After Many Springs is the title of a Thomas Hart Benton painting that evokes nostalgia for a fertile, creative time gone by. This bold new book--taking the name of this work by Benton--examines the intersections between Regionalist and Modernist paintings, photography, and film during the Great Depression, a period when the two approaches to art making were perhaps at their zenith. It is commonly believed that Regionalist artists Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood reacted to the economic and social devastation of their era by harking back in tranquil bucolic paintings to a departed utopia. However, this volume compares their work to that of photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn and filmmakers such as Josef von Sternberg-all of whom documented the desolation of the Depression-and finds surprising commonalities. The book also notes intriguing connections between Regionalist artists and Modernists Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston, countering prevailing assumptions that Regionalism was an anathema to these New York School painters and showing their shared fascination with the Midwest. Distributed for the Des Moines Art Center Exhibition Schedule: Des Moines Art Center (January 30 - May 17, 2009)

"Animations" accompanies the first museum exhibition to focus on the films and videos of the acclaimed contemporary German artist and photographer Thomas Demand (born 1964). Demand is best known for his large-scale color photographs of objects or sites taken from images in the popular media, which he painstakingly reconstructs in paper. With these new films and videos, Demand has taken this practice to the next stage, extending his investigations in to real time and space by animating his paper constructions. The primary focus of the volume is the two-minute tour de force video entitled "Pacific Sun," which takes place in a cruise ship bar during a violent storm at sea. This volume--the first to survey Demand's films and videos--brings these latest works back full circle, but as video stills. Also included is a major essay on the artist by the acclaimed photo critic Michael Fried.