Publications

Charlotte Mullins brings art to life through the stories of those who created it and, importantly, reframes who is included in the narrative to create a more diverse and exciting landscape of art. She shows how art can help us see the world differently and understand our place in it, how it helps us express ourselves, fuels our creativity and contributes to our overall wellbeing and positive mental health.

Why did our ancestors make art? What did art mean to them and what does their art mean for us today? Why is art even important at all?

Mullins introduces readers to the Terracotta Army and Nok sculptures, Renaissance artists such as Giotto and Michelangelo, trailblazers including Käthe Kollwitz, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, and contemporary artists who create art as resistance, such as Ai Weiwei and Shirin Neshat. She also restores forgotten artists such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Guan Daosheng and Jacob Lawrence, and travels to the Niger valley, Peru, Java, Rapa Nui and Australia, to broaden our understanding of what art is and should be.

This extraordinary journey through 100,000 years celebrates art’s crucial place in understanding our collective culture and history.

A Material Legacy: The Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection of Contemporary Art (Duke University Press) is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2016.

Comprised of more than 30 large-scale works in two- and  three-dimensions and drawn entirely from the Nancy A. Nasher and David  J. Haemisegger Collection, A Material Legacy is a  multi-generational exhibition that illustrates the material impulse found in contemporary art-making practices. Nearly all of the works in  the exhibition have been made in the previous decade, providing an almost real-time glimpse into the varied approaches and innovative techniques of art being made in the second decade of the 21st century. The exhibition reveals the various ways in which contemporary artists manifest a material tendency,  from the politically-charged works of Ivan Navarro and Kara Walker, the  formal complexity of Tony Cragg, and the ascetic repetition of Sol  Lewitt, to the colorful exuberance of Katharina Grosse and Elliot  Hundley, among many others. 

• Hardcover, 112 pages
• 100 color illustrations

A Window into Collecting American Folk Art: The Edward Duff Balken Collection at Princeton

The second volume in Thames & Hudson’s monographic series on global architect Sir David Adjaye, winner of the 2021 RIBA royal gold medal

Following on from Adjaye – Works: Houses, Pavilions, Installations, Buildings, 1995–2007, published by Thames & Hudson in 2020, this book covers the impressive portfolio of work created by the architect between 2007 and 2015. During the years covered in this book, Adjaye became interested in developing an architecture that was more expansive, taking him outside Europe to work on major projects such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver and the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo. Designing buildings around the globe, including two projects connected with the post-Katrina reconstruction programme in New Orleans, Adjaye carefully tailored his approach to each place, sensitive to the important role architecture plays in affirming a sense of community and identity.

Adjaye: Works 2007–2015 brings together these recent projects and presents them with new analyses and personal insights from the architect, including detailed drawing and site plans and stunning color photography, demonstrating the originality of Adjaye’s talents. 

• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 300
• Artwork: 500 illustrations
• Size: 10.5 in x 10.5 in x 1.2 in
• Published: October 18th, 2022

50 Pioneers Defining African Art for the Twenty-First Century

With African artists attracting sizable audience numbers to museums, setting sky-high auction records, and appearing in mainstream press, it has become impossible to overlook the cultural significance of contemporary African art today. Author and curator Osei Bonsu's engaging profiles of leading African artists—along with gorgeous full-color reproductions of their work—introduce readers to a generation of movers and shakers whose innovative artwork reflects on Africa as both an idea and an experience. Using diverse forms, languages, and expressions to articulate what it means to be a part of the world, these artists generate alternate histories and imaginative futures—work that is both personal and political, universal and incredibly specific. Their work helps define contemporary African art as a vast artistic and cultural movement.

The book includes a stellar roster of artists: Amoako Boafo, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Bronwyn Katz—from household names to up-and-coming artists, African Art Now features some of the most exciting artists working today.

Over the past two decades, contemporary African art has become part of the global mainstream, inspiring countless exhibitions, fairs, and auctions around the world. And yet, African art remains overlooked as an area of dedicated study due to continued academic and cultural bias. This book shines a spotlight on the artists whose wide-ranging accomplishments represent the shifting dynamics and boundless possibilities of African art today. 

• Hardcover
• Pages: 240
• Publication Date: 10/18/2022
  

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.

About the Authors

Chika Okeke-Agulu is Professor of African and African Diaspora Art at Princeton University. He is the author of several books including Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria (2015), and is a co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art.

Joseph L. Underwood is a scholar and curator whose research addresses the transnational networks of modern and contemporary African art, with an emphasis on artists from Senegal.

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 290 x 250 mm (11 3/8 x 9 7/8 in)
• Pages: 352 pp
• Illustrations: 315 illustrations

Edited by Perrin Lathrop, Assistant Curator of African Art at Princeton University

A groundbreaking examination of modern African artists and their relationships with American artists and cultural institutions in the mid-twentieth century

Between 1947 and 1967, institutions such as the Harmon Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and historically Black colleges and universities collected and exhibited works by many of the most important African artists of the mid-twentieth century, including Ben Enwonwu (Nigeria), Gerard Sekoto (South Africa), Ibrahim El-Salahi (Sudan), and Skunder Boghossian (Ethiopia). The inventive and irrefutably contemporary nature of these artists’ paintings, sculptures, and works on paper defied typical Western narratives about African art being isolated in a “primitive” past. Providing an unprecedented examination of the complex connections between modern African artists and American patrons amid the interlocking histories of civil rights, decolonization, and the Cold War, this fascinating volume reveals a transcontinental network of artists, curators, and scholars that challenged assumptions about African art in the United States and encouraged American engagement with African artists as contemporaries.

224 Pages, 9.00 x 10.80 in, 152 color illustrations

Published: Oct 25, 2022

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese concept that derives from simplicity and authenticity. It values the beauty of imperfection. Elegance in natural materials, nobility without sophistication, timelessness with tradition: these are the principles that define Axel Vervoordt's personal take on the concept.

This book features Vervoordt interiors that are inspired by wabi philosophies, showing readers how to create calm, peaceful spaces in which beauty is distilled to its purest form. Created with contributions by architect and frequent collaborator, Tatsuro Miki, the book's photographs by Laziz Hamani transport us into the unique atmospheres of these Wabi Inspirations.

• Publisher: Flammarion
• Pages: 256 pages
• Hardcover
• Dimensions: 8.72" x 1.22" x 10.86"

The shipwreck narrative is used to explore globalization, colonization and climate change in the masterful works of contemporary American painter Alexis Rockman

by Andrea Grover (Editor), Daniel Finamore (Introduction), Trevor Smith (Introduction), Alexis Rockman  (Artist), Sasha Archibald (Contributor), Brett Littman (Contributor)

In Shipwrecks, Alexis Rockman (born 1962) looks at the world’s waterways as a network by which all of history has traveled. The transport of language, culture, art, architecture, cuisine, religion, disease and warfare can all be traced along the routes of seafaring vessels dating back to and in some cases predating the earliest recorded civilizations. 

Through depictions of historic and obscure shipwrecks and their lost cargoes, Rockman addresses the impact―both factual and extrapolated―the migration of goods, people, plants and animals has on the planet. 

This timely publication, which includes essays from leading scholars, is propelled by impending climate disaster and the current largest human migration in history, taking place in part by waterway.

• Hardcover
• 112 pages
• Publication date: July 6, 2021

The first extended monograph on Saar, featuring older and more recent works, gorgeously bound in cloth with embossed details

Drawing inspiration from the imagery of African, Caribbean and Latin American folk art as well as found objects and her own upbringing in a multiracial artist family, Los Angeles artist Alison Saar (born 1956) creates works that reflect on the duality of body and spirit within the context of a larger cultural setting, focusing in particular on black womanhood. In life-size wooden sculptures and mixed-media portraits, Saar crafts complex narratives about diasporic identity.

This publication accompanied an exhibition co-organized by the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, California and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California. Alongside photographic reproductions of Saar’s work, the clothbound catalog contains an interview between Saar and the exhibit’s co-curator, never-before-published photographs from the artist’s childhood and poetry by Camille Dungy, Harryette Mullen and Evie Shockley.

Lawrence, the best known black American artist of the 20th century, developed the series of thirty panels, each measuring 12 × 16 inches, over the course of two years. Lawrence created the panels as history you could hold in your hands and intended to reproduce the images in a book that he never realized. The paintings depict signal moments in the American Revolution and the early decades of the American republic, and feature the words and actions of founding fathers, enslaved people, women, and Native Americans. 

In January 2020, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, is mounting the landmark exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle. The show, which unites the panels in one place for the first time in nearly half a century, then travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., on a two-year national tour.

In the spirit of Lawrence’s project, this collection includes brief interpretive texts written by teens in response to the Struggle series. This illustrated book features a chorus of thirty singular young adult voices expressing how Lawrence and his Struggle series speaks to them on a personal, emotional level. The young writers come from a broad variety of races and ethnicities, nationalities, religions, genders, sexualities, and abilities, and underrepresented voices. As Jacob Lawrence mined American history to reflect upon events he saw happening around him in segregation-era America, these young adults use these panels to comment on their experiences in today’s America.

• Hardcover, 200 pages
• Grade level 9-12

 Anatomy: Exploring the Human Body is a visually compelling survey of more than 5,000 years of image-making. Through 300 remarkable works, selected and curated by an international panel of anatomists, curators, academics, and specialists, the book chronicles the intriguing visual history of human anatomy, showcasing its amazing complexity and our ongoing fascination with the systems and functions of our bodies. Exploring individual parts of the human body from head to toe, and revealing the intricate functions of body systems, such as the nerves, muscles, organs, digestive system, brain, and senses, this authoritative book presents iconic examples alongside rarely seen, breathtaking works. The 300 entries are arranged with juxtapositions of contrasting and complementary illustrations to allow for thought-provoking, lively, and stimulating reading. 

by Carolyn L. Mazloomi

Contemporary quilt artists trace the path of Black history in the United States with 97 original works exploring important events, places, people, and ideas over 400 years. Arranged in chronological order, quilt themes include the first enslaved people brought to the US by Dutch traders in 1619, the brave souls marching for civil rights, the ascendant influence of African American culture on the American cultural landscape, and the election of the first African American president. Other quilts commemorate and celebrate cultural milestones and memories, such as the first African American teacher, the Buffalo Soldiers, the first black man to play Othello on Broadway, Muhammed Ali, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The 69 artists who contributed works for this curated collection provide narrative explaining the important stories and histories behind the quilts.

• Size: 8.5in x 11.0in 
• Pages:208
• 97 color images
• Binding: Hardback

‘A sweeping meditation on femininity, power, vulnerability, and the visual vocabulary we use to define all three.’ – Vogue  

The complete Annie Leibovitz Women collection, featuring more than 250 portraits spanning over 30 years  First published in 1999, Annie Leibovitz's landmark collection of portraits of women is back in print, together with a new book of photographs. The broad array of subjects reflects what women look like now: dancers, actors, astronauts, artists, politicians, farmers, writers, CEOs, philanthropists, soldiers, musicians, athletes, socialites, scientists.  

Together, these highly personal books feature more than 250 portraits in the unique, personal, and insightful style that is Leibovitz's trademark. Stunning photographs – in both color and black and white – represent an international who’s who of women effecting positive change in the world, from Louise Bourgeois, Joan Didion, Elizabeth Taylor, and Eudora Welty to Joan Baez, Billie Eilish, Serena and Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour.

Featuring texts by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Susan Sontag, one of the most prominent writers and public intellectuals of the twentieth century; and feminist icon Gloria Steinem, this two-volume, slipcased edition is a celebration of women by one of the most influential photographers of our time.

• 493 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Dimensions: 9.2 x 2.38 x 11.65 inches

Aperture 240 - Fall 2020

“Native America” is a special issue about photography and Indigenous lives and guest edited by the artist Wendy Red Star.

“Native America” considers the wide-ranging work of photographers and lens-based artists who pose challenging questions about land rights, identity and heritage, and histories of colonialism. Several contributors revisit or reconfigure photographic archives—from writer Rebecca Bengal’s look at the works of Richard Throssel and Horace Poolaw, to artist Duane Linklater’s intervention in a 1995 issue of Aperture, “Strong Hearts,” the magazine’s first volume devoted to Native American photographers.

“I was thinking about young Native artists,” says Red Star, “and what would be inspirational and important for them as a road map.”

That map spans a diverse array of intergenerational image-making, counting as lodestars the meditative assemblages of Kimowan Metchewais and installation works of Alan Michelson, the stylish self-portraits of Martine Gutierrez, and the speculative mythologies of Karen Miranda Rivadeneira and Guadalupe Maravilla. “Native America” also features contributions by distinguished writers and curators, including strikingly personal reflections from acclaimed poets Tommy Pico and Natalie Diaz.

With additional essential contributions from Rebecca Belmore and Julian Brave NoiseCat, as well as a portfolio from Red Star, the issue looks into the historic, often fraught relationship between photography and Native representation, while also offering new perspectives by emerging artists who reimagine what it means to be a citizen in North America today.

Format: Paperback
Publication date: 2020-09-08
Measurements: 9.25 x 12 x 0.6 inches

Lead support of the “Native America” issue of Aperture magazine is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Henry Luce Foundation. Further generous support is provided by the Philip and Edith Leonian Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.Significant support of Aperture magazine is provided by The Kanakia Foundation. Additional lead support is provided by Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović.

• For the summer 2019 issue of Aperture, Swinton, as guest-editor, draws upon the central themes of Orlando—gender fluidity, consciousness without limits, and the deep perspective of a long life—to offer a collection of images and writings that celebrate openness, curiosity, and human possibility. Virginia Woolf’s prescient 1928 novel Orlando tells the story of a young nobleman who, during the era of Queen Elizabeth I, lives for three centuries without aging and mysteriously shifts gender along the way.  In 1992, filmmaker Sally Potter released a now-classic adaptation of the book with Tilda Swinton in the starring role as Orlando. Since then, Woolf’s tale has continued to hold sway over Swinton, who describes the book’s ability “to change like a magic mirror. Where I once assumed it was a book about eternal youth, I now see it as a book about growing up, about learning to live.”“Woolf wrote Orlando,” Swinton notes, “in an attitude of celebration of the oscillating nature of existence.  She believed the creative mind to be androgynous. I have come to see Orlando far less as being about gender than about the flexibility of the fully awake and sensate spirit. 
• This issue of Aperture will be a salute to indetermination and limitlessness, and a heartfelt celebration of the fully inclusive and expansive vision of life exemplified by the extraordinary artists collected here.”This issue features contributions by artists and writers, including Michael Cunningham, Zackary Drucker, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Isaac Julien, Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, Jamal Nxedlana, Elle Pérez, Sally Potter, Walter Pfeiffer, R. Ruby Rich, Antwaun Sargent, Viviane Sassen, Collier Schorr, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Mickalene Thomas, Lynne Tillman, Justin Torres, Marina Warner, Carmen Winant, and more
• Format: Paperback / softback
  Publication date: 2019-06-04
  Measurements: 9.25 x 12 x 0.6 inches

Architecture as Icon: Perception and Representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art

Presenting the first formulation of the central subject, this volume challenges major assumptions long held by Western art historians and provides new ways of thinking about, looking at, and understanding Byzantine art in its broadest geographic and chronological framework, from A.D. 300 to the early nineteenth century.

by Rachel Z. DeLue

Arthur Dove, often credited as America’s first abstract painter, created dynamic and evocative images inspired by his surroundings, from the farmland of upstate New York to the North Shore of Long Island. But his interests were not limited to nature. Challenging earlier accounts that view him as simply a landscape painter, Arthur Dove: Always Connect reveals for the first time the artist’s intense engagement with language, the nature of social interaction, and scientific and technological advances.

Rachael Z. DeLue rejects the traditional assumption that Dove can only be understood in terms of his nature paintings and association with photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz and his circle. Instead, she uncovers deep and complex connections between Dove’s work and his world, including avant-garde literature, popular music, meteorology, mathematics, aviation, and World War II. Arthur Dove also offers the first sustained account of Dove’s Dadaesque multimedia projects and the first explorations of his animal imagery and the role of humor in his art. Beautifully illustrated with works from all periods of Dove’s career, this book presents a new vision of one of America’s most innovative and captivating artists—and reimagines how the story of modern art in the United States might be told.

• Hardcover

Art collecting can be time-consuming, complicated and confusing for the beginner...

...but it doesn't have to be.

In this clear and easy-to-follow guide, learn the necessary knowledge and skills to begin building your own art collection.

Art conveys the words the artist often might not have been able to speak aloud. In, The Black Market: A guide to art collecting, Charles, a long-time art collector and art historian, introduces novice collectors and would be collectors to the art world, its deep roots, its connections to our pasts, and its hopes for our future.

In the first part of the book, you'll discover the history of African American art and will find essays born in the decades between 1900 - 1990; fascinating lecture reviews on books and exhibition catalogs that invite art enthusiasts to explore the culture, the storied lives, the simplicity, and the everyday struggles and triumphs of the African American experience.

The final sections of the book offer insights and tips about the business side of becoming an art collector. You'll find an overview of storage, collection management, a glossary of terms, and the all-important guide to insurance for your collection and interviews featuring prominent art advisors and collectors like Hill Harper and Keith Rivers.

If you ever wanted to become a collector, wanted to learn more about the African American art, or want to deepen your knowledge, The Black Market: A guide to art collecting is a fascinating, immersive, and essential guide to developing a meaningful and awe-inspiring collection.

• Softcover ‏ : ‎ 204 pages

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and the color black is one of the most beautiful colors

Art historian, art collector, curator, and writer Charles Moore takes you on an exquisite journey through the world of the Black artists who revolutionized contemporary art and the patrons who dedicated their lives to collecting their works.

Through interviews and dialogues, Moore captures the essence of exceptional Black artists, exploring their quests for recognition of their brilliance.

Moore touches on the powerful relationships between collectors and artists, as well as on the intricate and fascinating business of art ownership, from managing your assets to supporting the growth of Black art through sponsorship and involvement.

The color black evokes a myriad of emotions, and that's what makes it one of the most impactful shades on the palette wheel.