The Best Black Art Books of 2024 explore many artists and themes, including Alvin Ailey, Elizabeth Catlett, Tschabalala Self, Sargent Claude Johnson, the Harlem Renaissance, African photographers, Caribbean makers, and queer designers
SOME OF THE BEST illustrated Black art books published over the past year highlight the work of women artists and reflect the rich selection of solo and thematic exhibitions presented in 2024. Across monographs, exhibition catalogs, and compendiums, the volumes explore contemporary and historic artists working in an array of mediums and styles. Culture Type’s 16 Best Art Books of 2024 stood out based on a variety of qualities, including innovative design, exceptional images, effective editorial strategy, and delivery of new and engaging scholarship. They are generously illustrated, coffeetable-worthy, and incredibly readable. Perhaps their greatest appeal, these are compelling volumes worth returning to again and again, year after year. (The books are listed in the order of their wide-distribution publication dates.)
“Ernest Cole: The True America,” Photographs by Ernest Cole, Text contributions by Raoul Peck, James Sanders, and Leslie M. Wilson, Design by Oliver Barstow (Aperture, 312 pages), | Hardcover, Published Jan. 16, 2024
Ernest Cole: The True America
South African photographer Ernest Cole captured the atrocities of apartheid in the landmark publication “House of Bondage,” first published in 1967. In the years following, he documented racial disparities in American cities and rural communities, conditions Cole was not expecting to find in the country he viewed as a beacon of democracy. The images were thought to be lost until the negatives were located in Sweden in 2017. This publication is the first to showcase the remarkable trove of photographs, shedding light on the state of race and freedom in the United States in the periods immediately before and after the 1968 assassination of Marin Luther King Jr. Nearly 300 pages are devoted to Cole’s mostly black-and-white street-style images of New York City and other pockets of the country. The largest section of the book captures Harlem, “A Whole World in Itself” (about one-third of these images are in color). Cole also documents Midtown Manhattan. The section called “Stranger in Town” is the only part of the book that includes photos of white people. Venturing further afield, “The Situation in This Country: Travels in America” focuses on Los Angeles, Cleveland, Chicago, Alabama, South Carolina, Memphis, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. It’s an incredible book of photography providing a candid look at the challenging and complex state of America half a century ago. The striking images hone in on the culture of protest and resistance, Black style, pride and joy, despair and oppression, the innocence of childhood play, contours of rural life, symbolism and messaging of public signage, and connections to religious and political institutions.
“Ernest Cole’s work continues to talk to the present as much as it does to the past. If his South African photography captured the dystopian world of apartheid,… his North American work was preoccupied by topics such as the fluidity of identity, Black culture, and the revolutionary impulse of the late 1960s. But while Cole’s photographs identify and celebrate, the also question and challenge.” — James Sanders
“Sargent Claude Johnson,” Edited by Dennis Carr, Jacqueline Francis, and John P Bowles with contribution by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw (Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 132 pages). | Hardcover, Published Jan. 30, 2024
Sargent Claude Johnson
The first Black artist based in California to gain national regard, Sargent Claude Johnson worked in a range of mediums, but he is best known for his modernist sculptural portraits. “Chester” (1931), a terra-cotta bust modeled after a young boy in his Berkeley neighborhood, graces the cover this exhibition catalog. The volume was published on the occasion of a rare career survey of Johnson organized by the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in Huntington, Calif., presenting 41 works spanning the 1920s to 1960s. Providing vital documentation of his life and work, essays explore his childhood and multiracial identity, role in the Black Renaissance that extended beyond Harlem, global influences, material experimentation, participation in the San Francisco Bay Area’s artistic community, and specific government-funded works commissioned through the Public Works of Art Project and Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. In the introduction to the fully illustrated catalog, co-curators Dennis Carr with Jacqueline Francis and John P. Bowles, wrote: “[Johnson] adopted influences from the ancient arts of the Americas and Europe, Asian and African formal traditions advanced over centuries, and European and Latin American modernism into his works. He made trips to Mexico, where he conversed with leaders of the muralist movement and learned from indigenous artists, and later Japan. Through these connections and a decades-long artistic practice. Johnson actively attempted to shape modernism into a diverse and inclusive space, creating art that upended stereotypes and forged new links across time and place.”.
“The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” Edited by Denise Murrell (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 332 pages). | Hardcover, Published Feb. 27, 2024
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism
The greatest asset of an exhibition catalog is its capacity to not just document the show but to serve as an engaging, scholarly, and expansive reflection of the gallery experience that lives on beyond the presentation dates. This catalog does just that. One of the most-anticipated exhibitions of the year, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” explored the Harlem Renaissance, the myriad ways Black American artists captured everyday life in the 1920s to 40s, and how their portrayal of the Black subject influenced international modernism. About 160 works by dozens of artists were on view—most rarely seen, many from the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a significant portion drawn from the collections of HBCUs. Featured works included multiple paintings by William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, and Laura Wheeler Waring; sculptures by Richmond Barthé, August Savage, Meta Warrick Fuller, and Sargent Johnson; and selections from The Met’s recently acquired archive of James Van Der Zee photographs. The greatest highlight was a room full of Aaron Douglas paintings at the center of the show. The expansive group of works assembled for the exhibition is generously illustrated in the catalog across a 150-page illustrated plate section. A robust selection of writings includes contributions by Richard J. Powell, Lowery Stokes Sims, Bridget R. Cooks, and exhibition curator Denise Murrell, who provides a comprehensive overview titled “The New Negro Artist and the Modern Black Subject.” Essays also cover new negro portraiture, queer Harlem, British sculptor Ronald Moody, Met acquisitions by African American artists in the early 1940s, artists from the Antilles and interwar Paris, Harlem and the Dutch Caribbean, and Van Der Zee’s photography, among other topics.
“All These Liberations: Women Artists in the Eileen Harris Norton Collection,” Edited by Taylor Renee Aldridge, with contributions by Sophia Belsheim, Susan Cahan, Chelsea Frazier, Thelma Golden, Genevieve Hyacinthe, Kellie Jones, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Kris Kuramitsu, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Steven Nelson, Legacy Russell, Lorna Simpson, and Lowery Stokes Sims (Marquand Books, 272 pages). | Hardcover, Published March 12, 2024
All These Liberations: Women Artists in the Eileen Harris Norton Collection
Former educator Eileen Harris Norton is a Los Angeles-based collector, activist, and patron of the arts. She is also a co-founder, with artist Mark Bradford and Allan Dicastro, of Art + Practice, the foundation and exhibition space in Leimert Park. “All These Liberations” was inspired by “Collective Constellation: Selections from The Eileen Harris Norton Collection” (2020-21), an exhibition curated by Erin Christovale at Art + Practice. This fully illustrated volume, edited by Taylor Renee Aldridge, hones in on the women artists represented in Harris Norton’s extraordinary art collection. Fifty artists are featured, including Belkis Ayón, Sonia Boyce, Genevieve Gaignard, Sandra McCormick, Julie Mehretu, Senga Nengudi, Shirin Neshat, Lorraine O’Grady, Adrian Piper, Calida Rawles, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Doris Salcedo, Lorna Simpson, Alma Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, Pat Ward Williams (cover work), and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Essays detail the foundations of Harris Norton’s collecting, which began in 1976 when she purchased her first work, a print by Ruth Waddy. The occasion was a Black History Month printmaking workshop held by Waddy that the collector and her mother she attended at the Museum of African American Art (founded by Samella Lewis) at what is now known as Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall in Los Angeles. Writings also explore the artists represented in Harris Norton’s collection and the political and cultural themes raised in their work, from memory and spirituality to women’s rights and Black feminism. The volume features an interview with Harris Norton conducted by Thelma Golden and a chronology of the collector’s remarkable life.
“Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch,” Edited by Sarah Ganz Blythe, Dominic Molon, Kajette Solomon; Essays by Ganz Blythe, Molon, Ebonie Pollock, Kelly Taylor Mitchell, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Simone Leigh; Conversation between Lorén Spears and Mack H. Scott III; Contributions by Amalia K. Amaki, Horace D. Ballard, Jennie Goldstein, Maureen C. O’Brien, Stephanie Sparling Williams (Yale University Press, 184 pages). | Hardcover, Published March 12, 2024
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890-1960) was a significant, under-studied modernist sculptor. Published on the occasion of the first museum survey of Prophet, this invaluable volume offers a comprehensive look at her life and practice through visual documentation and scholarly writings. Born in Providence, R.I., to parents of African American and Narragansett descent, Prophet was the first woman of color to graduate from Rhode Island School of Design in 1918. She lived, studied, and worked in Paris from the early 1920s to the early 1930s. Upon her return to the United States, she taught for a decade in the Spelman College art department, where she was a founding faculty member. Only about two dozen works by Prophet are known to remain. The museum exhibition includes marble and wood sculptures, painted wood friezes, watercolors, and photographic documentation of lost or destroyed sculptures. The catalog illustrates the exhibited works and features archival photography and ephemera. Essays by curators Sarah Ganz Blythe, Dominic Molon, and Kajette Solomon, as well as Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, among others, contextualize Prophet’s work with her contemporaries; explore her relationship with the “system of institutions she had to navigate,” including art schools, studio, and exhibition culture; highlight her financial challenges and support from W.E.B. Du Bois; provide insights from her diary; and consider her identity and Afro-Indigenous heritage. Simone Leigh reflects on Prophet’s influence as a mentor “after the fact” whose stories and choices have given her guidance. Full-color plates of nine key sculptures are accompanied by brief writings providing background and details about each work and a chronology highlights the many contours of Prophet’s historic life.
“Tschabalala Self: Bodega Run,” Edited by Sasha Bonét with written contributions by Tschabalala Self, G’Ra Asim, Joshua Bennett, Carolyn “CC” Concepcion, Ayanna Dozier, Naomi Fry, Loryn Lopes, Roya Marsh, Camille Okhio, and Raven Rakia (Gregory R. Miller & Co., 248 pages). | Hardcover, Published March 26, 2024
Tschabalala Self: Bodega Run
“Bodega Run” is a multifaceted study of the reality and political dynamics of the bodega through the lens of art. Inspired by what is familiar, artists often create work that examines their own biographies, family history, and the place where they grew up. With her Bodega Run series, Tschabalala Self undertook an expansive project along these lines that centers a familiar social, cultural, and economic institution. “Bodega” is the universal name for the corner store in Black and Brown neighborhoods in New York. The bodega has intersected with Self’s daily experiences and memories, and for generations had a ubiquitous presence in Harlem, the community she calls home. Self is known for her imaginative, layered, and collaged characters with exaggerated forms and features. The figures celebrate individuality, consider how Black bodies exist in certain environments, and call attention to the objectification and many stereotypes associated with Black bodies, Black female bodies in particular. This exceptional volume documents the paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and installations the artist has created in her Bodega Run series. Initiated in 2017 and concluded in 2019, the series pictures her characters with the many products and brands found in bodegas and the interior features that define the spaces, including linear shelving, checkerboard linoleum floors, neon lighting, and often a store cat. Self has presented Bodega Run exhibitions at museums and galleries in New York, London, Los Angeles, and Shanghai, China, and Lee’s Oriental Deli and Market in Miami, Fla. Generously illustrated with individual works and many installation views, this book showcases Self’s work in context with insightful essays by her contemporaries—writers and scholars who share both their intellectual perspectives and personal experiences with bodega culture. The book also includes a conversation with the artist and 16-page zine insert with historic and contemporary images of New York bodegas taken by a selection of photographers.
“The bodega is both positive and problematic, and through this complexity its significance arises. The culture of the bodega is a reflection of so many aspects of Black and Brown city life. For this reason, the bodega is the perfect avatar through which to speak on the community at large. My Bodega Run project hopes to explore, celebrate, and examine the significance of the bodega, a hood institution.” — Tschabalala Self
“Stanley Whitney: How Hight the Moon,” Edited by Cathleen Chaffee and Stanley Whitney, with foreword by Janne Sirén, and contributions from Kim Conaty, Ruth Erickson, Pavel S. Pys, Duro Olowu, Norma Cole, and Grégoire Lubineau (DelMonico Books/Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 295 pages). | Hardcover, April 9, 2024
Stanley Whitney: How Hight the Moon
Stanley Whitney explores the expansive possibilities of color in terms of rhythm and juxtaposition. Working within a grid structure of stacked blocks and bars, his abstract paintings are inspired by jazz and call to mind the rectilinear forms of Piet Mondrian and African American quilt patterns. This exhibition catalog is published on the occasion of “Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon,” the first career-spanning museum retrospective of the artist, currently on view at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn., through March 16, 2025. The volume both documents the exhibition and provides an overview of Whitney’s background and practice. Essays explore the origins and maturation of his work and his relationship with color and language. A candid conversation conducted in 2018 and published for the first time in the catalog, has the depth of an oral history interview. Five decades of works are presented in the exhibition, along with a selection of Whitney’s sketchbooks. Over the years, the artist filled the pages with quotes from the likes of bell hooks and potential titles for paintings, doodles, and sketches of his signature grid and stacked-box structures—some loosely rendered with spare lines, others fully formed and infused with color. Lavishly illustrated, full-color plates of Whitney’s works appear across 180 pages of the catalog in four groups: Paintings (1972-2019); Drawings and Prints (1978-2022); Sketchbooks (1987-2020); and Small Paintings (2001-2010).
“Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.,” Edited by Michelle D. Commander, with foreword by Kevin Young, and contributions from Aaron Bryant, Amy Sherald, Tuliza Fleming, Bisa Butler, and Deborah Willis (Rizzoli Electa, 224 pages). | Hardcover, Published Sept. 3, 2024
Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.
This volume accompanies “Reckoning,” the current visual art exhibition on long-term view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Since 2016, when NMAAHC opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the museum has been widely hailed for its visceral examination of slavery and civil rights and expansive celebration of Black culture, entertainment and community, through monumental installations, objects, documents, and other ephemera. The visual art gallery is a critical component of the museum’s presentations. “Reckoning” debuted in 2021, conceived in response to the COVID-19 era—the systemic racism revealed in health outcomes during the pandemic; heightened spate of police killing African Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among many others; and the global protests that sprung up in response. The catalog documents the critical role of visual art, providing a lens into the complex histories and experiences of African Americans through paintings, sculpture, photography and other forms of art from the museum’s collection. “Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.” is NMAAHC’s first publication focused on visual art. In the foreword, NMAAHC Director Kevin Young wrote, “The show journeys from defiance to acceptance, from racial violence and cultural resilience to grief and mourning, hope and change.” The volume features nearly 80 exhibited artworks, across about 140 pages of color plates, including a section devoted to installation views. Bisa Butler’s quilted portrait of Harriet Tubman (“I Go To Prepare A Place For You” (2021) graces the cover. Other key works by AfriCOBRA artists, Benny Andrews, Elizabeth Catlett, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Torkwase Dyson, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, David Hammons, Barkley L. Hendricks, Jacob Lawrence, Roberto Lugo, Howardena Pindell, Deborah Roberts, Rashaun Rucker, Merton Simpson, Lava Thomas, Charles White, and many others, are also featured. The art is complemented by essays from curators Tuliza Fleming, Aaron Bryant, and Michelle D. Commander, and the edited transcript from a March 16, 2023, conversation at the museum among Butler, Deborah Willis, and Amy Sherald, about “Portraiture at the Intersection of Art and History.”
“Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.: Citizen Printer,” By Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., with foreword by Austin Kleon, and contributions by Myron Beasley and Kelly Walters ( Letterform Archive Books, 276 pages). | Hardcover, Published Sept. 17, 2024
Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.: Citizen Printer
After working in corporate America, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., discovered the art of letterpress and devoted himself to the craft at age 40. He earned an MFA, became a professor, and launched Kennedy Prints, a community letterpress center in Detroit, Mich. Focusing on race, politics, history, capitalism, and his support for libraries, Kennedy makes text-driven work in the form of prints and posters for the masses. An artist and activist, he layers the insightful words of leading authors and social justice figures such as Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Audre Lorde (and his own wisdom as well) in bold black type over vividly colored and patterned backgrounds. He uses art as a form of protest in the name of agitating for change and a better society. He doesn’t mince words. The phrases are poignant, ironic, and truth telling. The range of examples includes “I Teach. What’s your superpower?”; “A Dirty Book Rarely Gets Dusty”; “Niggers Come in All Colors”; “Knowledge Does Not Equal Understanding”; and “If Women Want any Rights More Than they’s got, Why don’t They Just Take Them, and Not Be Talking About It” (Sojourner Truth). He has stamped “Landback” and “Post-Racial, My Ass!” across maps of the United States. In 2013, Kennedy created a series of church fans dedicated to civil rights martyrs. He listed the name, state, and year of death of the activist with “MURDERED” stamped across each fan in red capital letters. One of the best designed books of the year, the volume is designed by AND, the design studio of Gail Anderson and Joe Newton. The monograph explores Kennedy’s unique story and profound practice through his own manifesto (“I print negro. I use printing to express negro culture. I seek to do to printing what the blues did to music. …I print for the glory of my peoples.”) and essays detailing his biography by Myron Beasley and the history of Black printing in America by Kelly Walters. More than 800 reproductions of Kennedy’s artworks are featured (organized in three sections: Social Justice, Shared Wisdom, and Community), along with images of the artist at work in his studio.
“People ask me when I got into social justice. I tell them Aug. 14, 1950: The day I was born colored in these United States of America.”
— Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.
“The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and Power,” by Amy Sall, with contributions by Mamadou Diouf, Yasmina Price, and Zoé Samudzi (Thames & Hudson, 288 pages). | Hardcover, Published Sept. 17, 2024
The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and Power
This invaluable volume brings together 25 photographers and 25 filmmakers all born or working mostly in Africa and active primarily in the post-colonial and contemporary eras. In the preface, author and editor Amy Sall notes the cultural, political, and historical significance of their work and practices: “By turning the camera on themselves, African image-makers liberated themselves, their sitters, their viewers, their communities from the definitions and categorizations imposed on them by the West.” The publication builds on Sall’s personal archive and a university course she developed and taught at the New School in New York called, “The African Gaze: Visual Culture of Postcolonial Africa and the Social Imagination.” The array of photographers featured includes Solomon Osagie Alonge (Nigeria), James Barnor (Ghana), Ernest Cole (South Africa), Jean Depara (Congo), Seydou Keïta (Mali), Deo Kyakulagira (Uganda), Omar Ly (Senegal), J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere (Nigeria), Malick Sidebé (Mali), Sanlé Sory (Burkina Faso), and Jacques Toussele (Cameroon). Among the many filmmakers are Souleymane Cissé (Mali), Haile Gerima (Ethiopia), Gaston Kaboré (Burkina Faso), Djibril Diop Mambéty (Senegal), Ousmane Sembéne (Senegal), and Jean-Marie Teno (Cameroon). Few women artists are featured. Sall accounts for this citing the historically male-dominated nature of the fields in Africa and therefore a “lack of sufficient scholarship and visual material” from which to draw. The women who do appear in the volume include photographer Felicia Abban (Ghana) and filmmakers Safi Faye (Senegal) and Sarah Maldoror (France), a pan-African artist with roots in Guadeloupe and more than 40 films to her credit. Generously illustrated throughout, four to six pages of images and text are dedicated to each artist. Interviews with photographer Samuel Fosso (Cameroon), and filmmaker Souleymane Cissé (Mali) round out the coverage, which is further contextualized with an introduction by Mamadou Diouf and essays from Zoé Samudzi exploring the “sovereignty and poetry” of African photography and Yasminia Price on the “autonomy and plurality” of African cinema. Well-designed and highly readable, the volume is an eye-opening, insightful, and essential compendium of important African image makers.
Edges of Ailey, Edited by Adrienne Edwards with contributions by Horace D. Ballard, Harmony Bench, Kate Elswit, Aimee Meredith Cox, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Malik Gaines, Jasmine Johnson, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Uri McMillan, Ariel Osterweis, J Wortham, CJ Salapare, Kyle Abraham, Claire Bishop, Masazumi Chaya, Brenda Dixon-Gottschild , Jennifer Homans, Judith Jamison, Sylvia Waters, Jamila Wignot, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Whitney Museum of American Art, 388 pages). | Hardcover, Published Sept. 24, 2024
Edges of Ailey
“Edges of Ailey” is a soaring tribute to choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931-1989). The exhibition presents a constellation of artworks, copious archival materials in many mediums and formats, and a multi-screen video installation playing documentary footage of Ailey on a loop in the main gallery. Curator Adrienne Edwards developed an incredible universe to pay tribute to Ailey and examine his life and the expansive roots of his work. In addition to the multifaceted exhibition and robust program of live dance performances by Ailey dancers and other artists and companies, an incredible catalog accompanies the project. “Such Sweet Thunder,” the opening essay by Edwards, describes the roots of the project and offers an over-arching assessment of Ailey. Conversations and other essays and writings unpack Ailey’s biography, persona, repertory, and diverse influences; the symbolism of water and the Black church in the performances; and the intersections of queer identity and the HIV/AIDS crisis with the company’s creativity and culture. Dancers also reflect on learning, performing, and teaching Ailey’s choreography. Contributors include curators, scholars and representation from the dance world, most notably Judith Jamison, Ailey’s muse and longtime artistic director of the company, who recently died. Highlights also include a fold out featuring several graphic visualizations providing a comprehensive and incredibly detailed historical accounting of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s seasonal membership, performances, and international tour stops; an illustrated chronology of Ailey; more than 120 pages of archival photography documenting Ailey company dance performances over the years; and about 50 pages of artworks.
Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies, Edited by Dalila Scruggs (University of Chicago Press, 304 pages). | Hardcover, Published Oct. 4, 2024
Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies
Handsomely designed and bound with durable paperboard covers, this catalog presents an unprecedented examination of Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), the artist known for her figurative sculptures and powerful printmaking. The generously illustrated volume was published on the occasion of the landmark exhibition, “Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies,” which presents more than 200 works along with archival materials. After debuting at the Brooklyn Museum, the show travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it opens March 9. “Black Unity” (1968), a cedar wood sculpture featuring a clenched fist on one side and two faces on the reverse, is featured on the cover of the catalog. Writings explore Catlett’s life and work—becoming an artist-activist at Howard University, social networks in Chicago and New York, art in public spaces, development of her printmaking practice, and focus on feminism and women through “form, substance, and radical politics.” The essays are interspersed with images of artworks—sections of 20 to 50 pages of full color plates, presented chronologically, dating from 1915 to 2012. A chronology further delineates her journey across the decades. Catlett spent the last six decades of her life in Mexico and despite her remove remained invested in the Black liberation struggle in the United States. In her opening essay, curator Dalila Scruggs wrote: “The narrative on Catlett has solidified into well-rehearsed beats, assisted by the artist herself. She engaged in a kind of autobiographical canonization by telling the same stories in similar ways in countless interviews. We have come to know her as a social realist printmaker and sculptor employing a vocabulary of organic abstraction. ‘Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies’ aims to complicate, deepen, and extend these received narratives.”
“When examining the archival record, alongside a close look at her work, what becomes clear is that her dedication to Black pride, revolutionary change, and artistic rigor are not inevitabilities, but born of a series of dogged, hard-nosed, and impassioned choices.” — Dalila Scruggs
“Crafted Kinship: Inside the Creative Practices of Contemporary Black Caribbean Makers,” by Malene Barnett (Artisan, 368 pages). | Hardcover, Published Oct. 29, 2024
Crafted Kinship: Inside the Creative Practices of Contemporary Black Caribbean Makers
This volume is a welcome resource shining a light on the practices of more than 60 Black Caribbean artists. Bronx, N.Y.-born, Brooklyn-based Malene Barnett embarked on the project in a quest to understand her Caribbean heritage and connection to fellow Caribbean makers. In the introduction, Barnett explained that after two decades as a textile and rug designer, she decided to pursue an MFA in ceramics and in the process yearned to learn more about her family roots in St. Vincent and Jamaica and peers working across art, design, and craft. “I searched the Caribbean and its diaspora, bringing together a group of contemporary Black Caribbean makers to reflect on prominent themes in their work: African origins, ancestors, Black womanhood or manhood, colonial histories, community and collaboration, identity, joy, land, climate, sustainability, materiality, memory, migration, and diaspora, and spirituality,” Barnett wrote. The result is a publication profiling a rich array of artists—across generations, varying levels of attention, and countless mediums. There are painters, sculptures, photographers, and weavers; artists working with wood, glass, clay, and mixed-media; and designers making clothing and furniture. Some are friends and colleagues of Barnett. Brief scholarly contributions offer insights on matters such as collecting and curating Caribbean artworks and the gap between art and design. A joyful journey throughout the Caribbean, the publication generally devotes four to six pages to each maker, including photos of the artist and their work and a Q&A shedding light on their background and practice. Alvaro Barrington (Grenada + Haiti/NYC), Anina Major (Bahamas/NYC), April Bey (Bahamas/Los Angeles), Arthur J. Francietta (Martinique), Basil Watson (Jamaica/Lawrenceville, Ga.), Charmaine Watkiss (Jamaica/London), Cosmo Douglas Whyte (Jamaica/Los Angeles), Davin K. Ebanks (Cayman Islands/Kent, Ohio), Donald Baugh (Jamaica/London), Firelei Báez (Dominican Republic + Haiti/NYC), Kraig E. Yearwood (Barbados), La Vaughn Belle (St. Croix), Lavar Munroe (Bahamas/ Baltimore, Md.), M. Florine Démosthène (Haiti/NYC), Marlon Darbeau (Trinidad and Tobago), Nina Cooke John (Jamaica/Montclair, N.J.), Paul Anthony Smith (Jamaica/NYC), Roberto Lugo (Puerto Rica/Philadelphia, Pa.), and Terry Boddie (St. Kitts + Nevis/Orange, N.J.), as well as Barnett, are among those included. Some are internationally known, many more are less familiar.
“…the book is not organized by discipline, last name, or chronology—all Western narrative constructs. Instead, we honor chosen names and invite you to engage with the makers by their definitions of their practices.”
— Malene Barnett
Black, Queer & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, & Trailblazers, by Jon Key (Levine Querido, 448 pages). | Published Nov. 19, 2024
Black, Queer & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, & Trailblazers
“Black, Queer, and Untold” explores more than two centuries of design history and cultural pioneers. It’s an incredible source of discovery. Inaugurated in 1869, Hamilton Lodge Ball in Harlem is believed to be one of the first drag balls in the United State. Pittsburgh, Pa.-born Mozelle W. Thompson Jr., was a prolific designer active for a time in New York City. Over the course of his short-lived career (1953-1969), Thompson designed album covers, book covers, theater posters, dresses, costumes, and store windows and his work was published in Mademoiselle, Glamour, Vogue, and The New York Times. Credited as the first Black woman to design album covers, Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy worked with the likes of Sun Ra and jazz musicians Roscoe Mitchell and Leon Sash. Jon Key (b. 1990) wrote and designed this entire book out of a desire to fill a void. An accomplished artist, Key was born in Seale, Ala., and lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. (His twin brother, Jarrett Key, is also an artist.) Employing a limited palette of black, green, red, and purple, Key makes graphic paintings featuring a contorted figure representing himself. He is also a talented writer, researcher, and co-founder of the design studio Marcos Key. “Black, Queer, and Untold” is the book he would have wanted to devour growing up and even when he was an undergraduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). In his introductory essay, Key wrote that he was one of the few Black students in the graphic design program at RISD, lectures made no mention of anyone who shared his identity, and his work was met with blank stares during critiques. Those challenges fueled an invaluable project. The book is arranged chronologically in six sections, dating from the 1800s to the present. More than 30 people are profiled and a slew of magazines are highlighted. Woven throughout are organizing themes such as The Queer Harlem Renaissance, Black/Queer Literary Greats, Queer Motown, and Zines. Generous illustrations include art, photography, newspaper clippings, archival documents, album covers, and magazine covers. Key periodically writes in first person, which provides the most affecting material. In 1988, Alan Bell founded BLK, a Los Angeles news magazine for what is now called the Black LGBTQ+ community. Key opens his profile of Bell with an anecdote about receiving a box from him containing a cache of back issues and ephemera. “This was the moment I’d been waiting for—Alan had followed through on his promise,” Key wrote. He added that having his own archive “gifted from the creator, felt unbelievably special.”
“The call for me to do this project echoed from the silence—the silence of not hearing stories of Black or Black and Queer histories in school, or Queer representation in any facets of my early life. This book is my attempt to cull together the voices hushed through time into a collective uproar. Now reverberating back to me are names, pictures, faces, stories, language, and text. My bodies trembles from this wave.” — Jon Key
“Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now,” by Akili Tommasino with contributions by Andrea Myers Achi, Makeda Djata Best, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Awol Erizku, Lauren Halsey, Solange Knowles, Iman Issa, Mia Matthias, Julie Mehretu , Kai Mora, Jennifer Newsom, Matthew Shenoda, and Fred Wilson (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 268 pages). | Hardcover, Published Nov. 26, 2024
Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now
The title of a landmark exhibition currently on view through Feb. 17 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is derived from “Flight into Egypt” (1923), a biblical-themed painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937). Born in Pittsburgh, Pa., Tanner was the first African American painter to succeed internationally. He moved permanently to France in 1891 and visited Egypt in 1897. This volume documents “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876 to Now,” an expansive show exploring how artists, writers, and musicians have engaged with ancient Egypt—from the 19th century, to the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement to today. In his overview essay, curator Akili Tommasino cites Tanner’s pilgrimage as a precedent for future generations. Ten cultural figures—including Fred Wilson, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Julie Mehretu, Eryka Badu, Solange Knowles, Lauren Halsey, and Awol Erizku, whose 2018 neon work, “Nefertiti (Black Power),” appears on the cover the of catalog—share statements about their experiences and connections with Egypt. Nearly 200 works spanning many mediums are featured in the exhibition and the generously illustrated catalog includes more than 250 images. Across a range of objects and artworks, Egyptian symbolism and influence in the Black art canon and Black cultural production is remarkably prevalent. Starting in 1912, the logo for the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine was centered around a pharaonic image. In the 1930s, George Washington Carver named one of his pigments Egyptian Blue 9th Oxidation. Artists from Aaron Douglas, Lois Mailou Jones, John Biggers, Houston Conwill, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Sam Gilliam, and Lorraine O’Grady to Betye Saar, David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Kara Walker, Derek Fordjour, Tavares Strachan, EJ Hill, and numerous others, across generations, directly reference Egypt in their work. Cover art and titles for albums by Miles Davis, Alice Coltrane, The Bar-Kays, Parliament, Fela Kuti, Earth, Wind and Fire, X Clan, De La Soul, Nas, Offset, and many others, invoke Egyptian themes. In 2023, a Levi’s x Denim Tears collaboration featured a black leather vest and belt buckle emblazoned with images of King Tut. “Encompassing the poles of abstraction and figuration, documentation and invention, and practices that fall within and outside institutional paradigms,” Tommasino wrote, “the materials assembled in ‘Flight into Egypt’ embody a continuum of creative and intellectual output reflecting the centrality of this foundational civilization to modern Black imaginations, identities, and ideologies.” Additional essays consider Black Americans and Egyptology; opacity and generative interpretations of ancient Egypt; and Black photography and ancient Egypt.
“‘Flight into Egypt’ is the first exhibition to examine the sustained engagement of Black cultural figures with ancient Egypt, connecting African diasporic history and contemporary experience to ancient African civilization.” — Met Director Max Hollein
“Sam Gilliam,” with essay authored by Mary Schmidt Campbell, poem by Ishmael Reed, and contributions by Sam Gilliam and Andria Hickey (Phaidon Press, 304 pages). | Hardcover, Published Dec. 3, 2024
Sam Gilliam
This engrossing volume lives up to its description as the definitive monograph of Sam Gilliam (1933-2022). The celebrated artist is known for his dynamic, color-drenched abstract pantings, most notably, his inventive works produced on draped canvases. A comprehensive, 10-part essay by Mary Schmidt Campbell reports on Gilliam’s life and work, which she frames in two key stages. First, Campbell unpacks his roots, artistic development, and journey from Tupelo, Miss., where he was born, to Washington, D.C., where he spent his career. Then, with the maturation of his practice, she considers the “multiple ways in which Gilliam engaged his artistic language.” The volume also includes “Gilliam’s Rainbow,” a poem by Ishmael Reed; Gilliam’s commencement address delivered at the Memphis School of Art in 1986; and a chronology of the artist, compiled by Andria Hickey. While the writings are substantive in terms of content and length, the publication provides a decidedly visual experience. Gilliam’s stunning output—dating from 1965 to 2022—is spread across more than 200 pages, full-color images of masterful individual works, details of works, and installation views. CT
“I hope they feel the energy and joy of life that comes out of the painting. I paint what it’s like to be alive.” — Sam Gilliam
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