A revelatory look at the life, work, and legacy of the legendary choreographer Alvin Ailey
 
Alvin Ailey is one of the most celebrated choreographers of the twentieth century. The creator of iconic works such as Blues Suite, Revelations, and Cry, he is widely recognized for the dance company he founded in 1958 when he was just twenty-seven years old. Ailey imagined and cultivated a platform for modern dance through his innovative repertoire, interdisciplinary sensibility, and support of dancers and choreographers. This expansive volume situates Ailey within a broader social, creative, and cultural context, looking at the artists who influenced and collaborated with him, the spaces and scenes he frequented, the dynamic themes within his dances, and how his vision and work changed contemporary dance.
 
Essays by artists, scholars, and critics cover topics ranging from the Black church, the South, and the Great Migration to nightclubs, musical influences, and queerness. With more than four hundred images including photographs of works Ailey choreographed, archival materials such as notebooks, sketches, letters, and never-before-published behind-the-scenes photos, and conversations about the legacy of the company with Sylvia Waters, Judith Jamison, and Masazumi Chaya as well as several contemporary dancers and scholars, this study offers an unprecedented full picture of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists and the way his work continues to inspire today’s generation of dancers.
 
Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art  
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
(September 25, 2024–February 9, 2025)

Guest-edited by Sarah Elizabeth
Lewis, Vision & Justice addresses
the role of photography in the
African American experience.

As the United States navigates a political moment defined by the close of the Obama era and the rise of #BlackLivesMatter activism, Aperture magazine releases “Vision & Justice,” a special issue guest edited by Sarah Lewis, the distinguished author and art historian, addressing the role of photography in the African American experience.

“Vision & Justice” includes a wide span of photographic projects by such luminaries as Lyle Ashton Harris, Annie Leibovitz, Sally Mann, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems and Deborah Willis, as well as the brilliant voices of an emerging generation―Devin Allen, Awol Erizku, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Deana Lawson and Hank Willis Thomas, among many others. These portfolios are complemented by essays from some of the most influential voices in American culture including contributions by celebrated writers, historians, and artists such as Vince Aletti, Teju Cole, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Margo Jefferson, Wynton Marsalis and Claudia Rankine.

"Vision & Justice” features two covers. This issue comes with an image by Awol Erizku, Untitled (Forces of Nature #1), 2014.

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From the photographer behind the Instagram sensation Brown Girls Do Ballet, this stunning coffee-table book showcases breathtaking images of ballerinas of color of all ages and levels that reflect today’s beautifully diverse world of dance. 

For decades the prominent image of a ballet dancer has been a white body with pale clothing. It took 75 years for American Ballet Theatre to have its first African American female principal dancer, Misty Copeland. When TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian went to enroll her three-year-old daughter into her first ballet class, she immediately saw this lack of diversity and representation—even on her local dance studio’s website. Within weeks TaKiyah, a freelance photographer, began shooting a project she called Brown Girls Do Ballet, which eventually became an Instagram hit and a nonprofit organization that provides resources, mentorship, inspiration, and encouragement to young dancers of color worldwide.

For her first book, The Color of Dance, TaKiyah traveled around the United States seeking out dancers of African, Asian, East Indian, Hispanic, and Native American ancestry. With these more than 190 breathtaking images of colorful ballerinas of all ages and levels, both amateur and professional, TaKiyah gives a voice to dancers who have been underrepresented for too long.

With dozens of quotes throughout from ballerinas themselves, The Color of Dance redefines what this classically Eurocentric art form has looked like for centuries and will inspire dancers—and all of us—to pursue our dreams no matter what barriers are put in front of us.

"The British-Ghanaian artist creates compelling character studies of people who don’t exist, reflecting her twin talents as a writer and a painter" –Zadie Smith, the New Yorker

This volume gathers around 60 works by British artist and writer Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, internationally celebrated for her paintings of timeless subjects in everyday moments of happiness, comradery and solitude. The publication includes texts by Yiadom-Boakye herself, writer and filmmaker Kodwo Eshun, and curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller.
Yiadom-Boakye’s lush oils on canvas or coarse linen portray fictitious characters rendered in loose brushwork and set against dramatic backgrounds. The figures are composites drawn from different sources including scrapbooks and drawings. Animals such as birds, foxes, owls and dogs make regular appearances. To look at a Yiadom-Boakye painting is an invitation to slow down and observe, to enter the imaginary visual tales she spins.
Born and raised in London by Ghanian parents, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born 1977) studied at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design and Falmouth College of Arts, and received her MA from the Royal Academy Schools in 2003. Her first solo exhibition was held at Jack Shainman Gallery in 2010. Since then, her work has been exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in London (2015), the Venice Biennale (2013), the New Museum in New York (2012), the Biennale de Lyon in France (2011), the Studio Museum in Harlem (2008) and many others. Her work has been collected by the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

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New visions and possibilities for Black masculinity through the lenses of 28 international photographers

In Black Masculinities, clichés of Black identity and masculinity are deconstructed and remade with exhilarating flexibility and imagination through the lenses of 22 Black photographers from around the world. Deeply embedded in histories of slavery, racism and oppression, Black masculinity is often mediated as aggressive, hypersexual and violent. Here, Swiss author, artist and editor Joshua Amissah compiles work that contributes to a wider spectrum of Black masculinities. By doing so, he writes, "[the photographers] are also questioning the narratological function of race and gender in visual culture as a whole … the stereotyped entanglement of ‘Black identity’ and ‘masculinity’ is visually deconstructed, partly reproduced and, more importantly, charged with a new set of values."
Photographers include: Kemka Ajoku, Kwaku Alston, Namafu Amutse, Eric Asamoah, Nuits Balnéaires, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Braylen Dion, Kofi Duah, Yannis Davy Guibinga, Jabari Jacobs, Kelvin Konadu, Jude Lartey, Naomi Mukadi, Maganga Mwagogo, Lakin Ogunbanwo, Ruby Okoro, RogersOuma, Micha Serraf, Ngadi Smart, Isaac West, Jozef Wright, and Ussi’n Yala.

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With pieces drawn from the extensive personal collection of Pharrell Williams, this is a stunning and unprecedented exploration of the “bling” in hip-hop culture and fashion.

Few recording artists have had a greater hand in incorporating the culture of hip-hop into contemporary luxury than Pharrell Williams. Collaborating with Louis Vuitton nearly two decades ago, Pharrell was the first to have his designs integrated into the haute joaillerie of the great maisons. His innovative team-ups continue through to the present day, most memorably with Tiffany and Chanel, and the watchmaker Richard Mille.

The most extravagant of these chains, rings, and pendants—crafted in precious metals and studded with gems—are as much a part of Pharrell’s musical performance as they are of his personal style. His designs, which include one-off pieces such as solid-gold cases for mobile phones and handheld game consoles, have been legendary for featuring iconography of Pharrell’s own brands, Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream.

This book was originally published with two different colored covers. Customers will be shipped either of the colors at random. 

Featured in the book are over 100 pieces, many of which he created in tandem with some of the most recognizable designers in the industry—such as Jacob & Co, Yoon & Verbal, and Lorraine Schwartz. With frequent collaborators such as NIGO® and Tyler the Creator, Pharrell discusses his role in the evolution of hip-hop jewelry, the processes involved in the creation of his one-of-a-kind custom pieces, and the state of connoisseurship in a growing market for the most extravagant of hip-hop collectibles.

Ba’s densely textured paintings intertwine African and European histories to explore the corrupting effects of wealth and power and their impacts on communities

This is the first monograph on Dakar- and New York–based mixed-media painter Omar Ba (born 1977), whose surreal scenes of violence and fantasy draw from a wide and often dark portfolio of themes: despotic warlords of the present, traditional folklore, colonial oppression and the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. His most abiding theme is the experiences of Black communities, both within America and across the globe. Ba articulates all these narrative threads through a densely textured visual language, applying oil, gouache, crayon and India ink onto rough, readymade surfaces such as corrugated cardboard. After preparing uniform backgrounds rendered in black paint, Ba populates the scenes with an abundance of fantastical beings—part human, part animal or plant.

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The definitive monograph on contemporary African American painter Kerry James Marshall, accompanying a major traveling retrospective. This long-awaited volume celebrates the work of Kerry James Marshall, one of America’s greatest living painters. Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts riots in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience. Best known for large-scale interiors, landscapes, and portraits featuring powerful black figures, Marshall explores narratives of African American history from slave ships to the present and draws upon his deep knowledge of art history from the Renaissance to twentieth-century abstraction, as well as other sources such as the comic book and the muralist tradition. With luscious color and brushstrokes and highly detailed patterning, his direct and intimate scenes of black middle-class life conjure a wide range of emotions, resulting in powerful paintings that confront the position of African Americans throughout American history. Richly illustrated, this monumental book features essays by noted curators as well as the artist, and more than 100 paintings from throughout the artist’s career arranged thematically by subject: history painting; beauty, as expressed through the nude, portraiture, and self-portraiture; landscape; religion; and the politics of black nationalism.

Ringgold's most formative and influential political works are gathered in this beautifully designed clothbound volume

Alongside reproductions of key works made between 1967 and 1981, Faith Ringgold: Politics / Power provides an overview of Ringgold's seminal artistic and activist work, and its historical context during these years, including accounts by the artist herself.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Ringgold, a dedicated and impassioned civil rights advocate, established her voice as a feminist and within the Black Arts Movement. Her influential work expressed her in-depth knowledge of art history and contemporary art, as well as her activism. Spanning mediums such as painting, cut paper works, posters, collage and textile art, the works presented in this publication foreground the artist’s explicitly political pieces, for which she deployed new material and formal processes, and developed a radical aesthetics and vocabulary.
Organized chronologically, the book allows readers to retrace the artist’s foundational creative approaches to contemporaneous social, political and artistic questions. It includes illustrations of individual artworks together with previously unpublished work and archival materials.

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A multidisciplinary look at the foremost archive of Black American visual culture, as recast by Theaster Gates

This book features essays and other reflections commissioned in response to the Facsimile Cabinet of Women Origin Stories, a monumental participatory work by Theaster Gates (born 1973). The Cabinet includes nearly 3,000 framed images of women from the Johnson Publishing Company archive, and highlights from the collection appear in this edited volume.
Founded in 1942, Chicago-based Johnson Publishing chronicled the lives of Black Americans for more than seven decades through the magazines Ebony and Jet. Composed from arguably the most important archive of American Black visual culture in the 20th century, Gates’ work centers the essential and too often unsung role of women in this history.
When the Cabinet was exhibited at the Colby College Museum of Art, 12 women from a wide range of disciplines (including archivists, legal scholars, anthropologists and librarians, as well as curators, visual artists, filmmakers, writers and art historians) were invited to reflect on a work that brings a sisterhood of images to light.

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An artist’s odyssey from Jim Crow–era Georgia to the Yale Art Gallery—a stunningly vivid, full-color memoir in prose and painted leather, with a foreword by Bryan Stevenson.

Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager. He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration, later survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent the next seven years on chain gangs.

During that time he met the undaunted Patsy, who would become his wife. Years later, at the age of 51 and with Patsy’s encouragement, he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather tooling skills he learned in prison.

Chasing Me to My Grave presents Rembert’s breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert calls forth vibrant scenes of Black life on Cuthbert, Georgia’s Hamilton Avenue, where he first glimpsed the possibility of a life outside the cotton field. As he pays tribute, exuberant and heartfelt, to Cuthbert’s Black community and the people, including his wife, Patsy, who helped him to find the courage to revisit a traumatic past, Rembert brings to life the promise and the danger of Civil Rights protest, the brutalities of incarceration, his search for his mother’s love, and the epic bond he found with Patsy.

Vivid, confrontational, revelatory, and complex, Chasing Me to My Grave is a searing memoir in prose and paintings that celebrates Black life and summons readers to confront painful and urgent realities at the heart of American history and society

Available for the first time since 1978, The Harlem Book of the Dead showcases James Van Der Zee's unflinching creative vision

Originally published in 1978, The Harlem Book of the Dead is a haunting and beautiful document of Black funerary traditions in Harlem, capturing the community's mourning rituals through the lens of one of the Harlem Renaissance's most celebrated photographers. The publication is the most complete record of Van Der Zee's funerary photographs, featuring over three dozen portraits by the artist, who meticulously composed the setting and the subjects before using his renowned darkroom and retouching skills to superimpose celestial figures, poetry, biblical scenes or portraits onto the images to compensate for lack of adornments, such as flowers, or to fulfill the requests of his subjects or their families.
These portraits are complemented and captioned by poems from Owen Dodson and a wide-ranging interview with Van Der Zee by the sculptor and filmmaker Camille Billops, who conceptualized and edited the publication. This facsimile edition reproduces the printing and specifications of the 1978 publication. The original foreword by Toni Morrison is included, and accompanied by a newly commissioned afterword by Karla FC Holloway, author of the canonical Passed On (2001).
James Van Der Zee (1886–1983) began working as a photographer in 1915, and by the following year had opened his photography studio on West 135th Street in Harlem. His images of Black New Yorkers, together with celebrities such as Langston Hughes, Joe Louis and Marcus Garvey, form an indelible corpus of images of the Harlem Renaissance.

How Bearden’s landmark quilt exemplifies his complex art and rich legacy

Romare Bearden’s (1911–88) Patchwork Quilt (1970) is a monumental collage that proves the artist’s mastery of his signature medium. Acquired by the Museum of Modern Art the year it was made, the work has become a landmark in Bearden’s career. But his path to creating it, to embracing collage, and to making work that addresses the specifics of Black life in America in ways that are both specific and broadly accessible, was a long one. Bearden’s early career is characterized by broad experimentation with materials and visual styles, as well as major life events that led away from a visual arts practice. In this latest volume of the MoMA One on One series, curator Esther Adler explores Bearden’s search for his artistic voice, illustrated by the breadth of different works in the museum’s collection. A close reading of Patchwork Quilt, its sources and materiality, further emphasize the artist’s unwavering commitment to both his art and community, a combination that has led to his centrality in mid-20th century art.

Now available in paperback, this exciting book charts Jean-Michel Basquiat's groundbreaking career.

Basquiat first came to prominence when he collaborated with Al Diaz to spray-paint enigmatic statements under the pseudonym SAMO©. From there he went on to work with others on collages, Xerox art, postcards, performances, and music before establishing his reputation as one of the most important painters of his generation. This book places his collaborations in a wider art historical context and looks at his career through the lens of performance. Six thematic chapters offer compelling research, with essays from poet Christian Campbell on SAMO©; curator Carlo McCormick on New York/New Wave; writer Glenn O'Brien on the downtown scene; academic Jordana Moore Saggese on Basquiat's relationship to film and television; and music scholar Francesco Martinelli on Basquiat's obsession with jazz. This insightful survey also features rare archival material and extensive illustrations, demonstrating how Basquiat's legacy remains more powerful and relevant than ever today.

A COLLECTION OF INCISIVE ESSAYS ABOUT AFRICAN ART, CULTURE AND THE CONTINENT’S STRUGGLE TO SHAKE OFF EUROPEAN RULE

Too many of our convictions about the fifty-four nations of Africa come from non-African sources. Western media often treat the continent as a simulacrum of Western anxieties. In contrast, Jeremy Harding focuses on specific historical episodes and cultural practices – cinema, art, ethnography and journalism – to steer us away from treacherous generalisations.

Analogue Africa celebrates the ingenuity with which African artists – and a handful of Europeans – have reimagined the colonial encounter and voiced their impatience with white minority rule. Among his illustrious cast of filmmakers, photographers, writers and painters are Seydou Keïta, Sanlé Sory, Ernest Cole, Sarah Maldoror, John Akomfrah, William Kentridge and Binyavanga Wainaina. Harding argues that Western museums with priceless African holdings – the British Museum, the Musée du Quai Branly, the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium – are now the sites of a struggle over the colonial past, adding the latest chapter to an unfinished history.

The Greatest brings together nearly 100 photographs of Muhammad Ali at the height of his career by Chris Smith.

The images are accompanied by Smith’s memories of his time spent with Ali from the early days of his career until his final years before retirement. In 1964 Chris Smith was in the US to photograph The Beatles on their first tour of the country. After photographing the band he headed down to Miami to photograph Cassius Clay, as he was then known, training at the 5th Street Gym. Smith was curious about the athlete who was starting to become influential in the world of boxing. Fortuitously, he was in gym when the doors opened and, much to everyone's surprise, in walked The Beatles.

Piles of Inspiration Everywhere lässt den Leser in die bislang nicht zugänglichen privaten Räumlichkeiten des renommierten US Künstlers Barkley L. Hendricks eintreten – sein Haus und sein Atelier. Die Publikation bietet damit einen detaillierten Einblick in das Leben und die Arbeitsweise des Künstlers. In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Fotografen David Katzenstein lädt die Witwe des Künstlers, Susan Hendricks, erstmalig dazu ein, den Ort zu erleben, den sie über 35 Jahre mit Barkley L. Hendricks teilte – eine Reise durch die Umgebung, die Hendricks inspiriert und energetisiert hat. Die großformatigen Fotografien werden kombiniert mit persönlichen Schriften aus den Tagebüchern des Künstlers. Piles of Inspiration Everywhere bietet somit einen einzigartigen Blick auf das Leben und den kreativen Prozess eines bedeutenden Künstlers und ist eine wertvolle Ergänzung für alle, die sich für Kunst und Kreativität interessieren.

A richly illustrated account tracing the full arc of contemporary painter Suzanne Jackson’s life and multifaceted artistic vision

First and foremost a painter, Suzanne Jackson has worked for six decades in a dizzying array of genres, including drawing, printmaking, poetry, dance, and theater design. Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love reveals Jackson’s achievements as a leading and influential artist who has been in dialogue with her contemporaries, from Betye Saar and Emory Douglas to Senga Nengudi and Mary Lovelace O’Neal.

This wide-ranging book illuminates Jackson’s work and its connections to nature, environmentalism, performance, feminism, and Black and Native traditions. It explores the way her innovative hanging acrylic works break the canvas; the role of dance and set design in Jackson’s practice; and her trailblazing Los Angeles art space Gallery 32, which she ran from 1968 to 1970, and which became a focus for a circle of fellow emerging artists. The book also features artist dialogues between Jackson and Nengudi, Saar, Fred Eversley, and Richard Mayhew, as well as a conversation between Jackson and SFMOMA painting conservator Jennifer Hickey.

Exhibition Schedule
SFMOMA, San Francisco
September 27, 2025–March 1, 2026

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
May 14, 2026–August 23, 2026

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
September 26, 2026–February 7, 2027

What began as an effort to prevent the neglect and potential loss of hundreds of African objects at the University of Texas at Austin has evolved into one of the most significant collections on campus. The art collections at Black Studies were born from the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies’ Art and Archive Initiative, under the leadership of Cherise Smith, Omi L. Jones, and Edmund T. Gordon.

Today Black Studies at the University of Texas boasts approximately 900 objects from sub-Saharan Africa, over 200 contemporary works from African American and Afro-Caribbean artists, and more than 100 pieces jointly held with other collecting entities on campus, adding a diverse richness to the overall collections. Collecting Black Studies gathers and presents these holdings—including costumes, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and photography—and prominently features five Black artists whose work is particularly significant. Scholars and curators examine how John Biggers, Michael Ray Charles, Christina Coleman, Angelbert Metoyer, and Deborah Roberts—artists with deep relationships to Texas—contributed to the Black Studies collections, to art history, and to the culture of our state and beyond.

The iconic comic created by contemporary African American artist Kerry James Marshall.

Marshall, widely considered one of America’s greatest living painters and inspired chronicler of the African American experience, has sought to diversify the art historical canon. In the late 1990s, he began working on a series of comics in response to the absence of authentic black characters and authors in the mainstream.

Marshall’s comic offers an alternative reality focused on the main character, Rythm Mastr, and his young protégé, Farell, superheroes whose powers derive from the seven gods of the Yoruba pantheon. Marshall’s characters debate history, philosophy, and politics in vernacular black English using the graphic novel medium to create an empowering, utopian blend of science fiction and Afrofuturism.

Initially serialized in a daily newspaper and presented as a Carnegie International installation, it has appeared in various incarnations over the past two decades, including light boxes, paintings, graphic prints, and drawings. This volume is the most comprehensive look at the character, its genesis, and its evolution.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: September 1, 2026

The definitive photographic celebration of John Coltrane's life and music, featuring exclusive contributions written by Ravi Coltrane, Wayne Coyne, Dev Hynes, Phil Lesh, Julie Mehretu, Carlos Santana, and Patti Smith.

John Coltrane's impact on music and culture endures far beyond his prolific career and untimely death in 1967 at age forty. His masterful saxophone style and groundbreaking jazz compositions had a profound effect on the evolution of music through the decades, and it continues to resonate across styles and genres to this day.

This beautiful photography book offers an intimate and in-depth look at his life with over one hundred expertly curated images taken by renowned photographers such as Francis Wolff and Chuck Stewart. The selection includes outtakes from the album cover photoshoot for Ascension, in-studio candid shots taken during the recording of Blue Train, a glimpse backstage with Alice Coltrane before their first performance together, and more. Coltrane is a visual celebration of John Coltrane's musical legacy, complete with an introduction by his son and fellow musician Ravi Coltrane, along with personal stories from other musicians, artists, and writers who have been moved by his work.

The Romare Bearden Reader brings together a collection of new essays and canonical writings by novelists, poets, historians, critics, and playwrights. The contributors, who include Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, August Wilson, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Kobena Mercer, contextualize Bearden's life and career within the history of modern art, examine the influence of jazz and literature on his work, trace his impact on twentieth-century African American culture, and outline his art's political dimensions. Others focus on specific pieces, such as A Black Odyssey, or the ways in which Bearden used collage to understand African American identity. The Reader also includes Bearden's most important writings, which grant readers insight into his aesthetic values and practices and share his desire to tell what it means to be black in America. Put simply, The Romare Bearden Reader is an indispensable volume on one of the giants of twentieth-century American art.

Contributors. Elizabeth Alexander, Romare Bearden, Mary Lee Corlett, Rachel DeLue, David C. Driskell, Brent Hayes Edwards, Ralph Ellison, Henri Ghent, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Harry Henderson, Kobena Mercer, Toni Morrison, Albert Murray, Robert G. O’Meally, Richard Powell, Richard Price, Sally Price, Myron Schwartzman, Robert Burns Stepto, Calvin Tomkins, John Edgar Wideman, August Wilson

Focusing on Black Americans' participation in world’s fairs, Emancipation expositions, and early Black grassroots museums, Negro Building traces the evolution of Black public history from the Civil War through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mabel O. Wilson gives voice to the figures who conceived the curatorial content: Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Horace Cayton, and Margaret Burroughs. Originally published in 2012, the book reveals why the Black cities of Chicago and Detroit became the sites of major Black historical museums rather than the nation's capital, which would eventually become home for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016.

THE CURATORS OF CULTURE: Celebrate Black digital art in this essay collection revealing how Black artists have shaped everything from TikTok dances to viral memes

Steven Underwood digs into the current Black digital arts movement that has shaped popular culture for the last decade. He connects this current space to historical influences, speaking to a “legacy of audacity and daring that presented us with the opportunity to redirect the conversations on Blackness back on its center. Back to Black people.” Written as a collection of thought-provoking essays pulling in social commentary, interviews, popular culture, and deep research, Underwood taps into a topic that is incredibly relevant but often unknown.

The nature of the internet is so ephemeral that sometimes we forget when we do something worth celebrating. For Black people particularly, that’s unforgiveable. Digital Black art has become increasingly more outspoken, introspective, and genre-defining. But it’s also vulnerable. Original phrases, tweets, dances, songs, and other content are often taken from a Black artist and attributed to a white influencer. And Black creators are paid less for their work, though their engagement is often higher than that of their white peers. There is also the added risk of backlash and hate that comes with publicly existing online. As an award-winning writer with a popular online presence, Underwood is no stranger to the experiences of Black digital artists. Using his own personal stories, he highlights the beauty, vulnerability, and innovation of the Black digital arts movement.

Shining a light on the curators of our culture, Forever for the Culture narratively follows the construction of a new Black art movement and how creators have defined a community when that community does not have a physical space.

Using traditional techniques such as direct carving and lost-wax casting, Mosley's early works in wood and later works in bronze enter into a dance between the organic and manmade

Born in 1926 in New Castle, Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Mosley has made sculptures from wood for over six and a half decades from his home in Pittsburgh. Using only a chisel and gauge to maintain the integrity of the original log, Mosley reworks salvaged timber into monumental abstractions. Through a process of direct carving, the artist's marks respond to and rearticulate the natural gradations of the material's surface. With influences ranging from Isamu Noguchi to Constantin Brâncusi, from Scandinavian design to West African sculpture--Mosley's "sculptural improvisations," as he calls them, also take cues from the modernist traditions of jazz. Weight in Space is the most comprehensive monograph on the artist's oeuvre to date. In addition to a detailed chronology, this volume features new scholarship by Fred Moten and Catharina Manchanda, a conversation between Mosley and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and excerpts from an extensive oral history interview conducted by Bridget R. Cooks and Amanda Tewes.

Dedicated to Gilliam's late-career sewn and collaged fabric works, this colorful catalog embraces the artist's restless creativity and visionary approach to abstraction

A pioneering artist who redefined the boundaries of painting, Sam Gilliam (1933–2022) transformed the medium with his radical approach to color, material and space. Sewing Fields focuses on a lesser-known yet crucial period in Gilliam's later career: that of his sewn and collaged works. His residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in 1993 reshaped his artistic practice. Far from his Washington, DC, studio, Gilliam embraced new materials, working with pre-stained fabrics that he shipped to Ireland, cutting and layering them into sculptural compositions. A collaboration with a local dressmaker further expanded his process, reinforcing his innovative fusion of painting and textile techniques. Sewing Fields brings these groundbreaking works back to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, nearly 50 years after Gilliam's first Dublin exhibition, positioning him within a broader transatlantic dialogue on abstraction.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: March 10, 2026

A gorgeous illustrated meditation on the homes of iconic Southern women, from Nina Simone to Carson McCullers

In These Long Shadows, writer Monica Nelson excavates the domestic narratives and mythologies contained within the publicly preserved homes of some of the American South's leading cultural figures.
In Virginia, readers are drawn into the garden and home of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer and encounter modernist architect Amaza Lee Meredith's International Style residence, Azurest South. Journeying south, they encounter the North Carolinian childhood homes of both influential civil rights activist Anna "Pauli" Murray, and revolutionary singer-songwriter Nina Simone. In Atlanta, readers wander into the apartment of incendiary Southern author Margaret Mitchell. In Louisiana, they gaze upon the quietly profound folk art paintings of Clementine Hunter at Melrose Plantation, and take a pilgrimage to writers' homes from the Southern Renaissance, including Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston and Carson McCullers.
These Long Shadows assembles a constellation of new visions, narratives and readings with which to examine the nation's ever-metamorphosing historical landscape. Nelson's book constitutes the third volume of The Illustrated America, Atelier Editions' ongoing anthropological survey of eclectic chapters drawn from 20th-century America's cultural past.
Monica Nelson is a writer and graphic designer based in New York and Savannah. She has developed strategic visual narratives for publications, cultural institutions and brands, working with over 100 photographers. She was the founding creative and photo director of Wilder Quarterly, which fostered a floral-drenched view of the natural world, and the author of Edible Flowers (Monacelli Press, 2021).

A rich examination of the role of portrait photography in the construction of Africa as a political idea

At a moment of profound change marked by decolonization and the civil rights period of the mid-20th century, photographers across Africa and the African diaspora used the photographic portrait in order to fuel incipient ideas of Africa. Published in conjunction with a groundbreaking exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination charts international histories of resistance and liberation up to the present day in order to contend with the construction of Africa as a political idea, and the tools that artists used to forge it.
Featuring more than 100 photographs by renowned artists of the time, such as Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé and Jean Depara, and by contemporary artists of African descent, such as Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi and Njideka Akunyili-Crosby, this richly illustrated publication explores modes of Pan-African possibility in powerful images of everyday people, where the personal was undeniably political. With an introduction by curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo, excerpts from landmark texts by V.Y. Mudimbe and Brent Hayes Edwards, and a conversation between Yasmina Price and Momtaza Mehri, Ideas of Africa highlights the potential of the photographic portrait as both a creative endeavor and political mechanism.

In Unfurled: Designing a Living Home, acclaimed plant stylist Hilton Carter invites readers into the heart of his home―a personal sanctuary that has evolved, layer by layer, to reflect his style, creativity, and love for plants.

Hilton takes readers on a behind-the-scenes journey through every room, from the tranquil primary bedroom to the plant-filled sunroom, the vibrant studio to the inviting guest room, and beyond. With his eye for design, he shares the inspiration that lies behind each space, talking the reader through the mood boards he creates when embarking on a room renovation and explaining the thoughts behind a design, both functional and decorative. Hilton shares how each room has ‘unfurled’ beautifully over time, discussing how to choose colour and texture, offering expert advice on room layout, and showing how to use plants to breathe life into the home. Alongside personal stories and design insights, Unfurled is filled with practical tips and ideas for ways to recreate these looks in your own home, whether you’re working with a spare bedroom or a compact shower room. With Hilton’s guidance, you’ll learn how to incorporate thoughtful styling, select the right plants for your rooms and cultivate a home that's nurturing, dynamic and alive.

A perfect book for young readers to discover lesser-known works of art and culture that have shaped Black history in the United States.

The Banjo Lesson. The Brownies Book. "Rapper's Delight." Throughout history, Black people have performed, created art, and broken barriers that helped propel the fight for equality forward. Celebrate little-known groundbreaking contributions to art and culture like these and learn about their social impact on American history in Overlooked Creations of Black Art and Culture.

ABOUT THIS SERIES:

This brand-new series is rooted in a profound commitment to shedding light on some of the important -- and often lesser-known -- aspects of Black history. From the Archives features landmarks, events, people, and artistic endeavors that have played a significant role in the Black experience in America and offers a chance to celebrate them. Written in a vivid, engaging style and featuring a colorful combination of photos and illustrations, each title serves as a powerful vehicle for education, inspiration, and empowerment for young readers.

‘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