The task of the present publication is to show how the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) has sought to initiate new narratives and histories of art through a wide selection of acquisitions during 2002-07 of the MACBA Collection. The book includes essays by Manuel J. Borja-Villel, Kaira M. Cabanas and Jorge Ribalta.

The profile of Latin American abstract art in North America and Europe has dramatically increased over the past decade or so, thanks in large part to the activities of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection. However, this is the first publication to specifically address the Concrete and Neoconcrete movements, spanning the 1930s through to the 1970s, and focusing on centers of activity throughout Latin America, in cities such as Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Caracas. In these decades, artists such as Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Jesus Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Judith Lauand, Geraldo de Barros, Hermelindo Fiaminghi, Luiz Sacilotto, Willys de Castro and Ferreira Gullar infused European Concrete art with fresh energy and warmth, extending it into the realms of performance and interactive sculpture (as seen in the works of Clark, Pape and Oiticica). The book organizes this rich range of work into five thematic sections: "Geometry," "Illusion," "Dialogue," "Vibration" and "Universalism." Accompanying an exhibition at the Reina Sofia, "Concrete Invention" also includes texts by several of the artists; an essay by sound artist and scholar Steve Roden; a questionnaire on the legacy of these movements answered by Luis Camnitzer, Jesus Carillo, Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy and Ana Longoni; and a series of geometric-abstract gatefolds designed for the catalogue by Jose Leon Cerrillo.

New exhibition catalogue on Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers. Marcel Broodthaers's work is characterized by a complex exploration of the relationship of text and image. This catalog raisonne, prepared by WIELS and developed in close collaboration with the Marcel Broodthaers Succession, is the first to include all of the Belgian conceptual artist's industrial poems created between 1968 and 1972. Borrowing from the aesthetics of industrially manufactured plastic signs, Broodthaers's multi-layered, often enigmatic pictorial poems testify to his interest in the entanglements of language, punctuation, and symbols. In blurring the boundaries between word and image, painting and object, new levels of meaning are made visible. The index is supplemented by a collection of Broodthaers's drawings, writings and "open letters" as well as scholarly contributions that position the poems as a crucial group of works within the artist's oeuvre.

Art History and Emergency assesses art history's role and responsibilities in what has been described as the "humanities crisis"-the perceived decline in the practical applications of the humanities in modern times. This timely collection of critical essays and creative pieces addresses several thought-provoking questions on the subject. For instance, as this so-called crisis is but the latest of many, what part has "crisis" played in the humanities' history? How are artists, art historians, and professionals in related disciplines responding to current pressures to prove their worth? How does one defend the practical value of knowing how to think deeply about objects and images without losing the intellectual intensity that characterizes the best work in the discipline? Does art history as we know it have a future? Distributed for the Clark Art Institute

Geometric abstraction found its most dynamic, sensual and enduring expression in Latin America. Between 1930 and 1970, concrete, neoconcrete art and other varieties of abstraction thrived on this continent as nowhere else, and nowhere is this rich vein better documented than in the famous Cisneros Collection. This volume draws on the collection to showcase works from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, all of which are contextualized with historical and artistic documents and essays. Among the many artists gathered in this definitive overview are Carmelo Arden-Quin, Wilys de Castro, Lygia Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Carmen Herrera, Anna Maria Maiolino, Tomas Maldonado, Jose Mijares, Helio Oiticica, Alejandro Otero, Lygia Pape, Mira Schendel, Lolo Soldevilla, Rafael Soriano, Jesus Rafael Soto and Joaquin Torres-Garcia.