Tara Donovan's sculptures and installations are mind-bending experiences: she transforms common everyday materials like straws and index cards turning them into elaborate, room-size sculptures that are as surreal as they are beautiful MacArthur "genius" grant recipient Tara Donovan's otherworldly sculptures have transfixed audiences for over a decade. Taking mundane materials and through clever craftsmanship, ingenuity, and repeated manipulation, the artist builds large-scale works made of rubber bands, plastic tubing, and paper plates into objects that evoke the natural world or other organic material. This volume--which accompanies a major exhibition at MCA Denver--features an expansive selection of her most significant works to date, including sculpture, drawings, works on paper, and site-responsive installations. This exhibition will be the first time that Donovan's wall-based and freestanding objects will be installed together, in order to understand fully how the artist conceptualizes her complex work. Curator Nora Burnett Abrams, along with two other leading scholars of contemporary art Jenni Sorkin and Guiliana Bruno, consider critical issues around her work: ideas related to labor, scale, process and formalism, among other key themes. The book looks at several major bodies of work realized in different formats and different settings, affording the reader a glimpse into the important themes and visual languages the artist continuously explores.

Tara Donovan: Fieldwork

Arts & Photography

Burnett Abrams, Nora

History & Criticism

Rizzoli Electa

Never-before-published work by an iconic woman artist from the very start of her career. Francesca Woodman took her first photograph at the age of the thirteen. From the time she was a teenager until her death at twenty-two, she produced a fascinating body of work exploring gender, representation, and sexuality by photographing her own body and those of her friends. Featuring approximately forty unique vintage prints, as well as notes, letters, postcards, and other ephemera related to the artist's burgeoning career, the volume, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at MCA Denver, details both Woodman's creative and personal coming-of-age during the years 1975-1979. Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation considers how the artist came into her creative voice and her singular approach to photography at a notably young age. Ranging from portraits in her studio/apartment in college to self-portraits in the bucolic Colorado landscape in which she was raised, these works capture Woodman's hallmark approach to art making: enigmatic, rigorous, and poignant. The volume also includes select photographs of Woodman taken by friend and RISD classmate George Lange during this period. Taken together, they present a nuanced and in-depth study of this formative period in the development of this groundbreaking artist.

Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation

Sawyer, Drew

Photography & Video

<div>The Cowboy, Reconsidered: the enduring myth of the cowboy is a richer, more diverse story than most understand. In this survey, some of the most important artists working today take up the cowboy through the lens of queer, Black, Asian, and Latinx perspectives. Perhaps no other figure in the American popular imagination conjures the respect, mystery, and adoration than that of the cowboy. And it's long been a favorite subject of artists from the early twentieth century to today. In this unique exhibition and accompanying catalogue, the cowboy is explored in depth from diverse perspectives and lived experience, ushering in a new vision for this long-standing pop icon. Director Nora Burnett Abrams considers the cowboy through historical perspectives, breaking down the myth and mystique. In an extended interview, curator Miranda Lash talks with queer Latinx artist rafa esparza who considers the vaquero (the Spanish term for cowboy) in his work. And Jongwoo Jeremy Kim explores issues around masculinity in Asian American cowboy communities. Artist List: Amy Sherald, Deana Lawson, Wendy Red Star, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Cruz Ortiz, John Baldessari, Mel Chin, Alex Da Corte, Angela Ellsworth, rafa esparza, Karl Haendel, Luis Jiménez, Kahlil Joseph, Grace Kennison, Yowshien Kuo, Laurel Nakadate, Richard Prince, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Ana Segovia, Stephanie Syjuco, Kenneth Tam, Ken Taylor, Salla Tykkä, Andy Warhol, and Nathan Young</div>

Cowboy

Lash, Miranda

Jeremy Kim, Jongwoo

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, exploded into the art space last year, no doubt because Beeple (a digital artist) sold his NFT at Christie's auction house for a staggering $69 million. Yet the story of NFTs is much more interesting, significant, and subtle than that sale. This book explains NFTs in the art world--and the ways they might not only democratize the arts but enliven our larger democracy. Since the NFT phenomenon took over the art world, useful information that isn't too reductive is in short supply. Artists, collectors, arts professionals, art lovers, and museumgoers are still trying to understand what NFTs are, how to benefit from or engage with them, and what they mean for the art world in the future. This book is precisely for this audience. The authors take the reader through the basic concepts of NFTs and the underlying technology of blockchain, including their origins, their surprising connections to the history of artmaking and art collecting, and their potential to radically reshape the art world. The book invites the reader to engage with this new technology, to understand its connections to the longer arc of art history, and to help shape its future. The volume is structured around four key chapters: Origin Stories (where NFTs come from), Artists + Making (how artists are currently engaging with the technology and minting NFTs logistically and conceptually), Collectors + Buying (what does it mean to collect an NFT and other advice for current and soon-to-be collectors), and Future States (how NFTs will upend and democratize the arts). In addition to the authors' extensive knowledge, the book draws on a wide range of interviews with leading contributors to the NFT story. The Story of NFTs is an inventive, elegant, and not insufferable book on a topic that matters more than most people think, in ways that are surprising and at odds with the one-dimensional cryptocurrency story. The many intersecting stories of NFTs in this book--knowledge stories, artist stories, democracy stories--center how we know what is true in an age of digital records and how we build collaborative and equitable structures for the future.

The Story of NFTs: Artists, Technology, and Democracy

Whitaker, Amy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Burnett Abrams, Nora. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Burnett Abrams, Nora

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Burnett Abrams, Nora. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Tara Donovan: Fieldwork

Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation

Cowboy

The Story of NFTs: Artists, Technology, and Democracy