Diversity in Our Collections

A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the art underworld. Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America, and a drama of almost unbearable acuity and power. It is a story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the enormous power of art

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him, and one by one, his friends are dying. After his friend Nico's funeral, the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter.

This spare, focused book takes us back to the late 1990s, when art was a commodity for the very wealthy and a coin of the realm for admission to the upper class. It's a character study, a light mystery, and an entertaining look at a world that few people see up close.

Signaling such recent activist and aesthetic concepts in the work of Kara Walker, Childish Gambino, BLM, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar, and marking the exit of the Obama Administration and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this anthology explores the role of African American arts in shaping the future, and further informing new directions we might take in honoring and protecting the success of African Americans in the U.S.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation's oldest civil rights organization, having dedicated itself to the fight for racial equality since 1909. While the group helped achieve substantial victories in the courtroom, the struggle for civil rights extended beyond gaining political support. It also required changing social attitudes. The NAACP thus worked to alter existing prejudices through the production of art that countered racist depictions of African Americans, focusing its efforts not only on changing the attitudes of the white middle class but also on encouraging racial pride and a sense of identity in the Black community. Art for Equality explores an important and little-studied side of the NAACP's activism in the cultural realm.

Beginning in the 1930s, Black Chicago experienced a cultural renaissance that lasted into the 1950s and rivaled the cultural outpouring in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The contributors to this volume analyze this prolific period of African American creativity in music, performance art, social science scholarship, and visual and literary artistic expression.

When many think of comic books the first thing that comes to mind are caped crusaders and spandex-wearing super-heroes. Perhaps, inevitably, these images are of white men (and more rarely, women). It was not until the 1970s that African American superheroes such as Luke Cage, Blade, and others emerged. But as this exciting new collection reveals, these superhero comics are only one small component in a wealth of representations of black characters within comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels over the past century.

A Companion to American Art presents 35 newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars that explore the methodology, historiography, and current state of the field of American art history.

Conflict, Identity, and Protest in American Art explores the powerful relationship between artistic production and cultures of conflict in the United States. Such a theme continues to provoke practitioners and scholars across a range of media and disciplines, especially as definitions of war and protest evolve and change in the twenty-first century. This anthology presents vital discussions of visual works in relationship to national identity, the politics and contexts of artistic production and reception, and the expressive and political function of art within historical periods defined by wars, rebellions, and revolutions.

The Encyclopedia of Black Comics focuses on people of African descent who have published significant works in the United States or have worked across various aspects of the comics industry. The book focuses on creators in the field of comics: inkers, illustrators, artists, writers, editors, Black comic historians, Black comic convention creators, website creators, archivists and academics--as well as individuals who may not fit into any category but have made notable achievements within and/or across Black comic culture.

Etching Our Own Image: Voices From Within the Arab American Art Movement is a celebration of Arab American art and identity. In the wake of 9/11, the need for Arab Americans to define themselves, rather than be defined by others has galvanized an artistic movement. This collection of writers includes poets, musicians, playwrights, creative writers, painters, conceptual artists, comedians and scholars of the arts who have gathered to assert for themselves what it means to be Arab American.

Discover one hundred of the greatest folk artists practicing in the United States in Folk Masters: A Portrait of America. Over the past 25 years, photographer Tom Pich has traveled the country to the homes and studios of recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship, the highest honor given to folk and traditional artists in the US. His portraits give us a glimpse into their art, their process, and their culture.

During the early part of the Cold War, Japan emerged as a model ally, and Japanese Americans were seen as a model minority. From Confinement to Containment examines the work of four Japanese and Japanese/American artists and writers during this period: the novelist Hanama Tasaki, the actor Yamaguchi Yoshiko, the painter Henry Sugimoto, and the children's author Yoshiko Uchida.

InThe Heart of the Mission, Cary Cordova combines urban, political, and art history to examine how the Mission District, a longtime bohemian enclave in San Francisco, has served as an important place for an influential and largely ignored Latino arts movement from the 1960s to the present.

Most people outside of the art world view art as something that is foreign to their experiences and everyday lives.A People's Art History of the United States places art history squarely in the rough-and-tumble of politics, social struggles, and the fight for justice from the colonial era through the present day.

Syndicated cartoonist and illustrator Tim Jackson offers an unprecedented look at the rich yet largely untold story of African American cartoon artists. This book provides a historical record of the men and women who created seventy-plus comic strips, many editorial cartoons, and illustrations for articles. The volume covers the mid-1880s, the early years of the self-proclaimed black press, to 1968, when African American cartoon artists were accepted in the so-called mainstream.

In this vibrant and pioneering book, Nadine Hubbs shows how a gifted group of Manhattan-based gay composers were pivotal in creating a distinctive "American sound" and in the process served as architects of modern American identity.

Queer Images chronicles representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer sexualities over one hundred years of American film. The most up-to-date and comprehensive book of its kind, it explores the ever-changing images of queer characters onscreen as well as the work of queer filmmakers and the cultural histories of queer audiences--from the works of discreetly homosexual filmmakers during Hollywood's Golden Age and classical Hollywood's attempt to purge sex perversion from films, to queer exploitation and physique films, cinematic responses to AIDS, and how contemporary Hollywood deals with queer issues. An essential volume for film buffs and anyone interested in sexuality and culture.

In the heady and hallucinogenic days of the 1960s and '70s, a diverse range of artists and creative individuals based in the American West--from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest--broke the barriers between art and lifestyle and embraced the new, hybrid sensibilities of the countercultural movement.

Ledger art has traditionally been created by men to recount the lives of male warriors on the Plains. During the past forty years, this form has been adopted by Native female artists, who are turning previously untold stories of women's lifestyles and achievements into ledger-style pictures.

"Once a thriving working class neighborhood on Chicago's south side, the 'Bottomyards' is now the definition of urban blight. When an aspiring fashion designer named Darla and her image-obsessed friend, Cynthia, descend upon the neighborhood in search of cheap rent, they soon discover something far more seductive and sinister lurking behind the walls of their new home."

In the United States at midcentury - a time of few opportunities for women in general and even fewer for African American women - Jackie Ormes (1911-85) blazed a trail as a popular cartoonist with the major black newspapers of the day. Ormes's work provides an invaluable glimpse into American culture and history, with topics that include racial segregation, U.S. foreign policy, educational equality, the atom bomb, and environmental pollution, among other pressing issues of the times. This biography's more than 150 illustrations include photographs of Jackie Ormes and a large sampling of her cartoons and color comic strips.

"For more than five years the cartoonist Lynda Barry has been an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison art department and at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, teaching students from all majors, both graduate and undergraduate, how to make comics, how to be creative, how to not think. There is no academic lecture in this classroom. Doodling is enthusiastically encouraged. Making Comics is the follow-up to Barry's bestselling Syllabus and this time she shares all of her comics-making exercises. In a new hand drawn syllabus detailing her creative curriculum, Barry has students drawing themselves as monsters and superheroes, convincing students who think they can't draw that they can, and most important, encouraging them to understand that a daily journal can be anything so long as it is hand drawn"--Provided by publisher.

The secret story of Superman's creation, told from the perspective of illustrator Joe Shuster, reveals how after creating the famed character, he and his partner Jerry Siegel made a deal they ultimately regretted.

With overview essays and more than 400 A-Z entries, this exhaustive encyclopedia documents the history of Asians in America from earliest contact to the present day.

The life of artist Frida Kahlo, from her humble upbringing to her worldwide fame and controversy that surrounded both her and her husband, Diego Rivera.

In this dictionary of American art, 945 alphabetically arranged entries cover painters, sculptors, graphic artists photographers, printmakers, and contemporary hybrid artists along with important aspects of the cultural infrastructure.

Why is St. Sebastian an icon of gay male artists? Is there such a thing as a gay or lesbian sensibility? What's the connection between Buddhist monasteries and Japanese homoerotic imagery? And are all those European bathing scenes as deliciously homoerotic as they seem? The perfect browser's guide to queer art - and the ideal reference work - The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts answers these questions and more in essays that will keep you turning pages long after you've found the answer you were looking for. An easy-to-use, culturally inclusive volume with in-depth critical analyses of major figures, and bibliographies to guide further study.