Art & Culture
- PRE-ORDER: Theaster Gates: Oh, You’ve Got to Come Back to the City
PRE-ORDER: Theaster Gates: Oh, You’ve Got to Come Back to the City
$60.00Taking inspiration from a song by Marvin Tate, Gates personifies the city of Chicago through a grid of stone sculptures, tar paintings and performance activations
In Oh, You’ve Got to Come Back to the City, Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates (born 1973) brings together a new series of tar paintings, sculptures and installations to tell an allegory of the city in decay and the potential contained within its ruins. The exhibition’s title comes from a song by Chicago musician and poet Marvin Tate, in which the city, personified as a character, has cleaned up its act and attempts to lure its residents back from the suburbs. In this body of work, Gates wrestles with the burden brought on by aging infrastructure to create new narratives that build on the rich metaphors embedded in his materials―as tools of resistance, signs of excess and evidence of decline.
- PRE-ORDER: Diary of a Harlem Family, 1967/1968
PRE-ORDER: Diary of a Harlem Family, 1967/1968
$75.00On 8 March 1968, Life magazine published “A Harlem Family” by Gordon Parks, a searing portrait of poverty in the United States, told through images and text about a single family residing in Harlem, the Fontenelles. On the twentieth anniversary of The Gordon Parks Foundation, this new, expanded study considers this story as a pivotal moment in Parks’ life, and one that launched his career in film. Since the publication in 2012 of a book devoted to Parks’ photo essay, additional images belonging to the series have been discovered, and research has been conducted on the accompanying film, Diary of a Harlem Family (1968). The present volume tells the story of Parks’ project through this updated lens. This material is accompanied by previously unpublished texts and ephemera related to the project, including correspondence and other documents Parks amassed over the years while he kept in touch with the Fontenelles, letters written by Life readers showing an outpouring of support for the family, and the transcript of a conversation between Parks and Michael Torosian about the making of the story. Essays by Studio Museum of Harlem director and chief curator Thelma Golden, Oscar-winning author Cord Jefferson, and noted scholars Leigh Raiford and Michael Boyce Gillespie offer enlightening commentary on this seminal body of work. Co-published with The Gordon Parks Foundation
- PRE-ORDER: Robert Pruitt
PRE-ORDER: Robert Pruitt
$45.00Over 20 years of Pruitt’s expansive vision of Blackness, articulated through large-scale drawings as well as sculptures, graphic novels, photographs, animations and installations
Published with Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
This publication commemorates the American artist Robert Pruitt (born 1975), who works across drawing, sculpture, photography and animation. Pruitt is famed for rendering large-scale drawings of Black subjects in conté on hand-dyed paper. He places his subjects―who are often modeled after friends and family―within imagined scenarios, narrativized through clothing and accoutrements that reference historical Black struggles as well as hip-hop culture and comic books. In doing so, he advances a diverse and radical vision of Blackness past and present.
This substantial monograph aims to broaden public understanding of Pruitt’s practice by including his lesser-known sculpture, graphic novel and installation works. The most comprehensive volume on Pruitt’s oeuvre to-date, this book delves into the artist’s influences, research, training and legacy through fresh scholarship and an interview. - Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art (Yale Publications in the History of Art)
Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art (Yale Publications in the History of Art)
$42.00The Sande Society of the Mende people of Sierra Leone is a secret female regulatory society that both guards and transmits the ideals of feminine beauty so fundamental to the aesthetic criteria in Mende culture. In this eloquent and moving book, Sylvia Ardyn Boone describes the Society, its rituals and organization, and the mask worn by its members. Her book is an evocative account of Mende life and philosophy as well as a unique contribution to the study of African art, one based on African conceptions about the person and the human body.
"This is a beautiful and beautifully written book. … Boone writes in ways that reveal her evident devotion to Mende culture."―John Picton, African Affairs
"A major contribution to our ethnographic understanding of Mende culture, and to understanding the way concepts of women’s bodies encode cultural messages about gender relations."―E. Frances White, Women’s Review of Books
"A respectful approach to [the mysteries of the Sande], by an art historian who has tiptoed where anthropologists feared to tread. Radiance from the Waters deserves to be read. … It provides something more interesting than esoteric knowledge: an extended meditation on notions of beauty and decorum and the way in which these can be translated simultaneously into art and … advancement for women."―John Ryle, London Review of Books
"The first text to illuminate the power of the feminine aesthetic in West African art."―Ms. - Art as Sanctuary: Conjuring an Africana Aesthetic (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People)
Art as Sanctuary: Conjuring an Africana Aesthetic (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People)
Sold outIn Art as Sanctuary, Michael D. Harris considers literal and metaphorical uses of sanctuary in the black experience and African diaspora art, including locales of spiritual expression, self-renewal, and cultural celebration. Harris offers an alternative framework to the Duboisian philosophy of double consciousness, pushing the boundaries of Africana aesthetic analysis by exploring the cultural signifiers embedded consciously or unconsciously in African diaspora art. Within these works, he reveals how these cultural cues speak to the vibrancy of African American life. While acknowledging the presence of the white observer’s gaze, Harris wishes to relieve the black interior from the panoptic assumptions of that gaze and its disciplines. Art as Sanctuary provides innovative pathways to understand African American visual culture and music as autobiographies of cultural identity and experience.
- Moving Stones: About the Art of Edmonia Lewis (The Visual Arts of Africa and its Diasporas)
Moving Stones: About the Art of Edmonia Lewis (The Visual Arts of Africa and its Diasporas)
Sold outMoving Stones explores the extraordinary life and work of Edmonia Lewis, the Black and Ojibwe sculptor who rose to international fame in the nineteenth century. Blending biography, history, and theory, Jennifer DeVere Brody approaches Lewis’s legacy through a Black feminist and queer lens, illuminating how her sculptures and self-fashioning challenged constraints of her time. Living much of her life in Rome as a free Afro-Native woman, Lewis used neoclassical forms to carve out a life in art. Brody considers how Lewis’s works were viewed historically and how they resonate with postmodern artists, engaging themes of race, materiality, sexuality, and embodiment. Rethinking one of the most important sculptors of her era, Moving Stones shows how Lewis’s art continues to inspire contemporary artists and scholars today.
- Interior Design in Latin America (World of Interior Design)
Interior Design in Latin America (World of Interior Design)
$110.00Interior Design in Latin America is an opulent volume of images and texts that highlights the region’s unique and contemporary approach to design. Focusing on private residences, intercultural influences, and exceptional craftsmanship, the book combines photo reports, interviews, historical context, and material studies. From rural colonial homes to urban architect lofts, it presents Latin America as a rich, multifaceted design world that balances aesthetic inspiration with cultural and historical depth.
- Keepers of a Movement: Black Collectors Who Preserve Art, Stories, and Legacies That Define Black Life
Keepers of a Movement: Black Collectors Who Preserve Art, Stories, and Legacies That Define Black Life
$50.00Features 39 Black art collectors who collect works in a variety of art mediums created by Black artists that span more than five decades.
For centuries, Black artists across the African diaspora have been architects of cultural innovation, resilience, and transformation. Their art, music, literature, and activism have profoundly shaped the world.
But behind these celebrated figures stands another equally vital force: the Black collector.
These keepers of history and culture play a crucial role in preserving artifacts, stories, and legacies that define Black life.
They safeguard rare books, heirlooms, art, and ephemera that might otherwise be lost, ensuring future generations can access these narratives.
Keepers of a Movement honors these individuals whose passion and dedication illuminate our heritage and identity. Each collection showcases a unique perspective, offering a deeper understanding of history.
Visitors will also hear from collectors about their personal connections to the works featured. More than objects, these collections represent lives, communities, and movements—ensuring that Black voices are heard, remembered, and celebrated for generations to come.
- PRE-ORDER: The Studio Museum in Harlem: A History
PRE-ORDER: The Studio Museum in Harlem: A History
$45.00A kaleidoscopic history of the Studio Museum in Harlem told through oral histories, essays, and a trove of archival imagery
Founded in 1968 by a diverse group of artists, community activists, and philanthropists, the Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally known for its catalytic role in promoting the work of artists of African descent. The Museum has a unique history but until now, there has not been a publication that positions its founding and tells its story.
Bringing together oral histories from the Museum’s founding figures; essays by leading scholars, curators, and artists; and a trove of archival material, this dynamic volume offers the first comprehensive history of the Studio Museum. In-depth essays anchor thematic sections examining the Museum’s founding, its collecting practices and exhibitions, and community engagement. Shorter texts and monologues drawn from interviews with foundational figures immerse the reader in specific events, exhibitions, and moments in the landmark institution’s history. At the book’s center is an expansive visual archive offering a timeline in ephemera and photographs, many of them published here for the first time. This richly illustrated volume will serve as the definitive resource on the history and legacy of the place “Where Black Art Lives.”
Distributed for the Studio Museum in Harlem
- NIGO: From Japan with Love
NIGO: From Japan with Love
$34.95The life and cultural impact of musician and streetwear pioneer NIGO, founder of A Bathing Ape, as told through clothes and ephemera from his personal archive
Working across street style, fashion, music and beyond, NIGO is a multifaceted artist, designer and creative director who has been shaping contemporary culture for over three decades, ever since he founded the influential streetwear label A Bathing Ape. His ability to draw from wide-ranging disciplines and cultural references has produced some of the most influential products in recent fashion history, such as the Bapesta sneaker. While partially inspired by vintage Americana, his clothing and shoe designs remain deeply rooted in Japanese subcultures.
Charting NIGO’s inspirations, output and legacy from the 1980s to the present day, From Japan with Love takes a chrono-thematic approach. NIGO’s life story is told primarily through objects from his personal archive and collections―many published here for the first time. These include collectible merchandise, garments, music and film ephemera and printed matter, complemented by his own voice and those of his peers. The book also explores NIGO’s more recent discovery of pottery making, studying with ceramic artists and learning the rituals of the Japanese tea ceremony.
Tomoaki Nagao, known as NIGO (born 1970) founded streetwear brand A Bathing Ape in 1993 and served as its chief designer for 20 years. He is a member of Teriyaki Boyz and Honest Boyz, and has collaborated with artists such as Pharrell, ASAP Rocky and Flavor Flav. In 2021 he became Artistic Director at luxury fashion house KENZO. - ICONIC: Doechii: The Making of a Legend in 50 Images
ICONIC: Doechii: The Making of a Legend in 50 Images
$19.99'Stop creating from the perspective of what other people want you to make.' Dive headfirst into the world of ultimate pop sensation and rapper Doechii, in a vibrant celebration of the ‘Anxiety’ icon’s most incredible moments to date. From her early life growing up in Florida to her incredible sweep of awards at the VMAs, you’ll learn all there is to know about the ‘NISSAN ULTIMA’ singer’s journey to stratospheric fame and global popularity, including her sold-out shows, festival performances and internet-breaking fashion moments. Packed with 50 gorgeous images accompanied by insights into her life, join the ‘DENIAL IS A RIVER’ megastar on a visual journey of her life so far. With powerful vocals and slick dance moves, there’s no doubt this ‘BLOOM' performer is an unstoppable force in the music industry. Making waves with her bold lyrics, '90s style and unforgettable music videos, ICONIC: Doechii proves her status as one of the most exciting new artists of her generation.
- A CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNEY
A CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNEY
$40.00A Civil Rights Journey presents the astonishing archive of Dr Doris Derby: photographer, activist, and professor of anthropology. Active throughout the Civil Rights Movements of the mid twentieth century in the southern United States, particularly Mississippi, Derby acted as a photographer, organiser and teacher, making photographs of the intimate and human side of the everyday struggle for survival and human rights. She photographed both the organisation of political events, meetings, and funerals, alongside the literacy, co-operative and community theatre programmes, many of which she founded, and encountered much danger and tragedy along the way. Here we see the speeches and protests that gave the movement its defining moments, as well as vital figures including Muhammad Ali, Alice Walker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Jesse Jackson. We also see classrooms and church halls, doctors and secretaries: everyday scenes of joy, frustration, curiosity, and connection, in which the determination and collective actions and resolve and actions of the movement are equally expressed. This extensive volume presents Derby's images in sequences that between them document rural and urban poverty, offer lucid ethnographies of particular streets and families, track the day-to-day lives of African American children growing up in the Mississippi Delta, and bear witness to such pivotal events as the Jackson State University shooting, the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., and the 1968 Democratic Convention. Derby's photographs offer us an invaluably rich portrait of a historical moment whose effects have defined today's world and issues a vital reassertion of the work that remains to be done. Artist photographer Hannah Collins has worked with Doris Derby to recount the events photographed in extensive texts which accompany the images.
- Shining Lights: Black Women in Photography in the 1980s-90s
Shining Lights: Black Women in Photography in the 1980s-90s
$65.00Shining Lights: Black Women in Photography in the 1980s–90s is the first critical anthology of Black women photographers active in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, providing a richly illustrated overview of a significant and overlooked chapter of British photographic history. Seen through the lens of Britain’s sociopolitical and cultural contexts, the publication tells a unique story from the dual perspectives of lived experience and historical investigation, authored and researched by one of the period’s most influential photographic artists, Joy Gregory. The pioneering and diverse work created by Black women artists in the UK over the course of these two decades marked an important juncture in both documentary and conceptual practices, including the experimental use of photomontage, self-portraiture, staged imagery, and photography in dialogue with other media. Shining Lights showcases the expertise and evolution of this work, illuminated by ephemera and archival material, new essays and roundtable conversations, foregrounding a variety of individual artistic developments as well as the communities fostered around them. Amongst the fifty-eight photographers included are Maxine Walker, Ingrid Pollard, Claudette Holmes, Roshini Kempadoo, Mohini Chandra, Carole Wright, Joy Gregory, Sutapa Biswas, Maud Sulter, Brenda Agard, Anita McKenzie, Mitra Tabrizian, Poulomi Desai, Virginia Nimarkoh, Jennie Baptiste, Nudrat Afza, Merle Van den Bosch, and Eileen Perrier. This comprehensive publication by Joy Gregory is developed in close collaboration with photography historian and writer Taous Dahmani, and is co-published with Autograph, London.
- The Colored Cartoon: Black Presentation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954
The Colored Cartoon: Black Presentation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954
$27.95From the introduction of animated film in the early 1900s to the 1950s, ethnic humor was a staple of American-made cartoons. Yet as Christopher Lehman shows in this revealing study, the depiction of African Americans in particular became so inextricably linked to the cartoon medium as to influence its evolution through those five decades. He argues that what is in many ways most distinctive about American animation reflects white animators' visual interpretations of African American cultural expression.
The first American animators drew on popular black representations, many of which were caricatures rooted in the culture of southern slavery. During the 1920s, the advent of the sound-synchronized cartoon inspired animators to blend antebellum-era black stereotypes with the modern black cultural expressions of jazz musicians and Hollywood actors. When the film industry set out to desexualize movies through the imposition of the Hays Code in the early 1930s, it regulated the portrayal of African Americans largely by segregating black characters from others, especially white females. At the same time, animators found new ways to exploit the popularity of African American culture by creating animal characters like Bugs Bunny who exhibited characteristics associated with African Americans without being identifiably black.
By the 1950s, protests from civil rights activists and the growing popularity of white cartoon characters led animators away from much of the black representation on which they had built the medium. Even so, animated films today continue to portray African American characters and culture, and not necessarily in a favorable light.
Drawing on a wide range of sources, including interviews with former animators, archived scripts for cartoons, and the films themselves, Lehman illustrates the intimate and unmistakable connection between African Americans and animation.
- Destiny Is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection
Destiny Is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection
$60.00Use discount code: SALE to receive 30% off.
The eloquent story of Eileen Harris Norton's collection and its pivotal role in championing the work of women artists, artists of color, and changing narratives of contemporary art.
Since she acquired her very first artwork from Los Angeles printmaker Ruth Waddy in 1976, Eileen Harris Norton's collection has bloomed into a beautiful reflection of her interest in the practices of women and artists of color, and work made in California. Alongside the eponymous exhibition Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, Destiny Is a Rose celebrates fifty years of Harris Norton's remarkable collection, taking its title from a painting in the collection by Kerry James Marshall and featuring numerous iconic works of contemporary art by Mark Bradford, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Yoshimoto Nara, Adrian Piper, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and more. Texts by art historian Kellie Jones and curator Ingrid Schaffner delve into the critical role that education and philanthropy, representation and identity, and personal relationships with artists and curators have played in shaping Harris Norton's visionary collecting practice. Offering deep insight into the act and impact of collecting, Destiny Is a Rose is a tribute to Harris Norton's ongoing role as a vital agent of change and growth within the contemporary art world.
- Rodney McMillian: A Son of the Soil
Rodney McMillian: A Son of the Soil
$60.00"McMillian endows simple objects with affecting political resonances...There is anger in them, but there is hope too." ―Frieze
Published with Columbia Museum of Art.
Multimedia artist Rodney McMillian (born 1969) conjoins political texts, found domestic materials and archival footage into assemblages that confront the complex histories of class, race, landscape and region that inform American identity. In A Son of the Soil, McMillian trains his eye on the history of landscape representation in the South. Through large-scale abstract expanses painted on old bedding, sculptures constructed from post-consumer objects and archival film footage, McMillian evokes the land's tillage and spoilage, histories of ownership and the charged relationship between land and the body. A Son of the Soil presents a bevy of scholarly essays that examine McMillian's oeuvre, focusing on the artist's interplay between urban industrialism and domestic space, his visual culture and art historical sources and, more broadly, the relationship between a region and a nation.
- Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory
Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory
$55.00A vital critical resource on the artist who helped transform the landscape of the Bay Area with her public artworks
Published with Oakland Museum of California.
The American artist Mildred Howard (born 1945) is best known for her mixed-media assemblages and sculptural installations that engage with memory, place, identity and the Black experience. Her work has been associated with the Black Arts Movement and distinctly Californian aesthetics such as Bay Area expressionism, West Coast conceptual art and San Francisco funk. In recent decades, Howard has produced numerous large-scale public artworks both within the Bay Area and throughout the country. These installations vary from site-specific outdoor environments, to architecturally integrated surface treatments, to stand-alone sculptural objects and structures.
This compendium covers the entire scope of Howard's multifaceted, politically engaged practice, featuring a selection of works that represent different aspects of her oeuvre alongside essays and an interview with the artist. Poetics of Memory also includes photographs of Howard's archive and studio commissioned specifically for the volume. - Akinsanya Kambon: The Hero Avenges
Akinsanya Kambon: The Hero Avenges
$49.95The first monograph on Vietnam veteran, Black Panther Party member and griot Akinsanya Kambon, whose paintings and sculptures sing with revolutionary history
Published with Hammer Museum.
Born Mark Teemer in Sacramento in 1946, Akinsaya Kambon has led a radical, revolutionary and artistic life. Drafted into the Marine Corps as a combat illustrator, he served in Vietnam, and upon his return joined the Sacramento chapter of the Black Panther Party. Enrolled at Sacramento City College, he learned the raku ceramic firing process and thus formally began his artistic practice. After nine years of travel and study in Africa, he was given the Yoruba name Akinsaya Kambon, meaning "the hero avenges." This first book on the artist surveys his painting and sculptural practice that centers narratives of the Black diaspora, including African histories and mythologies, as well as stories of violence and revolution from Africa and the Americas. With his art and community work, Kambon seeks not only to provide in-depth history lessons on Black and Brown communities in the United States, but also to chart new visions for the future.
- Romare Bearden: Patchwork Quilt (One on One)
Romare Bearden: Patchwork Quilt (One on One)
$14.95Use discount code SALE for 30% at checkout
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.
- Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums
Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums
Mabel O. Wilson
$34.95Focusing 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.
- Forever for the Culture: Notes from the New Black Digital Arts Renaissance
Forever for the Culture: Notes from the New Black Digital Arts Renaissance
Steven Underwood
$29.95*Use discount code: SALE at check out for 30% off*
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.
- Weight in Space
Weight in Space
Thaddeus Mosley
$120.00Using 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.
- Sam Gilliam: Sewing Fields
Sam Gilliam: Sewing Fields
Sara Muthi
$40.00Use discount code SALE for 30% at checkout
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.
- These Long Shadows: Women's House Museums in the American South
These Long Shadows: Women's House Museums in the American South
Monica Nelson
$35.00PRE-ORDER: On Sale: May 26, 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). - Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam
Ishmael Reed
$150.00Use discount code: SALE to receive 30% off.
As featured in The Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Holiday Gift Books: Fine Art
The definitive monograph of Sam Gilliam one of the great innovators in post-war American painting
An African American artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Sam Gilliam blazed a trail with his singular artistic vision. Gilliam emerged from the Washington, DC art scene in the mid 1960s with works that disrupted established artistic norms and styles.
Relentlessly experimental and inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, Gilliam’s lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.
This book, made in close collaboration with the Sam Gilliam Foundation, is the first to comprehensively survey the breadth of his extraordinary career, and features never-before-seen archival materials an insightful newly commissioned texts that shine light on the artist, his life, and his work, together with examples of Gilliam's work spanning five decades.
- Rashid Johnson
Rashid Johnson
edited by Claudia Rankine, Sampada Aranke & Akili Tommasino
$54.95The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson
‘Johnson is a leading voice of his generation.’ – New York Times
The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson
Working with a variety of media that includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, Rashid Johnson has created a nuanced and iconographic body of work that connects literature, music, and art. Personal references and pervasive cultural narratives are interweaved with the legacy of modernist abstraction, producing what critics have labelled ‘conceptual post-black art’. A precocious talent (his work was included in the seminal ‘Freestyle’ exhibition in New York in 2001), Johnson received the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Prize, which honours contributions in the field of African-American art.
- Mural
Mural
by Mahmoud Darwish, John Berger
$15.95*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*
Mahmoud Darwish was the Palestinian national poet. One of the greatest poets of the last half century, his work evokes the loss of his homeland and is suffused with the pain of dispossession and exile. His poems display a brilliant acuity, a passion for and openness to the world and, above all, a deep and abiding humanity. Here, his close friends John Berger and Rema Hammami present a beautiful new translation of two of Darwish’s later works. Illustrated with original drawings by John Berger, Mural is a testimony to one of the most important and powerful poets of our age.
- Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility
Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility
edited by Ashley James
$65.00*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*
From Dawoud Bey and Lorna Simpson to Sondra Perry and Kerry James Marshall, a multiethnic group of artists explores what it means to be seen, not seen or erased in the world through formal experimentations with the figure
Going Dark brings together a multigenerational group of contemporary artists who engage the "semi-visible" figure—representations that are partially (or fully) obscured, including, in some cases, literally darkened—and suggests that the concept of going dark is a tool that has been used by artists for decades to probe enduring questions surrounding both the potential and the discontents of social visibility. Across mediums—painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation—Going Dark names, charts and makes meaning of the semi-visible figure, arguing for its significance in contemporary art as a genre of unique conceptual and formal power. More than 125 works in all of these mediums by more than 25 artists are featured.
Essays by such curators as Legacy Russell and Jordan Carter, and professor Abbe Schriber, among others, contextualize the histories that inspired these works. In addition, four award-winning poets and three acclaimed graphic designers have contributed works.
Artists include: American Artist, Kevin Beasley, Rebecca Belmore, Dawoud Bey, John Edmonds, Ellen Gallagher, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Tomashi Jackson, Titus Kaphar, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Joiri Minaya, Sandra Mujinga, Chris Ofili, Sondra Perry, Farah Al Qasimi, Faith Ringgold, Doris Salcedo, Lorna Simpson, Sable Elyse Smith, Stephanie Syjuco, Hank Willis Thomas, WangShui, Carrie Mae Weems and Charles White. - Noah Davis: In Detail
Noah Davis: In Detail
by Noah Davis
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Designed as a companion to the hugely successful monograph Noah Davis, this volume offers further insight into the impact and legacy of the revolutionary Los Angeles artist and activist.
“Embedding his dreams on canvas and in the community, visionary American artist Noah Davis created a mighty legacy.” — Rachel Willcock, ArtReview (2022)
Looking to literature, film, architecture, and art history, Noah Davis imbued his ethereal paintings with emotion and imagination. Muted colors, fantastic scenes, and blurred subjects create an intoxicating vision. Attuned to the power of his medium, Davis layered his paintings—figuratively and literally—using a unique dry paint application to depict quotidian life at an enigmatic, almost magical remove. Featuring sumptuous close-ups throughout, this important new book brings into focus the rich, painterly variety and luminous detail of Davis’s canvases.
With a special focus on the groundbreaking Underground Museum, which Noah Davis co-founded with his wife, Karon Davis, Noah Davis: In Detail includes a special conversation, moderated by Helen Molesworth, between Fred Moten, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Lax, and Julie Mehretu. This renowned group of artists and thinkers share personal experiences of the powerful and emotional impact of The Underground Museum and its connection to the larger artistic environs of Los Angeles. Franklin Sirmans contributes a new essay and Lindsay Charlwood, a lifelong friend of Noah’s, authors a chronology of his life, contextualizing his artistic and social achievements. - Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph
Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph
by Deana Lawson
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Deana Lawson is one of the most powerful photographers of her generation. Her subject is black expressive culture and her canvas is the African Diaspora. Over the last ten years, she has created a visionary language to describe black identities, through intimate portraiture and striking accounts of ceremonies and rituals.Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph features forty beautifully reproduced photographs, an essay by the acclaimed writer Zadie Smith, and an extensive interview with the filmmaker Arthur Jafa.
Deana Lawson is one of the most intriguing photographers of her generation. Over the last ten years, she has created a visionary language to describe identities through intimate portraiture and striking accounts of ceremonies and rituals. Using medium- and large-format cameras, Lawson works with models she meets in the United States and on travels in the Caribbean and Africa to construct arresting, highly structured, and deliberately theatrical scenes animated by an exquisite range of color and attention to surprising details: bedding and furniture in domestic interiors or lush plants in Edenic gardens. The body—often nude—is central. Throughout her work, which invites comparison to the photography of Diane Arbus, Jeff Wall, and Carrie Mae Weems, Lawson seeks to portray the personal and the powerful in black life. Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph features forty beautifully reproduced photographs, an essay by the acclaimed writer Zadie Smith, and an expansive conversation with the filmmaker Arthur Jafa. - To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness by Robin Coste Lewis
To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness by Robin Coste Lewis
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A genre-bending exploration of poetry, photography, and human migration—another revelatory visual expedition from the National Book Award–winning poet who changed the way we see art, the museum, and the Black female figure. • Winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry
“Lewis pushes the limits of language and image, composing lines alongside a cache of hundreds of photographs found under her late grandmother’s bed only days before the house was slated to be razed.” —Kevin Young, The New Yorker
Twenty-five years ago, after her maternal grandmother’s death, Robin Coste Lewis discovered a stunning collection of photographs in an old suitcase under her bed, filled with everything from sepia tintypes to Technicolor Polaroids. Lewis’s family had survived one of the largest migrations in human history, when six million Americans fled the South, attempting to escape from white supremacy and white terrorism. But these photographs of daily twentieth-century Black life revealed a concealed, interior history. The poetry Lewis joins to these vivid images stands forth as an inspiring alternative to the usual ways we frame the old stories of “race” and “migration,” placing them within a much vaster span of time and history.
In what she calls “a film for the hands” and “an origin myth for the future,” Lewis reverses our expectations of both poetry and photography: “Black pages, black space, black time––the Big Black Bang.” From glamorous outings to graduations, birth announcements, baseball leagues, and back-porch delight, Lewis creates a lyrical documentary about Black intimacy. Instead of colonial nostalgia, she offers us “an exalted Black privacy.” What emerges is a dynamic reframing of what it means to be human and alive, with Blackness at its center. “I am trying / to make the gods / happy,” she writes amid these portraits of her ancestors. “I am trying to make the dead / clap and shout.” - Radical Justice: Lifting Every Voice
Radical Justice: Lifting Every Voice
by Accra Shepp
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Radical Justice brings together two bodies of socially-engaged photographic portraiture by Accra Shepp, who has documented New York City’s Occupy Wall Street movement starting in 2011 and its racial justice/BLM protests since 2020.
Working in the style of August Sander with a large format camera and black and white film, Shepp pictures fellow New Yorkers on their city’s streets in acts of sit-ins and active protest, both unplanned and highly organized, both independent and unified, to address notions of the 99% and 1%, which have become part of the American political vernacular. Bearing witness to defining events of the last decade that echo the United States’ longer historical arch, Shepp’s empathetic depictions of fellow citizens standing up for the fair protection of the Constitution provide a prophetic mirror of current events, which reflects back centuries to where the American experiment began, to suggest where we’ll find ourselves in the years to come.
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