Nora Burnett Abrams – författare

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 retrospective - features an expansive selection of her most impressive and important works to date, spanning 10 years. Curator Nora Burnett Abrams, along with a several other leading scholars of contemporary art, consider critical issues around this important artist work: issues related to labour and process, and the interplay between ethereality and monumentality, 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. The book will also consider, importantly for the first time, the artist's sculptural wall works which shed light on her distinct and varied practice.

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.

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 Jimenez, Kahlil Joseph, Grace Kennison, Yowshien Kuo, Laurel Nakadate, Richard Prince, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Ana Segovia, Stephanie Syjuco, Kenneth Tam, Ken Taylor, Salla Tykka, Andy Warhol, and Nathan Young.

This book is a captivating exploration of Horn s decades-long fascination with water, both as a material and a metaphor. Known for her provocative approach to perception, identity, and the mutability of form, Horn uses water to mirror human experience and emotion. Born in 1955 in New York, Horn has spent decades pushing the boundaries of art to explore the complexities of identity, perception, and nature. Horn s body of work spans photography, cast glass, and installation, consistently returning to the theme of fluidity. Her iconic series You Are the Weather 100 photographs of Icelandic artist Margret Haraldsdottir Blondal submerged in water reveals how water can both obscure and define identity. Similarly, her liquid glass sculptures play with the tension between solidity and fluidity, their colors ranging from turquoise to black. In an era marked by climate change and water scarcity, Horn s works pose urgent questions about water as a shared resource and a symbol of impermanence and survival. This volume not only offers a retrospective of her water-centered works but also connects them to broader global challenges with critical and poetic texts by Nora Burnett Abrams, Jarrett Earnest, Anne Carson, and the artist herself.