This book presents an audacious account of the ways in which the arts in the Americas were modernized during the first half of the twentieth century. Rather than viewing modernization as a steady progression from one 'ism' to another, Edward J. Sullivan adopts a comparative approach, drawing his examples from North America, the Caribbean, Central and South America. By considering the Americas in this hemispheric sense he is able to tease out many stories of art and focus on the ways in which artists from different regions not only adapted and experimented with visual expression, but also absorbed trans-national as well as international influences. He shows how this rich diversity is most evident in the various forms of abstract art that emerged throughout the Americas and which in turn had an impact on art throughout the world.

An overdue evaluation of the life and work of a prolific and significant contemporary artist Cuban-born artist Carmen Herrera (b. 1915) has painted for more than seven decades, though it is only in recent years that acclaim for her work has catapulted the artist to international prominence. This handsome volume offers the first sustained examination of her early career from 1948-78, which spans the art worlds of Havana, Paris, and New York. Essays consider the artist's early studies in Cuba, her involvement with the Salon des Realites Nouvelles in post-war Paris, and her groundbreaking New York output, as well as situate her work in the context of a broader Latin American avant-garde art. An essay by Dana Miller considers Herrera's New York work of the 1950s through the 1970s, when Herrera was arriving at and perfecting her signature style of hard edge abstraction. Personal family photographs from Herrera's archive enrich the narrative, and a chronology addressing the entirety of her life and career features additional documentary images. Over 80 works are illustrated as color plates, making this book the most extensive representation of Herrera's work to date. Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art Exhibition Schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art (09/16/16-01/02/17) Wexner Center for the Arts (02/04/17-04/16/17)

In The Americas Revealed, distinguished art historian and curator Edward J. Sullivan brings together a vibrant group of essays that explore the formation, in the United States, of public and private collections of art from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas. The contributors to this volume trace the major milestones and emerging approaches to collecting and presenting Spanish Colonial and modern Latin American art by museums, galleries, private collections, and corporations from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. In chronicling the roles played by determined collectors from New York to San Francisco, the essays examine a range of subjects from MoMA’s mid-twentieth-century acquisition strategies to the growing taste on the West Coast for the work of Diego Rivera. They consider the impact of various political shifts on art collecting, from reactions against the “American exceptionalism” of the Monroe Doctrine to the aesthetic biases of government-sponsored art academies in Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, and Havana. The final three chapters focus on living collectors such as Roberta and Richard Huber, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and Estrellita B. Brodsky. A thorough and definitive account of the changing course of private and public collections and their important connection to underlying political and cultural relations between the United States and Latin American countries, this volume gives a rare glimpse into the practice of collecting from the collectors’ own point of view. In addition to the editor, contributors to this volume are Miriam Margarita Basilio, Estrellita B. Brodsky, Vanessa K. Davidson, Anna Indych-López, Ronda Kasl, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Berit Potter, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Joseph Rishel, Delia Solomons, and Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt.