Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in New York's Cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified. Strange Fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist sympathizer who wrote the song that would have an impact on generations of fans, black and white, unknown and famous, including performers Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Sting.

Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song

David Margolick

Hilton, Als

Humor & Entertainment

Ecco

The first novel published by an African American, Clotel takes up the story, in circulation at the time, that Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimate mulatto daughter who was sold into slavery. Powerfully reimagining this story, and weaving together a variety of contemporary source materials, Brown fills the novel with daring escapes and encounters, as well as searing depictions of the American slave trade. An innovative and challenging work of literary invention, Clotel is receiving much renewed attention today. William Wells Brown, though born into slavery, escaped to become one of the most prominent reformers of the nineteenth century and one of the earliest historians of the black experience. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition reproduces the first, 1853, edition of Clotel and includes, as did that edition, his autobiographical narrative, "The Life and Escape of William Wells Brown," plus newly written notes.

Clotel: or, The President's Daughter (Modern Library Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Brown, William W.

United States

Modern Library

Robert Gober rose to prominence in the mid-1980s and was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Early in his career, he made deceptively simple sculptures of everyday objects--beginning with sinks and moving on to domestic furniture such as playpens, beds and doors. In the 1990s, his practice evolved from single works to theatrical room-sized environments. In all of his work, Gober's formal intelligence is never separate from a penetrating reading of the socio-political context of his time. His objects and installations are among the most psychologically charged artworks of the late twentieth century, reflecting the artist's sustained concerns with issues of social justice, freedom and tolerance. Published in conjunction with the first large-scale survey of the artist's career to take place in the United States, this publication presents his works in all media, including individual sculptures and immersive sculptural environments, as well as a distinctive selection of drawings, prints and photographs. Prepared in close collaboration with the artist, it traces the development of a remarkable body of work, highlighting themes and motifs that emerged in the early 1980s and continue to inform Gober's work today. An essay by Hilton Als is complemented by an in-depth chronology featuring a rich selection of images from the artist's archives, including never-before-published photographs of works in progress. Robert Gober was born in 1954 in Wallingford, Connecticut. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions, most notably at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Schaulager, Basel. In 2001, he represented the United States at the 49th Venice Biennale. Gober's curatorial projects have been shown at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Menil Collection, Houston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in New York.

Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Interrogating Identity

Kellie Jones

Paul Gilroy

Adrian Piper

Thomas Sokolowski

Sarat Maharaj

Kass Banning

Grey Art Gallery & Study Ctr

Ways Of Seeing: Writings On Drawings From The Jack Shear Collection

African-American artist Kara Walker (born 1969) has been acclaimed internationally for her candid investigations of race, sexuality and violence through the lens of reconceived historical tropes. She had her first solo show at The Drawing Center in New York City in 1994 and, at the age of 28 in 1997, was one of the youngest people to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. This publication documents Dust Jackets for the Niggerati--and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings Submitted Ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker, a major series of graphite drawings and hand-printed texts on paper that grew out of Walker’s attempts to understand how interpersonal and geopolitical powers are asserted through the lives of individuals. In scenes that range from the grotesque to the humorous to the tragic, these works vividly and powerfully explore the themes of transition and migration that run through the African-American experience. The accompanying essays take us through Walker’s saga of American experience--the dual streams of renewal and destruction that trace parallel lines through the last century’s rapid urbanization and the complementary emergence of a “New Negro” identity. Fully illustrated with reproductions of the entire series, and designed by award-winning design studio CoMa with Walker’s close collaboration, Dust Jackets for the Niggerati represents a major contribution to the career of one of our most significant and complex contemporary artists.

Kara Walker: Dust Jackets for the Niggerati

James Hannaham

Christopher Stackhouse

Gregory R. Miller & Co.

In conjunction with the exhibition Cary Leibowitz: Museum Show, The CJM has published a 224-page fully-illustrated hardcover catalog with contributions by Hilton Als, A. Sergio Bessa, David Bonetti, Fran Drescher, Anastasia James, Rhonda Leiberman, Cary Leibowitz, Simon Lince, and Glen Helfand.

Cary Leibowitz: Museum Show

Anastasia James

Antonio Sergio Bessa

Glen Helfand

Cary Leibowitz

Simon Lince

Rhonda Lieberman

Contemporary Jewish Museum

Peter Doig is well known for the exotic atmospheres and dreamy narratives that appear in his work. With an uncommonly rich color palette and a unique material sensibility, he has created some of the most resonant and evocative images in contemporary painting, placing him among the most inventive painters working today. But, as this extensive volume makes clear, he is also a sophisticated visual thinker, endlessly preoccupied with the process and history of painting. No Foreign Lands is the first publication to examine in depth the conceptual underpinnings of Doig’s oeuvre. Particular attention is given to the importance of motifs, themes and variations in his work, explored in over 200 paintings and works on paper from the past 13 years, among them new works never before published.Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Peter Doig was raised in Canada and spent two decades in London before moving to Trinidad, where he now lives and works. Doig graduated from St. Martin’s School of Art in 1983 and the Chelsea School of Art in 1990. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994, and was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. In February 2013, his painting "The Architect’s Home in the Ravine" sold for $12,000,000 at a London auction. The exhibition No Foreign Lands, which opened at the Scottish National Gallery before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, showcases works created during the past ten years, much of which the artist spent in Trinidad. The Independent called the exhibition "a thrilling show," and The Observer praised it as "mesmerizing."

Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands

Keith Hartley

Stéphane Aquin

Angus Cook

Individual Artists

Hatje Cantz

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