How to Celebrate “Go to an Art Museum Day”
November 9 is “Go to an Art Museum Day,” and we’re celebrating by highlighting some fantastic exhibitions currently on view at museums around the US and Canada. Can’t make it to the shows? Learn more about these exhibitions and their subjects from wherever you are with corresponding books from UCP and our distributed client presses.
“Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies”
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) was a pioneering Black visual artist and activist, known especially for her work in printmaking and sculpture. A major traveling retrospective, now on view at the Brooklyn Museum, gives this revelatory artist long-overdue attention. The show has already been reviewed widely, including landing on the New York Times list of exhibitions to see this fall.
The catalog, edited by curator Dalila Scruggs, features over two hundred color images, along with essays on a range of topics including Catlett’s development as an artist-activist, the impact of political exile on her work, her pedagogical legacy, her achievement as a social realist printmaker, her work with the arts community of Chicago’s South Side, and the diverse influences that shaped her practice.
Learn more about the show, and the catalog, and catch the show at its next stops in Washington, DC, and Chicago!
“Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction”
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
Throughout the twentieth century, textile art was often considered to be lower than other art forms like painting and sculpture, and this exhibition challenges those hierarchies that have long separated textiles from other art. Bringing together works by more than forty-five diverse creators, this exhibition features textile techniques from weaving to netting and felting.
The exhibition’s curator, Lynn Cooke, is also the editor of a corresponding book that showcases artists from the exhibition, including Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Anni Albers, Ed Rossbach, Ruth Asawa, Lenore Tawney, Liz Collins, and many more.
Learn more about the exhibition, and see the book here.
“Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde”
Grey Art Museum, New York, NY
This show at NYU’s Grey Art Museum highlights the art historical impacts of gallerist and art dealer Berthe Weill (1865-1951). Through her groundbreaking career as the first woman modern art dealer, she gave early exhibitions to some of the most famous modern artists—including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Amedeo Modigliani—as well as being an avid supporter of women artists. This exhibition celebrates Weill’s contributions as a gallerist, as a champion of art, and as a Jewish woman who overcame sexism, antisemitism, and economic disadvantages to promote the artists she loved.
Get the story of Weill’s life in her own words with Pow! Right in the Eye!, translated into English for the first time by William Rodarmor and edited by one of the exhibition’s curators, Lynn Gumpert. This provocative 1933 memoir offers rare insights into the world of the twentieth-century Parisian avant-garde and tells the history of Weill’s gallery that spanned four decades.
Learn more about the exhibition, and check out Pow! Right in the Eye!. You can also catch the exhibition in Montreal in 2025!
“Samia Halaby: Eye Witness”
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
Samia Halaby (b. Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, 1936) is widely recognized as a pioneer in twentieth-century abstraction and computer-generated art and as a leading scholar of Palestinian art. In the last twenty years, Halaby has expanded her practice to larger, more ambitious paintings and canvas-based assemblages. The exhibition, Samia Halaby: Eye Witness, follows her creative journey through a diverse array of paintings. Published by Hirmer and distributed by the University of Chicago Press, Samia Halaby: Centers of Energy explores the formal and thematic relationships across bodies of work by the artist.
Learn more about the exhibition and check out the book.
“Andrea Morales: Roll Down Like Water”
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN
Peruvian-American artist Andrea Morales, whose photographs honor her community in Memphis and the surrounding area, has her first major museum exhibition on view in Memphis. Informed by Movement Journalism, her work captures community life and activism in the American South, and she centers her practice on building a long-term collaborative relationship with the communities she photographs.
Andrea Morales: Roll Down Like Water, the first book on the artist, accompanies the exhibition and showcases a decade of work by the photographer. The catalog is published by Paul Holberton Publishing and distributed by the University of Chicago Press.
Learn more about the exhibition and check out the catalog.
All of these books are available now on our website. Use the code UCPNEW at checkout to take 30% off.