Black artisans have long been central to American art and design, creating innovative and highly desired work against immense odds. Atlanta-based chairmaker and scholar Robell Awake explores the stories behind ten cornerstones of Black craft, including:

• The celebrated wooden chairs of Richard Poynor, an enslaved craftsman who began a dynasty of Tennessee chairmakers.
• The elegant wrought-iron gates of Philip Simmons, seen to this day throughout Charleston, South Carolina, whose work features motifs from the Low Country.
• The inventive assemblage art and yard shows of Joe Minter, James Hampton, Bessie Harvey, and others, who draw on African spiritual traditions to create large-scale improvisational art installations.

BLACK CRAFT AND AMERICANA: Delving into the history of Black skilled artisans, estimated to have outnumbered white artisans five to one in the southern United States in the late 1800s, this unique art history book celebrates handcrafted objects that reflect the dynamic nature of Black culture.

DYNAMIC ILLUSTRATED ESSAYS: Luminous color illustrations by artist Johnalynn Holland highlight beloved craft objects and their makers, creating a fascinating volume to study and treasure.

ART HISTORY EXPERTISE: Author Robell Awake is a notable furniture maker, artisan, and educator whose work has been featured in the New York Times and in group shows at Verso Gallery in New York City and the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC. Dr. Tiffany Momon, who contributes an afterword, is the founder and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive and a leading scholar of Black history and African American placemaking throughout the southeast.

BEAUTIFUL GIFT BOOK: The gorgeous design is ideal for art collectors and craft enthusiasts, as a keepsake reminder of Black heritage, for Black History Month and beyond.

Perfect for:

• Anyone interested in the intersection of Black art, craft, and history
• Designers and craftspeople
• Educators and students
• Collectors and museum curators
• Lovers of fine and artisanal design objects

The contemporary painter's defining subjects are everyday Black Americans, the 'sublime' buried subtly, but unmistakably, in their everyday gestures.--New York Times Book Review, 10 Giftworthy Visual Books

Bringing together nearly all of her artwork to date, this lavishly illustrated volume situates the work of Amy Sherald (b. 1973) within the context of American realist and figurative painting. Encompassing the full arc of her career, from her poetic early works to the distinctive figure paintings and portraits that have become her hallmark, Amy Sherald: American Sublime unfolds her method of selecting individuals she meets on the street and using facial expression, body language, and clothing choices to create paintings that transcend portraiture and expand the canon of American art. Essays by curators Sarah Roberts and Rhea Combs; poet and writer Elizabeth Alexander; artist Dario Calmese; and renowned scholar Deborah Willis contextualize and illuminate Sherald's creation of a new form of imaginative portraiture. Often depicting her subjects' skin in gray monochrome, surrounded by few markers of place, time, or context beyond the clothes they wear, Sherald challenges the assumption that Black life is inextricably bound with struggle, creating images that engage in more expansive thinking about race and representation and the wide-open possibilities and complexities of every individual. Whether a passerby or the former first lady Michelle Obama, Sherald's subjects are at ease with themselves, the world, and one another.

Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Exhibition Schedule:

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(November 16, 2024-March 9, 2025)

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
(April 9-August 3, 2025)

National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
(September 2025-January 2026)

Beginning in the 1920s, Upper Manhattan became the center of an explosion of art, writing, and ideas that has since become legendary. But what we now know as the Harlem Renaissance, the first movement of international modern art led by African Americans, extended far beyond New York City. This volume reexamines the Harlem Renaissance as part of a global flowering of Black creativity, with roots in the New Negro theories and aesthetics of Alain Locke, its founding philosopher, as well as the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. Featuring artists such as Aaron Douglas, Charles Henry Alston, Augusta Savage, and William H. Johnson, who synthesized the expressive figuration of the European avant-garde with the aesthetics of African sculpture and folk art to render all aspects of African American city life, this publication also includes works by lesser-known contributors, including Laura Wheeler Waring and Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., who took a more classical approach to depicting Black subjects with dignity, interiority, and gravitas. The works of New Negro artists active abroad are also examined in juxtaposition with those of their European and international African diasporan peers, from Germaine Casse and Ronald Moody to Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso. This reframing of a celebrated cultural phenomenon shows how the flow of ideas through Black artistic communities on both sides of the Atlantic contributed to international conversations around art, race, and identity while helping to define our notion of modernism.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(February 25-July 28, 2024)

'An encyclopedic necessity for anyone interested in contemporary art.' - Vanity Fair

'We want people to see themselves... We want you to see the giants on whose shoulders we stand.' - Alicia Keys

The first book to showcase selections from the groundbreaking Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, accompanying a major exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum

Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys celebrates selections from the world-class collection of musical and cultural icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys.

Giants illustrates 100 works by nearly 40 multigenerational Black American, African, and African diasporic artists in the Dean Collection, hand-picked and curated by the Brooklyn Museum for a major exhibition of the same name.

The book also features an exclusive conversation between curator Kimberli Gant and Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, as well as interviews with ten legendary artists: Derrick Adams; Kwame Brathwaite's son, Kwame Samori Brathwaite; Jordan Casteel; Nick Cave; Titus Kaphar; Ebony G. Patterson; Jamel Shabazz; Amy Sherald; Mickalene Thomas; and Kehinde Wiley.

Both book and exhibition bring together these 'giants' of the art world to embody and highlight the Deans' collecting philosophy: 'by the artist, for the artist, with the people.'

Featured artists : Nina Chanel Abney; Derrick Adams; Radcliffe Bailey; Ernie Barnes; Jean-Michel Basquiat; Jarvis Boyland; Kwame Brathwaite; Jordan Casteel; Nick Cave; Hassan Hajjaj; Barkley L. Hendricks; Arthur Jafa; Titus Kaphar; Jerome Lagarrigue; Deana Lawson; Esther Mahlangu; Meleko Mokgosi; Odili Donald Odita; Toyin Ojih Odutola; Zohra Opoku; Frida Orupabo; Gordon Parks; Ebony G. Patterson; Deborah Roberts; Tschabalala Self; Jamel Shabazz; Amy Sherald; Malick Sidibé; Lorna Simpson; Sanlé Sory; Vaughn Spann; Henry Taylor; Hank Willis Thomas; Mickalene Thomas; Kehinde Wiley; Qualeasha Wood; Kennedy Yanko; and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Accomplished printmaker and sculptor, avowed feminist, and lifelong activist Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) built a remarkable career around intersecting passions for formal rigor and social justice. This book, accompanying a major traveling retrospective, offers a revelatory look at the artist and her nearly century-long life, highlighting overlooked works alongside iconic masterpieces.

Catlett's activism and artistic expression were deeply connected, and she protested the injustices of her time throughout her life. Her work in printmaking and sculpture draws on organic abstraction, the modernism of the United States and Mexico, and African art to center the experiences of Black and Mexican women. Catlett attended Howard University, studied with the painter Grant Wood, joined the Harlem artistic community, and worked with a leftist graphics workshop in Mexico, where she lived in exile after the US accused her of communism and barred her re-entry into her home country.

The book's essays address a range of topics, including Catlett's early development as an artist-activist, the impact of political exile on her work, her pedagogical legacy, her achievement as a social realist printmaker, her work with the arts community of Chicago's South Side, and the diverse influences that shaped her practice.

From the late nineteenth century onward, Black Americans looked to ancient Egypt as evidence of a preeminent ancient culture from the African continent. Flight into Egypt traces ancient Egypt's influence on artists, from Edmonia Lewis's sculpture The Death of Cleopatra (1876) to the efflorescence of Afrocentric visual art during the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and artistic tendencies of the ensuing decades. This volume explores how Black artists, writers, and musicians--and modern and contemporary Egyptian artists--have employed ancient Egyptian imagery to craft a unifying identity. Authors bring to light the overlooked contributions of Black scholars to the study of ancient Egypt, while statements by contemporary Black and Egyptian artists illuminate ancient Egypt's continued hold on the creative imagination.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(November 17, 2024-February 17, 2025)

[A] heartfelt tribute to young people of color and their 'reflection of resplendent beauty, ancient history ... and irreplaceable value.' It's a standout. ―Publishers Weekly, starred review

Inspired by the groundbreaking work of W. E. B. Du Bois, this beautiful collection brings together an outstanding roster of Black creative voices to honor, celebrate, and foster Black excellence.

The New Brownies' Book reimagines the very first publication created for African American children in 1920 as a must-have anthology for a new generation. Expanding on the mission of the original periodical to inspire the hearts and minds of Black children across the country, esteemed scholar Karida L. Brown and award-winning artist Charly Palmer have gathered the work of more than fifty contemporary Black artists and writers. The result is a book bursting with essays, poems, photographs, paintings, and short stories reflecting on the joy and depth of the Black experience--an immersive treasure trove that reminds readers of all ages that Black is brilliant, beautiful, and bold.

IMPORTANT HISTORICAL LEGACY: In 1920, W. E. B. Du Bois and the founders of the NAACP published The Brownies' Book: A Monthly Magazine for Children of the Sun, which included art, stories, letters, and activities to inspire children, share Black history, and celebrate their identities. As the first periodical for African American youth, this was an important work in the history of children's literature. The New Brownies' Book revives its mission to inspire the young readers of today.

INCREDIBLE CONTRIBUTORS: This book features the work of talented and exciting Black creators, including playwright and poet Ntozake Shange, writer and editor Damon Young, Def Poetry Jam co-creator and painter Danny Simmons, sociologist and educator Dr. Bertice Berry, children's book illustrator James E. Ransome, muralist Fabian Williams, collage artist Marryam Moma, and many more.

BEAUTIFUL KEEPSAKE: This collection presents a celebratory array of artwork, from detailed paintings and drawings to photographs and collages. It includes stories meant to be shared by children and adults, offering a way for all families--especially Black families--to connect across generations through the power of literature. With its meaningful content and deluxe packaging, this hardcover volume makes a thoughtful gift for new parents, grandparents, or inquisitive readers of all ages.

Perfect for:

• Parents, grandparents, and young readers, especially in the Black community
• Artists and writers inspired by themes of family, community, and empowerment
• Adults and teens who work with and care for young children
• Youth program leaders and community organizers
• Teachers, librarians, and educators
• Fans of the contributing artists and writers
• Art book collectors
• Audiences who seek out racial diversity and representation in the media they consume
• Fans of The Fire This Time, Glory: Magical Visions of Black Beauty, and Black Futures

This important book showcases the potent role of visual art in African American history and culture. Featuring Black artists working in a range of media, from photography to sculpture to painting--including Amy Sherald, Benny Andrews, Sheila Pree Bright, Bisa Butler, Charles Alston, Elizabeth Catlett, Shaun Leonardo, and David Hammons, to name just a few--the book considers art that exemplifies resilience in times of conflict, as well as the ritual of creation, and the defiant pleasure of healing.

Reckoning, based on the exhibition of the same name at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), explores the ongoing struggles Black Americans have faced in their pursuit to enjoy the fundamental rights and freedoms promised in the Constitution to citizens of the United States. Drawn from the museum's permanent collection, the featured works respond to the dual crises of Covid-19 and systemic racism that shaped 2020, a period that has been called one of reckoning, as the world witnessed the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other African Americans, leading to some of the largest protests in US history.

*AWARD WINNER* of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author / and the NCBR Recognition Award

A gorgeous collection of 145 original portraits that celebrates Black pioneers--famous and little-known--in politics, science, literature, music, and more--with biographical reflections, all created and curated by an award-winning graphic designer.

Illustrated Black History is a breathtaking collection of original portraits depicting black heroes--both famous and unsung--who made their mark on activism, science, politics, business, medicine, technology, food, arts, entertainment, and more. Each entry includes a lush drawing or painting by artist George McCalman, along with an insightful essay summarizing the person's life story.

The 145 entries range from the famous to the little-known, from literary luminary James Baldwin to documentarian Madeline Anderson, who produced I Am Somebody about the 1969 strike of mostly female hospital workers; from Aretha Franklin to James and Eloyce Gist, who had a traveling ministry in the early 1900s; from Colin Kaepernick to Guion S. Bluford, the first Black person to travel into space.

Beautifully designed with over 300 unique four-color artworks and accessible to readers of all ages, this eye-opening, educational, dynamic, and timely compendium pays homage to Black Americans and their achievements, and showcases the depth and breadth of Black genius.

2024 NAACP Image Awards Nominee: Outstanding Non-Fiction

A fun and fact-filled introduction to the dismissed Black art masters and models who shook up the world.

Elegant. Refined. Exclusionary. Interrupted. The foundations of the fine art world are shaking. Beyoncé and Jay-Z break the internet by blending modern Black culture with fine art in their iconic music video filmed in the Louvre. Kehinde Wiley powerfully subverts European masterworks. Calls resonate for diversity in museums and the resignations of leaders of the old guard. It's clear that modern day museums can no longer exist without change--and without recognizing that Black people have been a part of the Western art world since its beginnings. Quietly held within museum and private collections around the world are hundreds of faces of Black men and women, many of their stories unknown. From paintings of majestic kings to a portrait of a young girl named Isabella in Amsterdam, these models lived diverse lives while helping shape the art world along the way. Then, after hundreds of years of Black faces cast as only the subject of the white gaze, a small group of trailblazing Black American painters and sculptors reached national and international fame, setting the stage for the flourishing of Black art in the 1920s and beyond. Captivating and informative, BLK ART is an essential work that elevates a globally dismissed legacy to its proper place in the mainstream art canon. From the hushed corridors of royal palaces to the bustling streets of 1920s Paris--this is Black history like never seen before.

The African diaspora--a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade and Western colonialism--has generated a wide array of artistic achievements, from blues and reggae to the paintings of the pioneering American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and the music videos of Solange. This study concentrates on how these works, often created during times of major social upheaval and transformation, use Black culture both as a subject and as context. From musings on the souls of black folk in late-nineteenth-century art to questions of racial and cultural identities in performance, media, and computer-assisted arts in the twenty-first century, this book examines the philosophical and social forces that have shaped Black presence in modern and contemporary visual culture.

Renowned art historian Richard J. Powell presents Black art drawn from across the African diaspora, with examples from the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. Black Art features artworks executed in a broad range of media, including film, photography, performance art, conceptual art, advertising, and sculpture.

Now updated and expanded, this new edition helps to better understand how the first two decades of the twenty-first century have been a transformative moment in which previous assumptions about race and identity have been irrevocably altered, with art providing a useful lens through which to think about these compelling issues.

In earlier studies of African American quilters, Freeman observed that popular interest in quilts had resulted in insufficient attention to who these quilters were, what quilting meant in their lives and what it represented within their community. While quilt revivals in the 1970s and '80s generated renewed interest in how geography and autobiography inform quiltmaking, there has been minimal consideration of the nuanced roles that race, gender, and class play in shaping the public's understanding of quilting traditions and techniques. Prevailing scholarship continues to frame Black southern quiltmaking as an exclusively improvisational artform. Of Salt and Spirit intervenes in this narrative by foregrounding the complex relational and archival practices of Black women quilters who cultivate networks of mutual support and preserve personal histories around and through their craft.

The book features ninety-five color illustrations; essays by exhibition curator Sharbreon Plummer, Lauren Cross (Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens), and Danielle Mason (folklorist); as well as a roundtable discussion among contemporary quilters facilitated by Lydia Jasper, assistant curator of the Permanent Collection, Mississippi Museum of Art.

For the first time, the real story behind the Highwaymen has emerged . . . a well-researched, lively, and comprehensive overview of the development and contribution of these African-American artists and their place in the history of Florida's popular culture.--Mallory McCane O'Connor, author of Lost Cities of the Ancient Southeast

The Highwaymen introduces a group of young black artists who painted their way out of the despair awaiting them in citrus groves and packing houses of 1950s Florida. As their story recaptures the imagination of Floridians and their paintings fetch ever-escalating prices, the legacy of their freshly conceived landscapes exerts a new and powerful influence on the popular conception of the Sunshine State.

While the value of Highwaymen paintings has soared in recent years, until now no authoritative account of the lives and work of these black Florida artists has existed. Emerging in the late 1950s, the Highwaymen created idyllic, quickly realized images of the Florida dream and peddled, by some estimates, 200,000 of them from the trunks of their cars.

Working with inexpensive materials, the Highwaymen produced an astonishing number of landscapes that depict a romanticized Florida--a faraway place of wind-swept palm trees, billowing cumulus clouds, wetlands, lakes, rivers, ocean, and setting sun. With paintings still wet, they loaded their cars and traveled the state's east coast, selling the images door-to-door and store-to-store, in restaurants, offices, courthouses, and bank lobbies.

Sometimes characterized as motel art, the work is a hybrid form of landscape painting, corrupting the classically influenced ideals of the Highwaymen's white mentor, A. E. Bean Backus. At first, the paintings sold like boom-time real estate. In succeeding decades, however, they were consigned to attics and garage sales. Rediscovered in the mid-1990s, today they are recognized as the work of American folk artists.

Gary Monroe tells the story behind the Highwaymen, a loose association of 25 men and 1 woman from the Ft. Pierce area--a fascinating mixture of individual talent, collective enterprise, and cultural heritage. He also offers a critical look at the paintings and the movement's development. Added to this are personal reminiscences by some of the artists, along with a gallery of 63 full-color reproductions of their paintings.

It's Finally time to take time out for YOU with this Self Care coloring book by Latoya Nicole - Exhale: Celebrating Black and Brown Women and Good Vibes and it's the perfect gift to yourself this New Year.

You can't pour from an empty cup. Give yourself permission to focus on self-care and self-love. It is important for your physical wellness and mental health, as well as for the health of your relationships. This self care coloring book provides 24 beautiful illustrations featuring motivational quotes and women reading, journaling, exercising and putting themselves first. It will inspire you and introduce you to ideas that all of us need to practice mindfulness and self care. Grab your colored pencils, markers, gel pens, and watercolors and have fun taking time to finally EXHALE.

• Premium gloss finish cover design
• Printed single sided on bright white paper
• Large format 8.5 x 11.0 pages
• Moderate to complex in detail

Do you feel like you live life looking in from the outside? From the way you speak, to the color of your skin, to the way you vote, or the way you pray, you don't fit the mold. And yet you find yourself still trying to prove yourself to others. In Set Me Free, New York Times bestselling author Lecrae invites you on a poetic and artistic exploration of how you can persevere against the lies of unworthiness to experience the freedom given to you in Jesus.

Under the weight of America's racial history, church traditions, and cultural pressures, Lecrae found himself trapped in the belief that he had to earn his freedom or prove his right to be on the stage, or even in the pews of a church. As he learns to shed these old ways of thinking, Lecrae beckons you to step out of the beliefs that are holding you captive and to reconstruct your faith.

Within this inspirational collection of poetry and essays, you will experience:

• Raw, lyrical expressions of what it means to be unfree in America
• Confessional essays explaining Lecrae's personal journey to claim his freedom and his faith
• Empowering words to help heal your wounded soul
• A testimony of God's unfailing love and eternal acceptance

This book is perfect for:

• Followers of Jesus who feel disillusioned or who are deconstructing from their church experience
• Spiritual seekers who feel on the outside of modern religious institutions
• Fans of Lecrae's music and album art

This dynamically designed collection is perfect to display on a coffee table or shelf. Provocative, vulnerable, convicting, and inspiring, Set Me Free is a poetry collection for our time.

A dynamic, personal, and poignant collection of over 90 works from Eric Key's extensive collection of art by American artists of African descent, spanning the Harlem Renaissance to the twenty-first century.

Since he started collecting in the 1990s, Eric Key's intent has always been to help preserve America's Black experience in the arts, and to benefit the many communities of which he has been a part--opening gateways for artists, African Americans, and conversations about race, identity, and America. Featured in the volume are selected works by some of the most recognizable contemporary African American artists, including Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, William Artis, Samella Lewis, and Renee Stout. Together, these artists work to dispel the many stereotypes and misunderstandings about African American art and people, but also remain a form of personal narrative. As Eric Key states, the works in his collection are an extension of himself, a Black man in a still mostly white art world; they are an extension of the country in which he lives and an extension of the artists who created them.

A lavish catalog . . . provides not just beautiful reproductions of the artworks but also commentary on the way these artists, and others, have used collage to address the full range of Black experience.--Margaret Renkl, New York Times

Building on a technique that has roots in European and American traditions, Black artists have turned to collage as a way to convey how the intersecting facets of their lives combine to make whole individuals. Artists have assembled pieces of paper, fabrics, and other, often salvaged, materials to create unified compositions that express the endless possibilities of Black-constructed narratives despite the fragmentation of our times.

As artist Deborah Roberts asserts, With collage, I can create a more expansive and inclusive view of the Black cultural experience.

More than 50 artists are represented in the book's 140 color images, with some creating original artworks for this project. Featured artists include such well-known figures as Mark Bradford, Lauren Halsey, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Howardena Pindell, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, and Kara Walker. In addition to scholarly essays, the publication contains short biographies of each artist written by Fisk University students.

Distributed for the Frist Art Museum

Exhibition Schedule:

Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN
(September 15-December 31, 2023)

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
(February 18-May 12, 2024)

The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
(July 6-September 22, 2024)

American artist Noah Davis (1983-2015) believed 'painting does something to your soul that nothing else can. It is visceral and immediate.' Drawing on art history, personal archives, anonymous photography found in Los Angeles' flea markets, and his own imagination, he compiled a ravishing body of figurative paintings that explore a range of Black life. Alongside his celebrated paintings, Davis made drawings, collages, and sculptures, and co-founded the Underground Museum.

This elegantly designed volume documents the span of Davis's career and attends to his commitment to representation in the art world and community engagement at the Underground Museum. Alongside new scholarship from writers, artists, and musicians like Tina M. Campt, Claudia Rankine, Marlene Dumas, and Jason Moran, this catalog features high-quality reproductions of Davis's more widely-known works as well as previously unseen archival material. A vital resource for understanding the depth and significance of his practice, this beautiful publication reveals how humanity, humor, imagination, and above all, people, were the epicenter of Davis's work.

African American art in the era of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers

In the period of radical change that was 1963-83, young black artists at the beginning of their careers confronted difficult questions about art, politics and racial identity. How to make art that would stand as innovative, original, formally and materially complex, while also making work that reflected their concerns and experience as black Americans?

Soul of a Nation surveys this crucial period in American art history, bringing to light previously neglected histories of 20th-century black artists, including Sam Gilliam, Melvin Edwards, Jack Whitten, William T. Williams, Howardina Pindell, Romare Bearden, David Hammons, Barkley L. Hendricks, Senga Nengudi, Noah Purifoy, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Charles White and Frank Bowling.

The book features substantial essays from Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley, writing on abstraction and figuration, respectively. It also explores the art-historical and social contexts with subjects ranging from black feminism, AfriCOBRA and other artist-run groups to the role of museums in the debates of the period and visual art's relation to the Black Arts Movement. Over 170 artworks by these and many other artists of the era are illustrated in full color.

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the first use of the term black power by student activist Stokely Carmichael; it will also be 50 years since the US Supreme Court overturned the prohibition of interracial marriage. At this turning point in the reassessment of African American art history, Soul of a Nation is a vital contribution to this timely subject.