5 Books Published by Delmonico Books on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

Portrayals of James Baldwin and others in his circle highlight the iconic writer’s activism.

The American writer and activist James Baldwin (1924-87) considered himself a “witness” as he challenged perspectives on America and its history through his work. He was often recognized for speaking out against injustice when other like-minded artists, collaborators, and organizers were overshadowed or silenced. By bringing together artworks that feature James Baldwin alongside portraits of other key figures who had an impact on his life, This Morning, This Evening, So Soon situates Baldwin among a pantheon of culture bearers who were instrumental in shaping his life and legacy, particularly in relation to his advocacy for gay rights.

The book accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, curated by the National Portrait Gallery’s Director of Curatorial Affairs, Rhea L. Combs, in consultation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hilton Als. Well-known portraits by Beauford Delaney and Bernard Gotfryd are shown alongside paintings, photographs, and films representing key figures in Baldwin’s circle. By viewing Baldwin in this context of community, readers will come to understand how Baldwin’s sexuality and faith, artistic curiosities, and notions of masculinity—coupled with his involvement in the civil rights movement—helped shape his writing and long-lasting legacy.

The book relies on portraiture to explore the interwoven lives of Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry (writer and activist), Barbara Jordan (lawyer, educator, and politician), Bayard Rustin (leader in social movements), Lyle Ashton Harris (artist), Essex Hemphill (poet and activist), Marlon Riggs (filmmaker, poet and activist), and Nina Simone (singer-songwriter, pianist, and activist), among others.

Artists include: Richard Avedon, Glenn Ligon, Donald Moffett, Beauford Delaney, Bernard Gotfryd, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Jack Whitten.

A celebratory visual chronicle of the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves

Spanning over two centuries from around 1800 to the present day, Black American Portraits chronicles the ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves in their own eyes. Remembering Two Centuries of Black American Art, curated by David C. Driskell at LACMA 45 years ago, this book is a companion to the exhibition of the same name that reframes portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters and spaces. This selection of approximately 140 works from LACMA’s permanent collection highlights emancipation, scenes from the Harlem Renaissance, portraits from the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, multiculturalism of the 1990s and the spirit of Black Lives Matter.

Countering a visual culture that often demonizes Blackness and fetishizes the spectacle of Black pain, these images center love, abundance, family, community and exuberance. Black American Portraits depicts Black figures in a range of mediums such as painting, drawing, prints, photography, sculpture, mixed media and time-based media. In addition to work by artists of African descent, Black American Portraits includes several works by artists of other backgrounds who have exemplified a thoughtfulness about, sensitivity toward and commitment to Black artists, communities, histories and subjects.

Artists include: Alvin Baltrop, Edward Biberman, Bisa Butler, Jordan Casteel, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Bruce Davidson, Stan Douglas, rafa esparza, Shepard Fairey, Charles Gaines, Sargent Claude Johnson, Deana Lawson, Kerry James Marshall, Alice Neel, Lorraine O’Grady, Catherine Opie, Amy Sherald, Ming Smith, Henry Taylor, Tourmaline, Mickalene Thomas, James Van Der Zee, Carrie Mae Weems, Charles White, Kehinde Wiley and Deborah Willis.

An inspirational trove of film posters and ephemera, photographs, artwork and more from the collection of Spike Lee

For nearly four decades, Spike Lee has made movies that demand our attention. His extensive filmography reflects an unflinching critique of race relations in the United States, from the Student Academy Award®–winning short Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads and the ever-relevant Do the Right Thing to the more recent Oscar®-winning BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods. A lifelong cinephile and film scholar, Lee draws inspiration from other artists working across a range of eras, genres and global cinemas. He has also devoted much of his career to teaching the next generation of filmmakers.

Spike Lee: Director’s Inspiration presents Lee’s personal collection of original film posters and objects, photographs, artworks and more―many of these inscribed to Lee personally by filmmakers, stars, athletes, activists, musicians and others who have inspired his work in specific ways. Straight from the walls of Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule production studio in Brooklyn, his faculty office at NYU and his Martha’s Vineyard home, these objects offer a glimpse into what shapes Lee’s signature filmmaking approach. Spike Lee: Director’s Inspiration also includes a conversation between Lee and Shaka King (Judas and the Black Messiah), Lee’s list of 95 essential films and brief texts by some of the many artists Lee himself has inspired.

Spike Lee (born 1957) is a director, writer, actor, producer, author and artistic director of the graduate film program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he has taught since 1993.

A visual and conceptual conversation between two leading US photo-artists famed for their mutual explorations of race, class and power

Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems met in New York in the late 1970s, and over the next 45 years these close friends and colleagues have each produced unique and influential bodies of work around shared interests and concerns. This publication brings together over 140 photographs and video art from the 1970s through the 2010s by two of our most notable and influential photo-based artists.

Since first meeting at the Studio Museum in Harlem five decades ago, Bey and Weems have maintained spirited and supportive mutual engagement while exploring and addressing similar themes: race, class, representation, and systems of power. Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue brings their work together in five thematic groupings to shed light on their unique creative visions and trajectories, and their shared concerns and principles.

A colossal, panoramic, much-needed appraisal of the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories across six centuries.

Published with Museu de Arte de São Paulo.

Named one of the best books of 2021 by Artforum

Afro-Atlantic Histories brings together a selection of more than 400 works and documents by more than 200 artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries that express and analyze the ebbs and flows between Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. The book is motivated by the desire and need to draw parallels, frictions, and dialogues around the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories—their experiences, creations, worshiping, and philosophy. The so-called Black Atlantic, to use the term coined by Paul Gilroy, is geography lacking precise borders, a fluid field where African experiences invade and occupy other nations, territories, and cultures.

The plural and polyphonic quality of “histórias” is also of note; unlike the English “histories,” the word in Portuguese carries a double meaning that encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, personal, political, economic, and cultural, as well as mythological narratives.

The book features more than 400 works from Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean, as well as Europe, from the 16th to the 21st century. These are organized in eight thematic groupings:

• Maps and Margins
• Emancipations
• Everyday Lives
• Rites and Rhythms
• Routes and Trances
• Portraits
• Afro-Atlantic Modernisms
• Resistances and Activism

Artists include:

• Nina Chanel Abney
• Emma Amos
• Benny Andrews
• Emanoel Araujo
• Maria Auxiliadora
• Romare Bearden
• John Biggers
• Paul Cézanne
• Victoria Santa Cruz
• Beauford Delaney
• Aaron Douglas
• Melvin Edwards
• Ibrahim El-Salahi
• Ben Enwonwu
• Ellen Gallagher
• Theodore Géricault
• Barkley Hendricks
• William Henry Jones
• Loïs Mailou Jones
• Titus Kaphar
• Wifredo Lam
• Norman Lewis
• Ibrahim Mahama
• Edna Manley
• Archibald Motley
• Abdias Nascimento
• Gilberto de la Nuez
• Toyin Ojih Odutola
• Dalton Paula
• Rosana Paulino
• Howardena Pindell
• Heitor dos Prazeres
• Joshua Reynolds
• Faith Ringgold
• Gerard Sekoto
• Alma Thomas
• Hank Willis Thomas
• Rubem Valentim
• Kara Walker
• Lynette Yiadom-Boakye