Celebrating Women in Art

See the world through Faith Ringgold's eyes and be inspired to produce your own masterpieces.

Have you ever wondered exactly what your favorite artists were looking at to make them draw, sculpt, or paint the way they did? In this charming illustrated series of books to keep and collect, created in full collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can see what they saw, and be inspired to create your own artworks, too. 

In What the Artist Saw: Faith Ringgold, meet inspiring American activist Faith Ringgold. Step into her life and learn what led her to mix different media and craft powerful stories into quilts. Travel with her from Harlem, New York, to Europe, Ghana, and Nigeria. Pick a cause that you care about and try combining it with fabric or sculpture to make your own artworks!

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

• Age 7-9 years | Grades 2-4
• Hardcover, 56 Pages
• Publication date:  Nov 30, 2021
  

The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. 

In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, these poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.

Hardcover | $24.99
Published by Viking Books
Dec 07, 2021 | 240 Pages | 5-1/2 x 8-1/4

An unprecedented visual history of African women told in striking and subversive historical photographs--featuring an Introduction by Edwidge Danticat and a Foreword by Jacqueline Woodson.

Most of us grew up with images of African women that were purely anthropological--bright displays of exotica where the deeper personhood seemed tucked away. Or they were chronicles of war and poverty--“poverty porn.” But now, curator Catherine E. McKinley draws on her extensive collection of historical and contemporary photos to present a visual history spanning a hundred-year arc (1870–1970) of what is among the earliest photography on the continent. These images tell a different story of African women: how deeply cosmopolitan and modern they are in their style; how they were able to reclaim the tools of the colonial oppression that threatened their selfhood and livelihoods.

Featuring works by celebrated African masters, African studios of local legend, and anonymous artists, The African Lookbook captures the dignity, playfulness, austerity, grandeur, and fantasy-making of African women across centuries. McKinley also features photos by Europeans--most starkly, striking nudes--revealing the relationships between white men and the Black female sitters where, at best, a grave power imbalance lies. It’s a bittersweet truth that when there is exploitation there can also be profound resistance expressed in unexpected ways--even if it’s only in gazing back. These photos tell the story of how the sewing machine and the camera became powerful tools for women’s self-expression, revealing a truly glorious display of everyday beauty.

 "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." 

The bold story of Maya Lin, the visionary artist-architect who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

You may be familiar with the iconic Vietnam Veterans Memorial. But do you know about the artist-architect who created this landmark?

As a child, Maya Lin loved to study the spaces around her. She explored the forest in her backyard, observing woodland creatures, and used her house as a model to build tiny towns out of paper and scraps. The daughter of a clay artist and a poet, Maya grew up with art and learned to think with her hands as well as her mind. From her first experiments with light and lines to the height of her success nationwide, this is the story of an inspiring American artist: the visionary artist-architect who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

 Silk Road Bazaar works directly with artisan groups to build sustainable livelihoods for craftspeople in marginalized regions. Using natural fibers and eco-friendly resources, Silk Road Bazaar supports and develops traditional crafting techniques on products with a fun, modern touch.

• Approximately 4 inches

Silk Road Bazaar works directly with artisan groups to build sustainable livelihoods for craftspeople in marginalized regions. Using natural fibers and eco-friendly resources, Silk Road Bazaar supports and develops traditional crafting techniques on products with a fun, modern touch.

• Approximately 4 inches

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

Alongside reproductions of key works made between 1967 and 1981, Faith Ringgold: Politics / Power provides an overview of Ringgold's seminal artistic and activist work, and its historical context during these years, including accounts by the artist herself.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Ringgold, a dedicated and impassioned civil rights advocate, established her voice as a feminist and within the Black Arts Movement. Her influential work expressed her in-depth knowledge of art history and contemporary art, as well as her activism. Spanning mediums such as painting, cut paper works, posters, collage and textile art, the works presented in this publication foreground the artist’s explicitly political pieces, for which she deployed new material and formal processes, and developed a radical aesthetics and vocabulary.
Organized chronologically, the book allows readers to retrace the artist’s foundational creative approaches to contemporaneous social, political and artistic questions. It includes illustrations of individual artworks together with previously unpublished work and archival materials.

Faith Ringgold (born 1930) is a painter, mixed-media sculptor, performance artist, teacher and writer best known for her narrative quilts. In 2020, the New York Times described her as an artist “who has confronted race relations in this country from every angle, led protests to diversify museums decades ago, and even went to jail for an exhibition she organized.” Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. Ringgold lives and works in Englewood, New Jersey.

• Hardcover
• Published March 22, 2022
• 104 pages

By Grace Lin and Chelsea Clinton
Illustrated by Alexandra Boiger and Gillian Flint

Inspired by the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, a chapter book series about women who spoke up and rose up against the odds–including Maya Lin! 

Maya Lin is known throughout the world as the creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. But many people objected to her gender, age, race, and more when she was chosen to design the memorial. Still, she persisted, and her design stands out today as one of the most memorable monuments in the country.

In this chapter book biography by bestselling and award-winning author Grace Lin, readers learn about the amazing life of Maya Lin–and how she persisted. 

Complete with an introduction from Chelsea Clinton, black-and-white illustrations throughout, and a list of ways that readers can follow in Maya Lin’s footsteps and make a difference!

• Hardcover
• Ages 6-9 years
• Publication date: November 1, 2022

by John Gosslee

This one-of-a-kind compendium features a selection of women artists and architects who have made groundbreaking contributions to contemporary art. Profiling an international cross section of artists, 50 Contemporary Women Artists presents fresh perspectives on feminism and notions of cultural power. Using a variety of mediums, the artists in this book address themes of social, cultural, political, environmental, and psychological issues.  Included are works by five MacArthur Foundation Fellows that activate an ongoing dialogue about contemporary practices. Readers receive a unique glimpse of seminal works such as Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, as well as brand-new pieces inspired by the Women’s March on Washington in 2017. Complete with a foreword by Elizabeth Sackler, PhD, this compilation is ideal for educators, students, curators, collectors, and all those who support the arts.

• Size: 8.5in x 11.0in
• Pages:360 
• 334 color illustrations
• Binding: Hardback

Admire the colorful artwork of the Gee’s Bend quilters as you play with these two 54-card decks. Build a winning hand on game night or deal a set for solitaire—there are as many ways to use these colorful playing cards as there are pieces in the beautiful quilts that adorn them!

Women in the small Black community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces over the years. The inhabitants of this rural community are primarily the descendants of the slaves who worked the fields of the local Pettway plantation for generations. Nearly surrounded by the Alabama River, and lacking access to ferries that now transport people to and from this tiny hamlet, Gee’s Bend remained geographically isolated for years. That isolation created dire economic conditions for the town’s residents—but it also allowed the astounding creativity of these quilters to flourish and grow into a cultural legacy unlike any other.