PUBLICATIONS

Princeton University Art Museum Handbook of the Collections

Revised and Expanded Edition.

The encyclopedic collections of the Princeton University Art Museum comprise more than 92,000 objects ranging from ancient to contemporary art. This essential guide features more than 450 of the Museum's best-loved and most important works--including Chinese bronzes and calligraphy, Roman sculptures and mosaics, Maya ceramics, African beadwork and sculpture, old master prints and drawings, European and American paintings, drawings, and sculpture, and outstanding examples of photography--all beautifully illustrated and accompanied by informative texts. An introduction by Director James Steward offers a brief history of the Museum from its origins in the 1750s to today. Available exclusively at the Museum Store.

by Kathryn Watterson (Author), Cornel West (Foreword)

 I Hear My People Singing shines a light on a small but historic black neighborhood at the heart of one of the most elite and world-renowned Ivy-League towns―Princeton, New Jersey. The vivid first-person accounts of more than fifty black residents detail aspects of their lives throughout the twentieth century. Their stories show that the roots of Princeton’s African American community are as deeply intertwined with the town and university as they are with the history of the United States, the legacies of slavery, and the nation’s current conversations on race.

Drawn from an oral history collaboration with residents of the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, Princeton undergraduates, and their professor, Kathryn Watterson, neighbors speak candidly about Jim Crow segregation, the consequences of school integration, World Wars I and II, and the struggles for equal opportunities and civil rights. Despite three centuries of legal and economic obstacles, African American residents have created a flourishing, ethical, and humane neighborhood in which to raise their children, care for the sick and elderly, worship, stand their ground, and celebrate life. Abundantly filled with photographs, I Hear My People Singing personalizes the injustices faced by generations of black Princetonians―including the famed Paul Robeson―and highlights the community’s remarkable achievements. The introductions to each chapter provide historical context, as does the book’s foreword by noted scholar, theologian, and activist Cornel West.

An intimate testament of the black community’s resilience and ingenuity, I Hear My People Singing adds a never-before-compiled account of poignant black experience to an American narrative that needs to be heard now more than ever. 

• Hardcover

An inspirational how-to course on Japanese woodblock printing's history and techniques, with guidance on materials and studio practices, step-by-step demonstrations, and examples of finished works by modern masters of the medium as well as historic pieces.

A Modern Guide to the Ancient Art of mokuhanga

An increasingly popular yet age-old art form, Japanese woodblock printing (mokuhanga) is embraced for its non-toxic character, use of handmade materials, and easy integration with other printmaking techniques. In this comprehensive guide, artist and printmaker April Vollmer—one of the best known mokuhanga practitioners and instructors in the West—combines her deep knowledge of this historic printmaking practice with expert step-by-step instruction, guidance on materials and studio practices, and a diverse collection of prints by leading contemporary artists. At once practical and inspirational, this handbook is as useful to serious printmakers and artists as it is to creative people drawn
to Japanese history and aesthetics.

• 8.29"W x 10.29"H x 0.92"D  
• 256 pages

 Through its thematic organization into six chapters―Realism and Beyond, Post-Pop Landscapes, New Romanticism, Constructed Realities, Abstracted Topographies, and Complicated Vistas―the book affords a generous window into the very best of contemporary landscape painting, from Cecily Brown’s sensual, fleshy landscapes to Peter Doig’s magic realist renderings of Trinidad, Maureen Gallace’s serene views of beach cottages and the foaming ocean, David Hockney’s radiant capturings of seasonal change in the English countryside, Julie Mehretu’s dynamically cartographic abstractions, Alexis Rockman’s mural-sized, postapocalyptic dioramas, and far beyond. 

 The first survey of more than fifty years of drawing by a legendary sculptor and draftswoman.

Lee Bontecou (b. 1931) established a significant reputation in the 1960s with pioneering sculptures and reliefs made of raw and expressionistic materials. Her art is simultaneously organic and mechanical, and infused with biological, geological, and technological motifs.  These same qualities also animate a less-known but compelling body of work: her drawings. 

Ranging from her early soot on paper works created using powder from a welding torch to recent drawings in pencil and colored pencil that evoke cosmoses and microcosmic worlds, this stunning book is the first retrospective survey of Bontecou’s consistently innovative drawings.  More than sixty full-color plates, populated by imagery ranging from black voids to mechanomorphs to hybrid descendants of teeth, plants, and fish, are complemented by original essays from leading scholars who explore themes such as the drawings’ historical contexts, Bontecou’s use of the iconography of the void, and the eco-apocalyptic themes of an artist who came of age in the roiling political atmosphere of the 1960s.   

• Hardcover

This catalog accompanied Rose B. Simpson’s first solo exhibition in 2018 at the Wheelwright Museum. Simpson grew up in a permaculture environment on Santa Clara Pueblo in northern New Mexico among a family of renowned potters and artists―her mother is the famed sculptor Roxanne Swentzell. Simpson’s self-reflective work has made a big impact on the contemporary art scene. The pieces feature life-size mixed-media sculptures, faces, and monumental figures in the traditional medium of clay, combined with welded steel and leather. A range of sculptural styles and sizes reflect the trajectory of Simpson’s recent work.

The catalog LIT: The Work of Rose B. Simpson provides insight into Rose’s art practice, academic achievements, and cultural background. Her brother, Dr. Porter Swentzell’s contribution acknowledges their shared upbringing, the colonial history of museums, and a powerful critique of the museumification of culture. 

• Preface by Jonathan Batkin, Museum Director
• Essays by Yve Chavez, Exhibit Curator and Dr. Porter Swentzell
• Photos of Rose B. Simpson and her exhibition by Minesh Bacrania
• Studio photo’s of Rose B. Simpson’s work by Addison Doty
• Artwork captions by Rose B. Simpson

The art of the past can seem very far away, obscured both by time and by knotty academic theory. Foregrounding the experience of the contemporary viewer, Look Again shows how this need not be the case. From the spectacular theatrics of Bosch to the harmonious simplicity of Cézanne, Ossian Ward tackles some of history’s greatest art in all its dynamism, horror and beauty. Ward’s simple, ten-step programme acts as an aid to looking, breaking down the often obscure strategies of the Old Masters into intuitive categories – from Art as Honesty to Art as Vision.

Look Again’s novel approach is influenced by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, but is here updated for the art world of the 21st century. Key to this book is an emphasis on ways not simply of looking at Old Masters, but also of experiencing them. Just as contemporary art should be judged by how it moves us, cajoles us and envelops us, so too can the great paintings of the world be seen as immersive, captivating, even participatory experiences.

Ward does not deny the specific complexities and barriers associated with looking at art from other eras. Instead he offers readers a new formula to help illuminate this kind of art. His method not only provides the viewer with the tools to interpret a work of art, but also assumes that we hold some of this knowledge within ourselves already. In other words, everyone can share the enriching experience of Old Master paintings.

• Format: Flexibound
• Size: 19.6 x 14.8 cm
• Extent: 176 pp
• Publication date: 25 April 2019
• ISBN: 9780500239674

In 1929, Louise Nevelson was a disappointed housewife with a young son, surrounded by New York's vibrant artistic community but unable to fully engage with it. By 1950, she was an artist living on her own, financially dependent on her family, but she had received a glimmer of recognition from the establishment: inclusion in three group shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1980, Nevelson celebrated her second Whitney retrospective. Her work was held in public collections aroundthe world and her massive steel sculptures appeared in public spaces in seventeen states.

The story of Nevelson's artistic, spiritual, even physical transformation (she developed a taste for outrageous outfits and false eyelashes made of mink) is inseparable from major historical and cultural shifts of the twentieth century. Art historian and psychoanalyst Laurie Wilson brings a unique perspective to Nevelson's story, drawing on hours of interviews she conducted with Nevelson and her circle. Over one hundred images, many of them drawn from personal archives and never before published, make this the most comprehensive biography--both in terms of visuals and narrative detail--of this remarkable artist.Format: Flexibound

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0500297371
• ISBN13: 9780500297377
• Release Date: July 2023
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.1"

This volume features a total of 83 vintage prints by eight Magnum photographers―Werner Bischof, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Ernst Haas, Erich Lessing, Jean Marquis, Inge Morath, and Marc Riboud―in large-format reproductions, around the theme of “photographic humanism”: people and their everyday surroundings, photographed unsensationally by committed photojournalists who believed in educating and bettering the world through their work.

Edited by Todd Cronan and Peter C. Bunnell, with contributions by Andrew Kensett

One of the most significant unpublished texts in the history of photography, Memorable Fancies is the daybooks of Minor White, an artist who played a leading role in shaping the practice of photography in postwar America. Begun in the early 1930s and taking its name from a series of dialogues in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, these writings are part diary, part photography manual, and part aesthetic treatise. Minor White, Memorable Fancies presents this work in its entirety for the first time, offering an intimate look at the ideas and interior life of one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century.

In this beautifully illustrated volume, art historian Todd Cronan sheds light on White’s guiding concerns and the connections between White’s writings and his public practice as a photographer and influential publisher and teacher. White’s journal is accompanied by an array of photographs by White as well as annotations that provide background and context, illuminating White’s life and career while capturing a vibrant and inventive moment in the history of modern photography.

Challenging our assumptions about photographic agency and the interplay between art and life, Minor White, Memorable Fancies engages deeply with the creative potential of photographic work, the nature and effect of artworks on viewers, and the formative role that chance plays in the production of photographs.

• Pages: 544
• Size: 6.5 x 9 in.
• Illus: 100 illus.

Five of Monet’s most beloved works spring to life in this vivid and brilliantly engineered collection of pop-up scenes.

One of the joys of a Monet painting is the sense of being fully immersed in a beautiful setting. Now fans of the great artist have an intriguing new way to dive into five of his most enduring paintings: Garden at Sainte-Adresse, Poppy Field, Waterlilies and Japanese Bridge, The Artist’s House at Argenteuil, and The Bridge at Argenteuil.

Each spread opens as a flat layout with a brief description of the painting and its historical context. As readers pull down the explanatory panel, a three-dimensional rendering pops up, and Monet’s exquisitely detailed flowers, waterlilies, clouds, trees, and people come alive.

Whether readers are appreciating Monet’s masterful use of color, brushstrokes, and light and shadow, or merely savoring the pleasures of the French countryside, this meticulously crafted and engineered book offers a thrilling new way to experience the artistic genius of this Impressionist icon.

Published on Nov 19, 2024 | 10 Pages | 8-2/5 x 10-2/3

The essays in More than One examine sequentiality and serialism in the practice of photography from the medium’s earliest years to the present. Contributors explore nuances of syntax and sense raised by works like photographic albums, books, thematic portfolios, journalistic photo features, and documentations of performance art.

Fully illustrated essays discuss, among other topics, the little-known volume Beyond This Point (1929), a collaborative experiment by American photographer Francis Bruguiere and London radio producer Lance Sieveking; the evolving relationship between public space and sexual self-definition in the early work of Minor White; and an important performance work by artist Ana Mendieta. The title essay surveys the social conditions and expressive motives that have given rise to serial and sequential forms throughout the history of photography.

About the Contributors: 

Joel Smith is curator of photography and Kelly Baum is the Locks Curatorial Fellow for Contemporary Art, both at the Princeton University Art Museum. Peter Barberie is curator of photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Anne McCauley is the David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton University. Kevin Moore is an independent scholar and curator.

Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment,  by co-curators Karl Kusserow and Alan C. Braddock, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum October 2018 - January 2019.    

The book is a groundbreaking ecocritical exploration of American art that  examines the complex and evolving relationship between art and the  environment. The authors present more than 120 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, videos, and works of decorative art, from the colonial period to the present, exploring for the first time how American artists of different traditions and backgrounds have both reflected and shaped environmental understanding while contributing to the development of a modern ecological consciousness. 

• Hardcover
• 400 pages

  Winner of the 2019 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, College Art Association  

 "Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting -- not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come." 

Nobody's Property; Art, Land, Space, 2000-2010, by Kelly Baum, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum from October 2010-February 2011.

This generously illustrated volume surveys a new chapter in the history of environmental art, one in which space, geopolitics, human relations, urbanism, and utopian dreamwork play as important a role as, if not more than, raw earth. Discussed are case studies by seven artists and two artist teams—Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Yael Bartana, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Emre Hüner, Andrea Geyer, Matthew Day Jackson, Lucy Raven, and Santiago Sierra. While some of these artists explore historical and symbolic configurations of space, others parse the social, legal, and economic conditions of specific land-sites, including the Navajo Nation, the island of Vieques, the border town of Juarez, and the cities of Tongling, Jerusalem, and Beirut. Not confined to the displacement of matter, these artists employ a wide range of media, such as performance, animation, assemblage, and photography.

• Hardcover

Edited & Designed by Ian Sternthal

Sternthal Books is proud to present ‘Odili Donald Odita’ – a visually enticing survey that spans over twenty years of Odili Donald Odita’s exciting career. Odili’s vibrant abstract paintings blur the borderlines of American, African, and Western European traditions of abstract paintings, which according to Rob Storr, has led him to “rejuvenate abstract painting 100 years after its invention – and in the process create a culturally syncretic idiom that is all his own.” The book will emphasize the political and aesthetic importance of Odili’s visually astounding paintings and installations by presenting them alongside a trove of accompanying visual materials – including images from photographic archives he has collected, drawings, installations, and geometric studies.

Odili Donald Odita is a hard cover comprehensive monograph of the artist’s work – spanning from his early mixed media collages from the early 1990’s – to his latest three dimensional painting installations and more. Odili’s vibrant abstract paintings blur the borderlines of American, African, and Western European traditions, which according to Rob Storr, has led him to “rejuvenate abstract painting 100 years after its invention – and in the process create a culturally syncretic idiom that is all his own.”

The book’s discreet black and white cover betrays a striking panoply of colors, papers, and formats that make up the book’s 400+ pages. Mixing and layering drawings, geometric studies, paintings, installations, and texts creates momentary connections between different images – echoing Odita’s thirty year artistic pursuit of fusing disparate and separate colors into spiritually unified spaces.

Inspired both by African and American Design, the book mixes his paintings with a trove of materials from the ‘Black Album’, a collection of ads, photographs, and media clippings related to race and Black American culture that he has been collecting for years. This intermixing contextualizes Odita’s abstract expressionism within a political context of struggle, race, and diaspora, resulting in a timely meditation on race in America.

The curatorial essays were laid out on spreads from Ebony Magazine, and while the images and captions were preserved,  the original texts were erased and replaced with new ones, with Odili’s work appearing on smaller shiny papers reminiscent of the detachable mail in subscription advertisements in magazines from the 80’s and 90’s.

Texts by Stamatina Gregory, Gregory Volk, and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, and a conversation between Odili and Ian Sternthal.

• HardBound sewn signatures
• Silkscreen on cloth
• 22,9 x 30.5 mm, 408 Pages

Princeton University Art Museum from March 5–June 7, 2009.

The art world is currently enthralled with contemporary Chinese art. This thoughtful book argues, however, that American audiences have been exposed only to a narrow range of what is available—with the majority of attention having been given to “avant-garde,” “experimental,” or politically charged art. Outside In discusses contemporary Chinese art in a far wider range of styles and subject matter and substantially expands on our understanding of this work.

The book features six artists—Arnold Chang, Michael Cherney, Zhi Lin, Liu Dan, Vannessa Tran, and Zhang Hongtu—all of whom are American citizens yet are widely diverse in age and experience as well as geographical and ethnic origins. In addition to extensive personal interviews and artists’ statements, there are essays that challenge the categorization of art into such focused genres as “Chinese,” “contemporary,” and “American,” and reexamine the factors that shape the development of “Chinese art” in America.

Jerome Silbergeld with contributions by Dora C. Y. Ching, Michellle Y. Lim, Cary Y. Liu, Gregory Seiffert, and Kimberly Wishart 

• Hardcover

WINNER of the Guild of Food Writers Award under the First Book category

This unique cookbook pairs artistic masterpieces with effortless recipes that will turn your dining room table into a feast for the eyes and the palate.

Filled with gorgeous photography, high quality reproductions and fascinating anecdotes, this one-of-a-kind cookbook connects great art with the world of food. To create the recipes in this book Felicity Souter delved into the lives of artists past and present, uncovering fascinating stories, eating habits, and cultural traditions.

Each entry consists of an appetizer, main, side, dessert, or drink that visually echoes the artwork and reflects the culinary connection to its artist. More than fifty masterpieces from an enormous array of genres and periods include works by Marina Abramović, Jean Michel Basquiat, Georgette Chen, Salvador Dalí, Jacob Lawrence, Man Ray, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock.

Sumptuous illustrations reveal a striking resemblance between recipe and artwork. An abstract Lee Krasner painting is transformed into a colorful mixed vegetable salad; an oval-shaped Barbara Hepworth sculpture into a crusty loaf of bread; a snowy Monet haystack into a sugar-dusted breakfast muffin; an Yves Klein sponge into an electric blue martini.

Easy enough for every day, and aimed at cooks of all abilities, these recipes are themselves works of art, and will whet the creative appetites of readers and chefs alike.

• Publisher: Prestel
• Publication Date: October 3, 2023
• Hardcover
• Pages: 240 pages
• Dimensions: 8.56 x 0.88 x 10.88 inches

Photography at Princeton: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Collecting and Teaching the History of Photography, by Peter C. Bunnell, complements the photography exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum  held  October 1998 - January 1999. 

• Softcover

A diverse set of contributions to the expanding field of ecocritical studies 

Offering a broad reexamination of visual culture through the lenses of ecocriticism, environmental justice, and animal studies, Picture Ecology: Art and Ecocriticism in Planetary Perspective presents a diverse array of art historical criticism formulated within an ecological context. This timely compendium brings together contributors whose scholarship extends chronologically and geographically from 11th-century Chinese painting to contemporary photography of California wildfires, emphasizing the environmental dimensions inherent in the content and materials of aesthetic, sacred, and didactic images and objects. The book’s introduction and fifteen interdisciplinary essays provide a dynamic, cross-cultural approach to an increasingly vital area of study, advancing valuable new strategies for considering works of art in ways that are innovative, intellectually stimulating, and universally significant.

With contributions by Alan C. Braddock, Maura Coughlin, Rachael Z. DeLue, T. J. Demos, Mónica Domínguez Torres, Finis Dunaway, Stephen F. Eisenman, Emily Gephart, Karl Kusserow, De-nin D. Lee, Gregory Levine, Anne McClintock, James Nisbet, Andrew Patrizio, Sugata Ray, and Greg M. Thomas. 

Karl Kusserow is the John Wilmerding Curator of American Art at the Princeton University Art Museum. Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum 

Publication date: October 2021

Paperback:  304 pages. 150 color illustrations