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Gala Porras-Kim

The Weight of a Patina of Time

By Gala Porras-Kim, Matthew H. Robb

Art that questions the museum's role in assigning meaning to cultural artifact

This thought-provoking volume focuses on a series of works by Gala Porras-Kim, whose research-based practice looks closely at the layered meaning of objects in...

Myrlande Constant

The Work of Radiance

By Katherine Smith, Jerry Philogene

Myrlande Constant: The Work of Radiance is the first museum retrospective of a contemporary Haitian female artist who has been creating groundbreaking work for thirty years. Constant's panels build on the drapo Vodou tradition, depicting...

Aboriginal Screen-Printed Textiles from Australia’s Top End

By Joanna Barrkman

Traces the development and contributions of Aboriginal-owned art centers to contemporary art and expression

Aboriginal Screen-Printed Textiles from Australia’s Top End presents the work of contemporary Australian textile artists working at five Aboriginal-owned art centers in...

Summoning the Ancestors

Southern Nigerian Bronzes

By Nancy Neaher Maas and Philip M. Peek

A survey of little-studied sacred African bells and ritual objects

Summoning the Ancestors explores a collection of 72 ofo (small ritual objects) and 74 bells produced in southern Nigeria by Igala, Igbo, Edo, Yorùbá, and other...

Dressed with Distinction

Garments from Ottoman Syria

By Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood. Introduction by Joanna Barrkman

A lavishly illustrated collection of Syrian textiles from the turn of the twentieth century

For hundreds of years, skilled craftspeople in the Syrian centers of Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs produced intricately woven textiles for the royal...

Meleko Mokgosi

Bread, Butter, and Power

By Erica P. Jones

A contemporary African artist's call for democracy

Botswana-born Meleko Mokgosi is an emerging contemporary artist whose large-scale figurative paintings are garnering growing accolades and attention worldwide. In all his work, Mokgosi emphasizes narrative storytelling. This approach...

Striking Iron

The Art of African Blacksmiths

By Allen F. Roberts, Tom Joyce, Marla C. Berns

For more than two millennia, African blacksmiths have transformed one of Earth’s most basic natural resources into objects of life-changing utility, empowerment, prestige, spiritual potency, and astonishing artistry—shaping African cultures in the most fundamental ways....

Axé Bahia

The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis

By Patrick A. Polk, Roberto Conduru, Sabrina Gledhill, Randal Johnson

Axé Bahia examines the unique cultural role played by Salvador, the coastal capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia. An internationally renowned center of Afro-Brazilian culture, Salvador has been a vibrant and important hub of...

Textiles of Timor, Island in the Woven Sea

By Roy W. Hamilton, Joanna Barrkman

Timor has been a divided island at least since the seventeenth century when Dutch and Portuguese colonial empires competed for its control. Despite this fragmentation, the weaving of cloth has remained intimately linked to the...

Light and Shadows

The Story of Iranian Jews

By David Yeroushalmi

Light and Shadows highlights the 2,700-year history of Jews in Iran. It reveals centuries of oppression, fascinating cultural borrowings, and great artistic achievements. The story is told through rare archaeological artifacts, illuminated manuscripts, beautiful ritual...

Enduring Splendor

Jewelry of India's Thar Desert

By Thomas K. Seligman and Usha R. Balakrishnan

Enduring Splendor focuses on the rich and diverse silver jewelry traditions of India’s Thar Desert region, stretching across the western states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. These traditions are considered against the background of the five-thousand-year...

World Share

Installations by Pascale Marthine Tayou

By Gemma Rodrigues and Leora Maltz-Leca

World Share: Installations by Pascale Marthine Tayou gives us a large-scale immersive environment that combines the artist's sculpture, drawings, and poetry with Fowler artworks. Assembled from a stunning diversity of materials and found objects, Tayou’s...

Jose Montoya's Abundant Harvest

Works on Paper / Works on Life

By Richard Montoya, Selene Preciado

Chicano activist, poet, artist, intellectual, professor, and musician, José Montoya (1932–2013) was a veritable Renaissance man. Montoya often found inspiration in the verdant fields of the San Joaquin Valley where his family arrived from their...

Making Strange

Gagawaka + Postmortem by Vivan Sundaram

By Saloni Mathur, Miwon Kwon

This volume juxtaposes for the first time two striking bodies of work by Delhi-based and internationally recognized contemporary artist Vivan Sundaram. Gagawaka, the first project, consists of twenty-seven sculptural garments made from a bizarre assortment...

Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners at the Margins of the Americas

By Patrick A. Polk

The margins of the Americas―borders that are at once physical and societal―engender sacred figures who walk the fine line between sinfulness and sanctity. In worship and artistic representation alike, these entities reflect and impact the...

The Peruvian Four-Selvaged Cloth

Ancient Threads / New Directions

By Elena Phipps

In this beautifully illustrated book, textile expert Elena Phipps examines the ancient Peruvian process of weaving textiles with four finished selvages, or edges. Without cutting a thread, master Peruvian weavers wove each textile to the...

Central Nigeria Unmasked

Arts of the Benue River Valley

By Marla C. Berns, Richard Fardon, Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Winner of the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association

The Benue River Valley is the source of some of the most abstract, dramatic, and inventive sculpture in sub-Saharan...

Resplendent Dress from Southeastern Europe

A History in Layers

By Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Barbara Belle Sloan

In the past, girls from rural southeastern Europe spent their childhoods weaving, sewing, and embroidering festive dress so that upon reaching puberty they could join the Sunday afternoon village dances garbed in resplendent attire. These...

Steeped in History

The Art of Tea

By Beatrice Hohenegger

After water, tea is the most frequently consumed beverage on the face of the earth. In ancient China tea was regarded as one of the seven daily necessities of life; for many Japanese it has...

Material Choices

Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific

By Roy W. Hamilton, B. Lynne Milgram

Winner of the R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Award sponsored by the Textile Society of America

Asia is renowned for the production of fine handwoven cottons and luxurious silks -- important items of trade for centuries....