The NOMA Book Club meets monthly to discuss fiction and nonfiction books related to art in NOMA’s collection and exhibitions. It is an informal group open to anyone on a month-to-month basis. You do not have to attend every meeting or read every book! In addition to monthly book discussions, the Book Club meets periodically for curatorial programs related to the book selections. Books are selected in advance and planned for the entire year according to the exhibition schedule. Participants are expected to procure their own copy of the selected titles. Meetings are held in person or via Zoom, determined at the beginning of each month. All meetings begin at 12 pm.

For more information on the NOMA Book Club please contact NOMA’s Curator of Education, Tracy Kennan, at tkennan@noma.org or (504) 658-4113.

JANUARY

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel
Back Bay Books, 2019, ISBN: 9780316226172

Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting—not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come. Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.

CURATORIAL PROGRAM | FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 12 pm with Katie Pfohl, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

BOOK DISCUSSION | FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 12 pm