Suggested Reading List | December 2021
As we approach the end of 2021, we asked our fellow staff members to share some of the books that impacted them the most this past year. Check out a handful of our picks. Read More
Object Lesson: The Arctic Regions
The images in this massive book were the first published photographs from the Arctic. In 1869, William Bradford, an adventuresome painter known for his Arctic seascapes and ship paintings, secured funding from businessman LeGrand Lockwood and chartered a steamship, The Panther, for a voyage to Greenland. He invited photographers John L. Dunmore and George Critcherson to join him on the expedition. During a three-month summer journey, the group produced drawings, texts, and photographs that were published in the lavish tome on display at NOMA in A Brief History of Photography and Transmission. Read More
Art-Making Activity: Produce Prints
Inspired by the act of translation—the way meaning can shift across contexts of cultures—Caroline Kent’s paintings contain secret codes and hidden messages. Painted against black backdrops, the shapes in her paintings are often inspired by architecture, foreign languages, and film. She thinks of her compositions almost like musical scores, dance, choreography, or scripts; a way of imagining new ways of moving through the world. Read More
Object Lesson: Junichi Arai
Innovative fabrics that can be blunt like concrete or ethereal like clouds sprung from the imagination of Japanese designer Junichi Arai, but were made possible through studied innovation and technological experimentation. A shimmering blue and silver textile by the artist is currently on view at NOMA in the exhibition Atomic Number 13: Aluminum in 20th-Century Design, representing the metal’s role in artistic experimentation by the end of the century. Read More
Art-Making Activity: Writing in Relief
Enrique Alférez (1901–99) was a Mexican artist who lived and worked in New Orleans and whose artistry is admired worldwide. Symbols of Communication is a large-scale, bas-relief mural sculpted by Alférez that was originally created for the New Orleans Times-Picayune Building in 1967, then acquired by NOMA in 2020. The mural celebrates the diversity of human culture and our shared desire to tell stories, communicate, and connect with one another through language and symbols. Read More