At various intervals between 1931 and 1945, Georgia O'Keeffe (18871986) completed seventeen drawings and paintings of katsina tithu ("kachina dolls"), the painted-wood representations of spirit beings carved by Native American artist -- especially Hopi and Zuni -- that have long played an important role in Pueblo and Hopi ceremonialism. O'Keeffe never explained how or why she became interested in these Native American carvings. Because she gave generic titles to her paintings of them except those works depicting Kokopelli, she may not have been aware of their specific names, meaning, or functions. But the artist always took inspiration from her immediate environment, whether working abstractly or representationally, often seeking subjects that conveyed her feelings for or experiences of specific places; her depictions of Native American spirit beings were no exception. As she later pointed out, "My pictures are my statement of a personal experience". The book, which accompanies a touring exhibition of fifty-three works by the artist, features fifteen drawings and paintings of katsina subjects made between 1931 and 1941 and thirty-eight additional works made between 1929 and 1953 that resulted from her deep exploration of the distinctive architecture and cultural objects of Northern New Mexico's Hispanic and Native American communities. Also included are numerous landscape paintings, a subject O'Keeffe addressed most consistently during her career. The book also features contributions by noted art historian W. Jackson Rushing III, Hopi weaver Ramona Sakiestewa, Hopi artist Dan Namingha, and Hopi tribal leader and author Alph H Secakuku. Rushing discusses O'Keeffe and other modernist painters, including Emil Bistram, Fred Kabotie, and Gustave Baumann, in their approach to Native subjects; Sakiestewa writes about O'Keeffe's katsina paintings and the influence the artist had on her own designs; Secakuku explicates katsinam ceremonalism; and Namingha is interviewed about katsina imagery in his work.

Miguel Covarrubias enjoyed transcultural encounters and exchanges in the cosmopolitan centers of Mexico City, New York, and Europe, where he met and exchanged ideas in a global network of modernists such as Georgia O'Keeffe. Famous for his caricature studies, he was also an accomplished painter, set designer, and book illustrator. Less well known are his consummate skills as an art historian, curator, cartographer, ethnographer, and documentary filmmaker, as well as his direction of programs in museum studies, dance, and the excavation of cultural sites in Mexico.

Miguel Covarrubias: Drawing a Cosmopolitan Line, the catalogue of an exhibition at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, establishes the importance of Covarrubias's broad-ranging and significant contributions to modern art. The book includes an extensive selection of this prolific artist's compositions in graphite, watercolor, and oil paint, as well as illustrations from his scholarly publications. Four accompanying essays consider Covarrubias's artistic practice and contributions to the richness of modern art. They discuss his lifelong habit of moving between modern cities and remote sites of ancient cultures, which engendered a strong cosmopolitanism in his work; his role in promoting the art of the Americas, from ancient Olmec works to contemporary pieces, through curatorial efforts in New York and Mexico City; the large-scale mural maps Covarrubias made for the 1939 San Francisco World's Fair that bring his anthropological, ethnographic, and geographic interests together with cartography and blur lines between landscape and culture; and his substantial scholarship on the indigenous arts of North America.