Welcome to Urban's Library Resources

This book chronicles the challenges of women artists, who are in some cases unknown to the general public, and places their achievements in the artistic and cultural context of early twentieth-century America. Contributors to this first book on the women artists of the Harlem Renaissance proclaim the legacy of Edmonia Lewis, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Augusta Savage, Selma Burke, Elizabeth Prophet, Lois Maillou Jones, Elizabeth Catlett, and many other painters, sculptors, and printmakers.

In Art on My Mind, bell hooks, a leading cultural critic, responds to the ongoing dialogues about producing, exhibiting, and criticizing art and aesthetics in an art world increasingly concerned with identity politics. hooks positions her writings on visual politics within the ever-present question of how art can be an empowering and revolutionary force within the black community.

Combining painted images, handwritten texts, and quilting techniques, Ringgold weaves together modernist painting; feminist critique; postmodernist strategies of appropriation, parody, and montage; and personal memoir in a remarkable synthesis that takes on European modernism, African American folk art, and the "black aesthetic" of the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1937, Edmondson became the first black artist to have a solo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Here, in twenty-three free-verse poems, award-winning poet Elizabeth Spires gives voice to Edmondson and his creations. With photographs by Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Edward Weston.

Stewart, the senior staff photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center, and a longtime friend of Bearden, photographed the artist from the late 1970s until Bearden's death in 1988. A select group of the b&w photos are collected in this volume, each accompanied by a brief caption of the places and people depicted, many of them African-American luminaries.

The first book on the drawings and works on paper of Jean-Michel Basquiat who was barely out of his teens when he rocketed to the center of New York's art scene.

Photographer, musician, writer and film director, Gordon Parks "was the first African American to produce and direct major motion pictures—developing films relating the experience of slaves and struggling black Americans, and creating the 'blaxploitation' genre."

An intimate look at James Van Derzee, one of twentieth century America's foremost photographers.

In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just twenty-three years old, completed a series of sixty small tempera paintings with text captions about the Great Migration. Within months of its making, Lawrence's Migration series was divided between The Museum of Modern Art (even numbered panels) and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (odd numbered panels). The work has since become a landmark in the history of African-American art, a monument in the collections of both institutions, and a crucial example of the way in which history painting was radically reimagined in the modern era.

A Matter of Fact, which accompanied an exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), showcases the work of Nigerian-born New York artist Toyin Ojih Odutola (b. 1985). Employing diverse mediums to emphasize the striated terrain of an image and its formulaic representations.

A full-length biographical and critical study of Romare Bearden, one of America's best-known collagists, including conversations with the artist as well as reminiscences by the artist's friends, family and colleagues.

Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance examines the cultural reawakening of Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s as a key moment in twentieth-century art history, one that transcended regional and racial boundaries.

The Sweet Flypaper of Life is a "poem" about ordinary people, about teenagers around a jukebox, about children at an open fire hydrant, about riding the subway alone at night, about picket lines and artist work spaces. This renowned, life-affirming collaboration between artist Roy DeCarava and writer Langston Hughes honors in words and pictures what the authors saw, knew, and felt deeply about life in their city. "The people in these photographs had no walls up. They just accepted me and permitted me to take their photographs without any self-consciousness." --Roy DeCarava

Known for his oversize paintings of contemporary African-Americans in heroic poses inspired by the great history and portrait painters of the past, Kehinde Wiley's clever and ironic "reversals" have provided rich commentary on the nature of race and power in our society.

African American art from its beginnings in Colonial America up to the present day. From early folk art to contemporary paintings, prints, and sculpture, a selection of 107 full-color illustrations.

Nature Swagger presents thirty life-changing stories of self-discovery, courage, and healing in the natural world. Told through first-person narratives, essays, and poems, this uplifting collection celebrates the many ways that outdoor spaces offer Black people opportunities for personal empowerment, connection, and rejuvenation.

145 original portraits that celebrates Black pioneers--famous and little-known--in politics, science, literature, music, and more, with biographical reflections, all created and curated by an award-winning graphic designer.