This rich, colorful retrospective celebrates the offbeat, inspired, and highly original artistic career of San Francisco-born painter Joan Brown. This exhibition catalog accompanies a retrospective exhibition of prolific San Francisco-born painter Joan Brown (1938-1990), the first significant survey of her work in more than twenty years. Joan Brown charts the turns and devotions of a vision that was once dismissed by critics as unserious but was in fact rooted firmly in research and impassioned curiosity that remains uniquely compelling today. Deeply embedded in the Bay Area art scene, Brown drew inspiration from many sources to create a charmingly offbeat body of work that merges autobiography, fantasy, and whimsy with weightier metaphysical and spiritual imagery and themes. Featuring texts by curators Janet Bishop and Nancy Lim as well as essays by Solomon Adler, Marci Kwon, and Helen Molesworth, this lavishly illustrated book establishes Brown's relationship to the self and family, to art history, and to her wider artistic community, while examining the unique materiality of her paintings and exploring her singular vision. In addition, select Brown works will be paired with commentaries by contemporary artists ranging from friends and peers, such as Ron Nagle, to younger artists inspired by her work, such as Woody De Othello. Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Exhibition dates: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 19, 2022-March 12, 2023 Carnegie Museum of Art, May-September 2023

The beautiful catalogue that accompanies the critically-acclaimed exhibition currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum Best known for her striking drawings of ocean surfaces, begun in 1968 and revisited over many years both in drawings and paintings, Vija Celmins (b. 1938) has been creating exquisitely detailed renderings of natural imagery for more than five decades. The oceans were followed by desert floors and night skies-all subjects in which vast, expansive distances are distilled into luminous, meticulous, and mesmerizing small-scale artworks. For Celmins, this obsessive "redescribing" of the world is a way to understand human consciousness in relation to lived experience. The first major publication on the artist in twenty years, this comprehensive and lavishly illustrated volume explores the full range of Celmins's work produced since the 1960s-drawings and paintings as well as sculpture and prints. Scholarly essays, a narrative chronology, and a selection of excerpts from interviews with the artist illuminate her methods and techniques; survey her early years in Los Angeles, where she was part of a circle that included James Turrell and Ken Price; and trace the development of her work after she moved to New York City and befriended figures such as Robert Gober and Richard Serra. Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Schedule: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (12/15/18-03/31/19) Art Gallery of Ontario (05/04/19-08/04/19) The Met Breuer, New York (09/24/19-01/12/20)

A major survey of contemporary artist Hung Liu, whose layered portraits explore history and memory through the stories of marginalized figures Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands presents the stunning work of this contemporary Chinese American artist. Liu (1948-2021) blends painting and photography to offer new frameworks for understanding portraiture in relation to time, memory, and history. Often working from photographs, she uses portraiture to elevate overlooked subjects, amplifying the stories of those who have historically been invisible or unheard. This richly illustrated book examines six decades of Liu's painting, photography, and drawing. Author Dorothy Moss illuminates the importance of family photographs in Liu's work; Nancy Lim examines the origins of Liu's artistic practice; Lucy R. Lippard explores issues of identity and multiculturalism; and Elizabeth Partridge focuses on Liu's recent series based on Dorothea Lange's Depression-era photographs. Philip Tinari, along with artists Amy Sherald and Carrie Mae Weems, among others, conveys Liu's impact on contemporary art. Having lived through war, political revolution, exile, and displacement, Liu paints a complex picture of an Asian Pacific American experience. Her portraits speak powerfully to those seeking a better life, in the United States and elsewhere. Published in association with the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Exhibition Schedule: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (August 27, 2021-May 29, 2022)