it is the imagination of Royster and her artists that make this music so exciting for a genre that has long been obsessed with the past. The futures conjured by June and others can be melancholy, and are not free of racism, but by centering Black folk Royster begins to understand what her daughter hears in the banjo music of Our Native Daughters and the trap beat of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.” A Black person claiming country music may still feel a bit like a queer person coming out, but, collectively, Black artists and fans are changing what country music looks and sounds like—and who gets to love it.

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With exclusive backstage stories from its legendary dancers and staff, and unprecedented access to its archives, Dance Theatre of Harlem is a striking chronicle of the company's amazing history, its fascinating daily workings, and the visionaries who made its legacy. Here you’ll discover how the company’s founders—African-American maestro Arthur Mitchell of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, and Nordic-American Karel Shook of The Dutch National Ballet--created timeless works that challenged Eurocentric mainstream ballet head-on—and used new techniques to examine ongoing issues of power, beauty, myth, and the ever-changing definition of art itself.
 
Gaining prominence in the 1970s and 80s with a succession of triumphs—including its spectacular season at the Metropolitan Opera House—the company also gained fans and supporters that included Nelson Mandela, Stevie Wonder, Cicely Tyson, Misty Copeland, Jessye Norman, and six American presidents. Dance Theatre of Harlem details this momentous era as well as the company's difficult years, its impressive recovery as it partnered with new media's most brilliant creators—and, in the wake of its 50th anniversary, amid a global pandemic, its evolution into a worldwide virtual performance space.
 
Alive with stunning photographs, including many from the legendary Marbeth, this incomparable book is a must-have for any lover of dance, art, culture, or history. 

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Afro-Atlantic Histories brings together a selection of more than 400 works and documents by more than 200 artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries that express and analyze the ebbs and flows between Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. The book is motivated by the desire and need to draw parallels, frictions and dialogues around the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories―their experiences, creations, worshiping and philosophy. The so-called Black Atlantic, to use the term coined by Paul Gilroy, is geography lacking precise borders, a fluid field where African experiences invade and occupy other nations, territories and cultures.
The plural and polyphonic quality of “histórias” is also of note; unlike the English “histories,” the word in Portuguese carries a double meaning that encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, personal, political, economic and cultural, as well as mythological narratives.
The book features more than 400 works from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as Europe, from the 16th to the 21st century. These are organized in eight thematic groupings: Maps and Margins; Emancipations; Everyday Lives; Rites and Rhythms; Routes and Trances; Portraits; Afro Atlantic Modernisms; Resistances and Activism.
Artists include: Nina Chanel Abney, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Emanoel Araujo, Maria Auxiliadora, Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Paul Cézanne, Victoria Santa Cruz, Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Melvin Edwards, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ben Enwonwu, Ellen Gallagher, Theodore Géricault, Barkley Hendricks, William Henry Jones, Loïs Mailou Jones, Titus Kaphar, Wifredo Lam, Norman Lewis, Ibrahim Mahama, Edna Manley, Archibald Motley, Abdias Nascimento, Gilberto de la Nuez, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Dalton Paula, Rosana Paulino, Howardena Pindell, Heitor dos Prazeres, Joshua Reynolds, Faith Ringgold, Gerard Sekoto, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Rubem Valentim, Kara Walker and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

The first major publication on Baltimore-based painter Jerrell Gibbs, whose contemplative portraits of Black sitters thrum with a vivid sense of place and reflect the complexity and emotional depth of everyday Black life.

This book captures a prolific period of self-examination and observation for contemporary artist Jerrell Gibbs (b. 1988). Known for his luminously rendered, expressionistic oil paintings, Gibbs uses the figure as a dynamic and recurring motif to explore themes of Black masculinity, fatherhood, legacy, and remembrance.

Drawing from archival family photographs, Gibbs emphasizes placement, size, and proportion, blending intimate mark-making with bold painterly gestures. By complicating and subverting visual stereotypes, Gibbs engages deeply with the materiality of painting, offering tender, emotionally evocative portrayals of Black men as husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. These allegorical and autobiographical works underscore quiet moments of joy, sorrow, and beauty as vital components of Black life. Additionally, commissioned portraits of such figures as Elijah Cummings and August Wilson are juxtaposed with allegorical figures from Gibbs’s dreams, reflecting his growth as an artist and individual. Gibbs’s work offers a fresh approach to painting the human form, following in the footsteps of other Black figurative painters Kerry James Marshall, Henry Taylor, and Amy Sherald.

A visual celebration of André Leon Talley’s life that centers his personal style as a lens on his contributions to fashion history.

This lavish volume reflects on the life of André Leon Talley and his impactful ascent to the height of global fashion. Many of Talley’s most iconic looks—from his suits and straw Breton boater in Paris of the late seventies to the opulent custom capes and coats he made famous—are newly photographed and presented alongside archival imagery.

From his days as Diana Vreeland’s apprentice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to Andy Warhol’s Factory and Interview Magazine, to Paris bureau chief for Women’s Wear Daily, to positions at W, The New York Times, Ebony, and Vogue, where he served as the magazine’s first African American creative director, Talley’s exuberant personality and voice guided thousands through the glamorous world of high fashion.

Essays, stories, and memories from industry luminaries who experienced his singular character reflect on a legacy in fashion spanning more than four decades. A posthumous commemoration of Talley, this celebratory volume offers a rare view into his world, the people who shared it, and the creation of one of the most iconic figures in fashion history.

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.

A poignant, unflinching study of black grief as a form of elegy found in visual art, music, literature—everywhere, if you know how to see it.

In Black Elegies, Kimberly Juanita Brown examines the form of the elegy and its unique capacity to convey the elongated grief borne of sustained racial violence. Structured around the sensorial, the book moves through sight, sound, and touch to reveal what Okwui Enwezor calls the “national emergency of black grief.” With her characteristic literary skill, Brown analyzes the work of major figures including Toni Morrison, Carrie Mae Weems, Audre Lorde, and Marvin Gaye, among others.

Brown contemplates recognizable sites of mourning: forced migration and enslavement, bodily violations, imprisonment and death. And she examines sites that do not register immediately as archives of grief: the landscape of southern U.S. slave plantations, a spontaneous street party, a quilt constructed out of the clothing worn by a loved one, a dance performance to hold the memory of history, and an aeolian harp installed at an institute of European art, among others. In this, the book offers a framework of mourning while black, within the parameters of contemporary artistic production. Brown asks: How do you mourn those you are not supposed to see? And where does the grief go? She shows us that grief is everywhere: “It spills out of photographs and modulates music. It hovers in the tenor and tone of cinematic performances. It resides in the body like an inspired concept, waiting for its articulation.”

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A guidebook to the institutional transformation of design theory and practice by restoring the long-excluded cultures of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color communities.

From the excesses of world expositions to myths of better living through technology, modernist design, in its European-based guises, has excluded and oppressed the very people whose lands and lives it reshaped. Decolonizing Design first asks how modernist design has encompassed and advanced the harmful project of colonization—then shows how design might address these harms by recentering its theory and practice in global Indigenous cultures and histories.

A leading figure in the movement to decolonize design, Dori Tunstall uses hard-hitting real-life examples and case studies drawn from over fifteen years of working to transform institutions to better reflect the lived experiences of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color communities. Her book is at once enlightening, inspiring, and practical, interweaving her lived experiences with extensive research to show what decolonizing design means, how it heals, and how to practice it in our institutions today.

For leaders and practitioners in design institutions and communities, Tunstall’s work demonstrates how we can transform the way we imagine and remake the world, replacing pain and repression with equity, inclusion, and diversity—in short, she shows us how to realize the infinite possibilities that decolonized design represents.

The court, the ball and the hoop: Barkley Hendricks paints basketball

The third book of the five-volume publication project on Hendricks, famed for his postmodern portraiture of Black Americans.

The third book of the five-volume publication project presents the artist's basketball paintings. The publication highlights how basketball was a vital inspiration for Hendricks' art, as well as a way to experiment with the different shapes and forms of the playing court. For the first time, they are grouped together in a dedicated volume.

Skira and Jack Shainman Gallery have partnered to realize an unprecedented book project dedicated to the artist Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017). The project consists of 4 booklets, each of which provides an in-depth exploration of a body of work integral to the artist's output (Works on Paper, Landscape Paintings, Basketball Paintings, Photography), in addition to a comprehensive 300-page monograph which traces the artist's evolution for the entirety of his career.

The project is tied to an extensive and never-accomplished-before recovery of the artist's archive. Each book will contain essays by different scholars that are leading international players. Each booklet allows for a detailed, oriented study of key bodies of works

The long-awaited first major monograph on the iconic portraitist of Black Americans

This is the first comprehensive monograph on acclaimed painter Amy Sherald, whose distinctive style of simplified realist portraiture features African American subjects rendered against colorful monochrome backdrops or in everyday settings. Sherald rose to fame after being chosen by former first lady Michelle Obama to paint her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, in 2018, becoming the first African American woman to receive this honor. In addition to reproductions of Sherald’s recent works, the book—published to accompany her solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London in fall 2022—includes illustrations of earlier paintings, as well as an intimate glimpse into Sherald’s process and practice through a series of in-studio photographs. Newly commissioned texts include an art historical analysis of the artist’s work by Jenni Sorkin; a meditation on the politics and aesthetics of Sherald's portraiture by cultural scholar Kevin Quashie; and a conversation between Sherald and acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Amy Sherald was born in Georgia in 1973 and received her MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. She has been included in countless group shows at galleries and museums worldwide as well as the subject of solo exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, among others. Sherald lives in Baltimore and New Jersey.

In this inspiring travelogue, celebrated traveler and photographer Jessica Nabongo—the first Black woman on record to visit all 195 countries in the world—shares her journey around the globe with fascinating stories of adventure, culture, travel musts, and human connections.

It was a daunting task, but Jessica Nabongo, the beloved voice behind the popular website The Catch Me if You Can, made it happen, completing her journey to all 195 UN-recognized countries in the world in October 2019. Now, in this one-of-a-kind memoir, she reveals her top 100 destinations from her global adventure.
Beautifully illustrated with many of Nabongo's own photographs, the book documents her remarkable experiences in each country, including:

• A harrowing scooter accident in Nauru, the world’s least visited country,
• Seeing the life and community swarming around the Hazrat Ali Mazar mosque in Afghanistan,
• Horseback riding and learning to lasso with Black cowboys in Oklahoma,
• Playing dominoes with men on the streets of Havana,
• Learning to make traditional takoyaki (octopus balls) from locals in Japan,
• Dog sledding in Norway and swimming with humpback whales in Tonga,
• A late night adventure with strangers to cross a border in Guinea Bissau,
• And sunbathing on the sandy shores of Los Roques in Venezuela.