This publication offers a definitive look at the artistic practice of Remedios Varo (1908-1963) following her emigration from Spain to Mexico City in 1941. Her work from 1955 to 1963 made a lasting contribution to modern art and the legacy of Surrealism. In Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, fresh historical and material findings establish the integral relationship between Varo's layered interests--in alchemy, architecture, magic, mysticism, philosophy, and science--and her beguiling technical approach to art making. Essays detail specific works' complex stories and spectacular surfaces. An illustrated taxonomy of Varo's artistic techniques, including automatic mark making as well as careful manipulation of materials and media, offers new insights into the artist's craft. An illustrated inventory of a major portion of Varo's library--published here for the first time--reveals the artist's engagement with a wide range of subjects. Stunning new photography of many of her artworks are presented within a dynamic geometric design inspired by the artist's work. Situating Varo as a woman working in midcentury Mexico City and living among a tight-knit community of local and émigré artists, poets, and thinkers, the catalogue illuminates the complex worldview that shaped her search for individual and collective transcendence.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago, in partnership with the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City

Exhibition Schedule:

Art Institute of Chicago
(July 29, 2023-November 27, 2023)

In 1924 Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) first moved to the Shelton Hotel in New York with her husband, the photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz. The Shelton was Manhattan's earliest residential skyscraper, and its dizzying heights inspired O'Keeffe to create a powerful series of approximately twenty-five paintings and numerous drawings over a span of about five years. She called these my New Yorks, and they overwhelmingly consist of two types of compositions: sprawling observations looking down onto the city and humbling views directed up at the newly built urban monoliths. Exploring the New York skyline, O'Keeffe resisted the approach of contemporaries such as Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand--who celebrated New York as a streamlined, impersonal series of geometric canyons--and instead portrayed it as an amalgamation of the organic and the inorganic, the natural and the constructed. Only in this way could she express New York (in her words) as it is felt.

Reshaping our understanding of this pivotal yet underappreciated period in O'Keeffe's storied career, this publication situates the New York paintings within the artist's larger oeuvre and examines how these works reflect narratives of built environments, racialized space, and the politics of place.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

The Art Institute of Chicago
(June 2-September 22, 2024)

High Museum, Atlanta
(October 25, 2024-February 16, 2025)

Since the term Pan-Africanism was coined around 1900, the movement's promise has been to foster liberation and solidarity for Black peoples worldwide. Focusing on its cultural expression, this book presents a rich selection of the visual, sonic, and other creative forms that have emerged throughout Pan-Africanism's evolution. Among the nearly two hundred artists represented from across the continent and the African diaspora are Beauford Delaney, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Hoyt William Fuller, Wifredo Lam, Simone Leigh, Ernest Mancoba, Zanele Muholi, Kawira Mwirichia, Cauleen Smith, Alma Thomas, and George Albert Yon.

Reflecting Pan-Africanism's ideals of diversity and dialogue as well as its aspirations to egalitarianism, essays from more than a dozen scholars, artists, and practitioners speak to a range of themes and places, while discussing works in all media made or circulated outside the infrastructure of fine art, including LP albums, illustrated magazines, and manifestos.

Distributed for The Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

The Art Institute of Chicago
(December 15, 2024-March 30, 2025)

MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona
(November 6, 2025-April 6, 2026)

Barbican Centre, London
(June 10-September 6, 2026)

KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels
(Fall 2026-Winter 2027)

Bisa Butler (b. 1973) is an American artist who creates arresting and psychologically nuanced portraits composed entirely of vibrantly colored and patterned fabrics that she cuts, layers, and stitches together. Often depicting scenes from African American life and history, Butler invites viewers to invest in the lives of the people she represents while simultaneously expanding art-historical narratives about American quiltmaking. Situating her interdisciplinary work within the broader history of textiles, photography, and contemporary art, contributions by a group of scholars--and entries by the artist herself--illuminate Butler's approach to color, use of African-print fabrics, and wide-ranging sources of inspiration. Offering an in-depth exploration of one of America's most innovative contemporary artists, this volume will serve as a primary resource that both introduces Butler's work and establishes a scholarly foundation for future research.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:
Katonah Museum of Art, New York
(March 15-October 4, 2020)

Art Institute of Chicago
(November 14, 2020-September 6, 2021)

Since World War II, women artists from Japan have made influential contributions to ceramics that have been inadequately acknowledged. This catalogue focuses on thirty-six ceramists who have produced original and technically innovative pieces over the past fifty years while working outside the male-dominated, traditional Japanese studio practice and its countermovements. Both established and emerging artists with diverse styles are presented together to showcase their collective achievements and impact. After embarking on their careers decades ago, Mishima Kimiyo (b. 1932), Tsuboi Asuka (b. 1932), and Ogawa Machiko (b. 1946) continue to produce groundbreaking sculpture that pushes the limits of the clay as a medium. Among the younger artists featured are Konno Tomoko (b. 1965) and Aoki Katsuyo (b. 1972), whose works explore themes ranging from bodily distortion to fantastical decoration. Many of these creators have resisted gendered expectations, whether by approaching traditionally feminine subjects like flowers in unconventional ways or by working in so-called masculine modes, including on large scales. All of the selected pieces are from the exemplary private collection of Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz, who have advocated strongly to bring these artists to global attention.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

Art Institute of Chicago
(December 16, 2023-June 3, 2024)

John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida
(July 27, 2024-May 11, 2025)

Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(June 13-August 31, 2025)

Phoenix Museum of Art
(September 24, 2025-August 9, 2026)

Dallas Museum of Art
(dates TBD)

Christina Ramberg (1946-1995) first gained renown for her acrylic-on-board paintings from the 1960s and 1970s that feature stylized fragments of female figures. Often associated with Chicago Imagism, Ramberg's distinct linear approach was informed by a wide range of popular and art-historical sources, resulting in works that are both highly polished and grippingly enigmatic. The first comprehensive consideration of the artist since her death, this study considers the full scope of her practice--from her intimate early scrapbooks and drawings to her late-career geometric abstractions--and includes the first substantive discussion of her often-overlooked quiltmaking. Essays from both scholars and artists situate Ramberg within her Chicago-based network of colleagues and approach her work from a variety of perspectives, such as gender and sexual identity, the body and disability studies, artistic craft, canon formation, and pedagogical practice. Featuring never-before-published diaries, sketchbooks, slides, and ephemera, this lavishly illustrated volume provides an unprecedentedly full picture of Ramberg's lifelong fascination with patterns and formal variation and her impact on the art of the twentieth century.

Distributed for The Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition schedule:

The Art Institute of Chicago
(April 20-August 11, 2024)

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
(October 6, 2024-January 5, 2025)

Philadelphia Museum of Art
(February 8-June 1, 2025)

Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection invites you to explore the storied Torlonia Collection, one of the largest and most important collections of ancient Roman sculptures in the world. It boasts portraits of individuals and the imperial family, sculptures of gods and heroes, and large-scale funerary monuments. This book presents stunning new images of dozens of these sculptures, most of them dating to the height of the Roman Empire, and nearly half of which have not been conserved, photographed, displayed, or published since the nineteenth century. Essays introduce readers to Roman sculpture and visual culture through these works and connect the cosmopolitanism of ancient Romans with our experiences of their art today, to provide an engaging and fresh introduction to the Torlonia Collection.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

The Art Institute of Chicago
(March 15-June 29, 2025)

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX
(September 14, 2025-January 25, 2026)

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
(March 14-July 19, 2026)

In February 1939, while visiting Paris at the invitation of writer André Breton, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) became sick and convalesced at the home of American expatriate Mary Reynolds (1891-1950), an avant-garde bookbinder, collector of Surrealist artist books, and partner of Marcel Duchamp. This book traces the story of Kahlo and Reynolds's connection and its influence on their work, even after the friendship had elapsed.

Kahlo and Reynolds's intense encounter unfolds in this volume through the artworks they each made, their shared exploration of Reynolds's expansive Surrealist library, and letters from Kahlo to her lover, American photographer Nickolas Muray, in which she recounted her time in Paris. Included in this focused study are paintings and drawings by Kahlo, selections of books by Reynolds, photographs by Muray of Kahlo, depictions of Reynolds by artists in Paris, and a selection of letters between Kahlo and Reynolds describing their defining experience together.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

Art Institute of Chicago
(March 29-July 13, 2025)

Cezanne presents a new examination of the work of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) across media and genres, surveying his career from the varied perspectives of art historians, conservation scientists, and a roster of renowned contemporary painters, including Etel Adnan, Phyllida Barlow, Paul Chan, Julia Fish, Ellen Gallagher, Lubaina Himid, Kerry James Marshall, Rodney McMillian, Laura Owens, and Luc Tuymans. Featuring wide-ranging essays and a series of maps tracing Cezanne's travels across the French landscape, this lavishly illustrated publication highlights the artist's favorite motifs, influence on his peers, and pivotal role in the development of modern art, in addition to presenting state-of-the-art technical analysis of his pigments and methods. It offers a fresh look at the ways in which Cezanne, driven by what he described as strong sensations, sought to develop a visual language that could fully translate his intense feelings into paintings. In doing so, he opened up possibilities that were embraced and elaborated by artists in his time and into the present.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

Tate Modern, London
(October 5, 2022-March 12, 2023)

The Thorne Rooms, sixty-eight miniature models of European interiors from the 16th century on and American furnishings from the 17th century on, have entranced generations of visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago. This charming book showcases these rooms, featuring full-color views of each one as well as eight two-page spreads of some of the most spectacular interiors.

The introductory essay by Bruce Hatton Boyer chronicles how Chicago socialite Mrs. James Ward Thorne conceived the rooms. They were made between 1934 and 1940 by a number of skilled craftsmen according to her exacting specifications. Many of the rooms were inspired by specific interiors in historic houses, palaces, and sites Mrs. Thorne visited during her travels, and Fannia Weingartner's individual commentaries provide information about each one. In addition, a number of Mrs. Thorne's original drawings are reproduced to actual scale.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

[A] gold mine of a book . . . Funny, biting, morbid, it's a page-turner for sure.--Holland Cotter, New York Times

Ray Johnson (1927-1995) was a renowned maker of meticulous collages whose works influenced movements including Pop Art, Fluxus, and Conceptual Art. Emerging from the interdisciplinary community of artists and poets at Black Mountain College, Johnson was extraordinarily adept at using social interaction as an artistic endeavor and founded a mail art network known as the New York Correspondence School.

Drawing on the vast collection of Johnson's work at the Art Institute of Chicago, this volume gives new shape to our understanding of his artistic practice and features hundreds of pieces that include artist's books, collages, drawings, mail art, and performance documentation. In keeping with Johnson's democratic, rhizomatic, and antihierarchical ethos, this indispensable resource on the artist's oeuvre contains 700 illustrations, many of them never before published, and twenty-one short essays by various contributors that allow readers to dip into and out of the book in a nonlinear manner.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

An acrobat, carpenter, railroad repairman, and two-time naval war veteran, sculptor H. C. Westermann (1922-1981) rose to prominence in Chicago in the 1950s with new forms inspired by his personal experiences. This overdue reassessment of an understudied artist includes stunning new photographs of Westermann's intricate and exceptionally crafted sculptures throughout his career. New essays by Giampaolo Bianconi and Thea Liberty Nichols explore his nonconformist attitudes about masculinity and his intense response to the horrors of war--a recurring theme in Westermann's sculpture following his return from service in the Korean War--as well as his experiments with wordplay, connection to conceptualism, and astonishing contributions to American art. An interview with artist Ed Ruscha, who knew and admired Westermann and his attention to craft, gives context to Westermann's complex role as an unpretentious father figure to American conceptual and pop artists.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

Art Institute of Chicago
(May 2025-May 2026)

Painting's complex history receives a new consideration in this fresh presentation of paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago's permanent collection, including new acquisitions from the last five years. Selections from cultures around the world over nearly two millennia provide a rich, inclusive account. Arranged chronologically--irrespective of each work's geographical origin--this comprehensive publication underscores the dramatic differences in style and technique occurring over time not only between but within cultures. The book features a dazzling array of paintings, including an ancient Egyptian funeral portrait, a wall mural from the ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan, Chinese handscroll paintings from the Yuan dynasty, a seventeenth-century triptych icon from Ethiopia, and works by artists such as Caillebotte, Cassatt, Cezanne, Degas, Duncanson, El Greco, Guston, Homer, Hopper, Johns, Lichtenstein, Magritte, Matisse, Mitchell, Monet, Morisot, Motley, Munch, O'Keeffe, Picasso, Pippin, Pollock, Rembrandt, Richter, Rivera, Rubens, Sargent, Seurat, Thomas, Tiepolo, Tosa Mitsuoki, Turner, Van Gogh, Varo, Warhol, Whistler, and Wood. Contemporary artists featured include David Hockney, Kerry James Marshall, Wanda Pimentel, Faith Ringgold, Ed Ruscha, and Pope.L.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Much of Joseph Elmer Yoakum's story comes from the artist himself--and is almost too fantastic to believe. At a young age, Yoakum (1891-1972) traveled the globe with numerous circuses; he later served in a segregated noncombat regiment during World War I before settling in Chicago. There, inspired by a dream, he began his artistic career at age seventy-one, producing some two thousand drawings over a decade. How did Yoakum gain representation in major museum collections in Chicago and New York? What fueled his process, which he described as a spiritual unfoldment? This volume delves into the friendships Yoakum forged with the Chicago Imagists that secured his place in art history, explores the religious outlook that may have helped him cope with a racially fractured city, and examines his complicated relationship to African American and Native American identities. With hundreds of beautiful color reproductions of his dreamlike drawings, it offers the most comprehensive study of the artist's work, illuminating his vivid and imaginative creativity and giving definition and dimension to his remarkable biography.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

Museum of Modern Art, New York
(November 28, 2021-March 18, 2022)

Menil Collection, Houston
(April 22-August 7, 2022)

Featuring one hundred figurative works on paper by Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), this volume shows a new side of an artist best known for abstraction. These informal depictions of friends and expressive self-portraits--all rarely or never previously displayed or published--span the entirety of Kelly's career, from the mid-1940s to the early 2000s. Throughout his life, Kelly made portraits as a means of keeping his hand adept at drawing, which provided a place to test his ideas, refine his bold use of lines, and interrogate the space between naturalism and abstraction. These works also capture his social milieu, which intersected with other creative circles and the queer community. He painstakingly recorded how his own appearance changed over time, and once described some of these sketches by saying, I use myself in order to draw. The accompanying critical essays unpack the ways in which such intimate efforts were fundamental to Kelly's practice and situate this important aspect of his work within the artist's wider oeuvre.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

A revelatory and informative presentation of the anti-apartheid posters created by Medu Art Ensemble

Formed in the late 1970s, Medu Art Ensemble forcefully articulated a call to end the apartheid system's racial segregation and violent injustice through posters that combined revolutionary imagery with bold slogans. Advocating for decolonization and majority (nonwhite) rule in South Africa and neighboring countries, Medu members were persecuted by the South African Defense Force and operated in exile across the border in Botswana.

The People Shall Govern! features nearly all the surviving posters that Medu created between 1979 and 1985. These objects are exceedingly rare, as they were originally smuggled into South Africa and mounted in public places, where they were regularly confiscated or torn down on sight. Offering new insight into the conceptual framework of Medu's working practice and featuring a beautiful silkscreened cover, this volume examines the continuing relevance and impact of its poster production.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Insightful essays examine the distinctive features of the Hairy Who's art and collaboration, explain how the group's work diverges from contemporaneous movements such as Pop and Funk, and provide biographical information on the artists themselves. Contributions from acclaimed contemporary artists Richard Hull and Laura Owens reflect on the Hairy Who's sources and influence, exploring how the group remains relevant in today's art world in significant and unexpected ways.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

Art Institute of Chicago
(09/27/18-01/06/19)

From ancient Egyptian shrouds for mummified remains to medieval relics, textiles have played both functional and symbolic roles in rituals of death across time and place. Featuring funeral hangings, mourning samplers, coffin covers, and many other textiles and fragments, along with works by contemporary textile artists such as Nick Cave (b. 1959) and Angela Hennessey (b. 1971), this book highlights how these objects help people negotiate experiences of loss, grief, healing, and survival.

With over seventy textiles dating from antiquity to today, On Loss and Absence brings together examples from cultures and traditions around the world. Close-up photographs provide an intimate look at the wealth of artistic and historical information embedded in their intricate details and painstaking techniques. In four key sections--Death and Grief, Transition of Realms, Care and Healing, and Resistance and Survival--artists, conservators, educators, and scholars offer their in-depth perspectives on select objects and their context. Contemporary practitioners, including the Noqanchis collective of Andean weavers and Navajo weavers Lynda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Ornelas, provide insight into the enduring legacies of Indigenous textile arts. A behind-the-scenes look at textile conservation examines preservation techniques in the larger thematic context of care and survival.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

Art Institute of Chicago
(September 2025-April 2026)

This book features 31 objects from Constance R. Caplan's noted collection of 20th- and 21st-century art, including works in a variety of media by artists such as Hans Arp, Lynda Benglis, Liz Deschenes, Claes Oldenburg, and Cy Twombly. Rather than specialize in one medium, artist, or movement, Caplan has instead assembled paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures, and examples of decorative art that together capture the full scope of a transformative period in art history. Individual pieces are examined by a diverse group of scholars that includes voices from both the school and the museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, while Yve-Alain Bois provides a historical overview of the collection's genesis, with a particular focus on the dialogue among works from different artistic disciplines.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

In ancient China (2000-221 b.c.) elaborate bronze vessels were used for rituals involving cooking, drinking, and serving food. This fascinating book not only examines the cultural practices surrounding these objects in their original context, but it also provides the first in-depth study tracing the tradition of collecting these bronzes in China. Essays by international experts delve into the concerns of the specialized culture that developed around the vessels and the significant influence this culture, with its emphasis on the concept of antiquity, had on broader Chinese society. While focusing especially on bronze collections of the 18th and 19th centuries, this wide-ranging catalogue also touches on the ways in which contemporary artists continue to respond to the complex legacy of these objects. Packed with stunning photographs of exquisitely crafted vessels, Mirroring China's Past is an enlightening investigation into how the role of ancient bronzes has evolved throughout Chinese history.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

The Art Institute of Chicago
(02/25/18-05/13/18)