An essential primer on collecting Black art that expertly blends the passion of an art student with the expertise of an...
A connoisseur offers advice for collecting African American works of art.
With an MBA in finance and a master’s degree in museum studies from Harvard (and a forthcoming doctorate in art education from Columbia), Moore has both a keen artistic eye and practical know-how on the ins and outs of the business of art collection. He acknowledges the structural barriers that have long confronted African American artists, but he believes that they’ve become “pillars” of today’s art scene. Museums from Los Angeles to Atlanta have seen an inclusive “curatorial shift,” he says, as “exhibitions rooted in the Black American identity” have become commonplace. The book’s first section offers guidance to novices interested in African American art, including a brief history lesson regarding important Black creators, from the early 20th century’s Norman Lewis and Jacob Lawrence to contemporary sensations, such as Tschabalala Self. The book is full of practical tips, with chapter topics that include general information on art museums and fairs, art schools, and auctions. The book’s second half profiles a cross-section of modern collectors of African American art, including actor Hill Harper, former Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Keith Rivers, and tech entrepreneur Everette Taylor. The collectors discuss their love of varied aesthetics found in Black art, but many also emphasize their “socially conscious” approach to collecting. This book deals in a cultural realm that many people associate with elitism, but Moore’s writing style is always accessible and geared toward neophytes, and his advice effectively emphasizes “economical…methods on which we can educate ourselves in the art world.” However, many readers will be disappointed by the lack of images of actual artworks in a work devoted to art. Still, the book provides ample, useful reference materials, including a detailed glossary of art terms and an annotated bibliography of introductory texts on art criticism and theory as well as on African American history and culture.
An essential primer on collecting Black art that expertly blends the passion of an art student with the expertise of an insider.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73517-080-0
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Petite Ivy Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing, rigorously documented study of a 20th-century literary trailblazer.
A penetrating exploration of the life and work of the acclaimed novelist, memoirist, and pioneering figure in gay culture.
While Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) may be best known for Goodbye to Berlin, which drew on his experiences in Weimar-era Berlin and inspired the musical Cabaret, this new biography by Bucknell, director of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, astutely highlights the considerable merits of his other novels and candid autobiographical works. The author renders a sweeping portrait of Isherwood's remarkable life journey, during which he forged indelible connections with many of the era's preeminent literary and artistic figures. Early on, Isherwood moved within an influential circle of writers that included W.H. Auden, E.M. Forster, and Steven Spender. In 1939, he moved to Hollywood and pursued screenwriting, while also initiating a spiritual conversion to Vedanta under the guidance of Indian monk Swami Prabhavananda. Over the ensuing years, his vast circle expanded, bringing in Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and David Hockney, among others. Bucknell dedicates perhaps too many pages to Isherwood's early years, privileged upbringing, Cambridge education, and elements of his complex family dynamics (including his father's death in World War II and his suffocating relationship with his mother), but this detailed exploration lays the foundation for her explorations of her subject’s later writing and the complexities that shaped his intimate relationships, particularly his romances with various men at different stages of his life, most enduringly with artist Don Bachardy. Throughout, Bucknell urgently draws attention to Isherwood’s courageous life as an openly gay man and his vital role in advancing gay liberation through his writing: "He saw from his career's outset that he must make homosexuality attractive to mainstream audiences if he was to change their view of it, and he worked to do this in all his writing in different ways.”
An engrossing, rigorously documented study of a 20th-century literary trailblazer.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780374119362
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
