Books
"I smile at the pile of books I found waiting for me here, wonder how
many will get read, and whether I shall be the wiser for having read them."
-Bernard Berenson in a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner, August 1, 1906
Illuminated manuscripts, a photograph of Walt Whitman, and even a lock of Nathaniel Hawthorne's hair: are just a few of the treasures in the vast collection of books, letters, and memorabilia that Isabella Stewart Gardner amassed.
Gift at the Gardner offers an eclectic array of books: from art history to poetry, literature to young readers, and more, start your literary collection with our featured titles today!
100 Churches of Venice and the Lagoon
$60.00
An in-depth guide to Venetian culture and history through its houses of worship
Begun in 2014 by Ecuadorian-born, New York–based photographer Alejandro Merizalde (born 1979), 100 Churches of Venice and the Lagoon documents religious temples from every sestiere of Venice and the smaller towns of the Venetian lagoon. What began as a small challenge of photographing just the Grand Canal’s churches quickly grew in scope to include every neighborhood in the city. From Murano to Burano and Torcello, from Pellestrina to Chioggia, and deep into the northern lagoon to areas such as Lio Piccolo and Treporti, Merizalde photographed their respective churches whether they remained in service or were deconsecrated or repurposed. The layout of these images emphasizes the facade, relying on subtle repetitions for aesthetic continuity and balance. An essay by Marina Gasparini Lagrange combines her experience living in Venice with a poignant historical perspective.
By Alejandro Merizalde with contributions by Marina Gasparini Lagrange
112 pages
Published by Damiani, 2021
Hardcover
9.06 x 9.06 inches
A Bedtime Full of Stories
$22.99
Look forward to bedtime with this richly illustrated treasury of 50 bedtime stories from around the world, each the perfect length to read aloud.
There’s always time for a bedtime story, so snuggle up and get ready to drift off to the land of nod with this collection of magical tales that includes both well-known classics and lesser-known treasures from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania, North America, the Middle East and Latin America.
These folktales and legends, accompanied by enchanting and dream-like illustrations, are each the perfect length for a bedtime story, and will transport children around the world as well as into fantasy lands.
- The Emperor’s New Clothes – Denmark
- The Bag of Winds – Greece
- How Cheetah Got His Speed – South Africa
- The Moon Maiden – Japan
- The Star Hunt – New Zealand
- The Crow and the Daylight – North America
- Aladdin – Syria
- The Three Dreams – Guatemala
Collected and retold by award-winning author Angela McAllister and beautifully illustrated by Anna Shepeta, this anthology will be treasured by story lovers both young and old.
By Angela McAllister with illustrations by Anna Shepeta
128 pages
Published by World Full of...,2021
Hardcover
9.7 x 0.75 x 11.1 inches
A Christmas Carol
$26.00
After reading Christmas Carol, the notoriously reclusive Thomas Carlyle was “seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality” and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens' other Christmas writings, it has had a lasting and significant influence upon our ideas about the Christmas spirit, and about the season as a time for celebration, charity, and memory.
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings by Charles Dickens
- A Dickens Chronology
- Introduction
- Further Reading
- A Note on the Christmas Festivities
The Story Of The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton
A Christmas Episode From Master Humphrey’s Clock
A Christmas Carol
The Haunted Man And The Ghost’s Bargain
A Christmas Tree
What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older
The Seven Poor Travellers
Appendix I: Dickens’s Prefaces to Collected Editions of The Christmas Books
Appendix II: Dickens’s Descriptive Headlines for A Christmas Carol and The Haunted Man
Appendix III: Dickens and The Arabian Nights
Notes
336 pages
Published by Penguin Classics, 2010
Hardcover
5 x 7.75 inches
A Dead Name That Learned How To Live
$20.00
–from SUPER-HUMAN
An honest lyric, a mighty harpoon straight from the heart, Golden’s debut full-length, A Dead Name That Learned How To Live weaves poems, family photographs, and self-portraits to share a journey of survival and living in the American south. Exploring themes of loss and legacy, nation and love language, forgiveness and fortitude, Blackness and being, Golden continually asks–What shifts within and around us when we choose to name ourselves and our kin here–our tragedy and triumphs, our human failures and feelings, our desires to be free? Releasing on their parent’s 30th wedding anniversary (August 29th, 2022) as a dedicated love letter and living archive, this debut is an awe and ode towards southern Virginia & Eastern Shore Maryland, Black family pasts, presents, and futures, to Black queer beginnings and belongings outside and within the family home.
By Golden
Published by Game Over Books, 2022
A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve
$29.95
With recipes by 41 popular chefs and food writers such as Alice Waters, Yotam Ottolenghi and Marcus Samuelsson, this cookbook focuses on the many uses of date syrup
Date syrup has been central to Iraqi cooking and home life for centuries. In this unique book, a fusion of contemporary art and food, Chicago-based Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz (born 1973) and 41 celebrated chefs present delicious dishes using this staple of Middle Eastern cuisine.
Written by Michael Rakowitz
240 pages
Published by D.A.P., 2019
Hardcover
6.5 x 8.75 inches
A Pile of Leaves
$18.95
Turn the see-through pages of this clever collage to dig into the surprising leaf pile!
By Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin24 pages
Published by Phaidon Press, 2018
Board book
7.6 x 7.6 inches
A Ritual Geology
$27.95
Set against the ongoing corporate enclosure of West Africa’s goldfields, A Ritual Geology tells the untold history of one of the world’s oldest indigenous gold mining industries: Francophone West Africa’s orpaillage. Establishing African miners as producers of subterranean knowledge, Robyn d’Avignon uncovers a dynamic “ritual geology” of techniques and cosmological engagements with the earth developed by agrarian residents of gold-bearing rocks in savanna West Africa. Colonial and corporate exploration geology in the region was built upon the ritual knowledge, gold discoveries, and skilled labor of African miners even as states racialized African mining as archaic, criminal, and pagan. Spanning the medieval and imperial past to the postcolonial present, d’Avignon weaves together long-term ethnographic and oral historical work in southeastern Senegal with archival and archeological evidence from Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Mali. A Ritual Geology introduces transnational geological formations as a new regional framework for African studies, environmental history, and anthropology.
By Robyn d'Avignon
328 pages
Published by Duke University Press Books, 2022
Paperback
6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
A Short Biography of Henry David Thoreau
$9.95
This short biography chronicles the life of Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) the 19th Century writer and philosopher from Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau was best known as a Naturalist, and his journals are filled with daily observations of the flora and fauna of Concord. He was also an Abolitionist and was involved with the Underground Railroad; his 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience” would influence Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 20th Century.
The Short Biographies series from Applewood's Benna Books imprint features short, intriguing, and entertaining biographies of world-renowned figures. Each beautiful hardcover book includes an interesting retelling of a single person's life, suitable for young adults and adults alike. These little gems will become beloved souvenirs of a favorite artist.
By Richard Smith
Part of the Short Biographies Series
32 pages
Published by Applewood Books, 2018
Hardcover
4.2 x 0.3 x 5.8 inches
A Short Biography of James Abbott McNeill Whistler
$9.95
The Short Biographies series from Applewood's Benna Books imprint features short, intriguing, and entertaining biographies of world-renowned figures. Each beautiful hardcover book includes an interesting retelling of a single person's life, suitable for young adults and adults alike. These little gems will become beloved souvenirs of a favorite artist.
By Henri-Pierre Corbacho
Part of the Short Biographies Series
32 pages
Published by Applewood Books, 2017
Hardcover
4.2 x 0.3 x 6.8 inches
A Stage Full of Shakespeare
$24.99
Step on to a stage full of stories with this beautiful anthology of 12 stories from Shakespeare, re-told to be accessible for children.
Get lost in Shakespeare’s most loved stories with this beautiful anthology of some of the most popular stories in the world. Introduce the children in your life to a collection of the most important stories every written, collected and retold by the much-loved author Angela McAllister. Featuring classics such as The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Othello, each story is rewritten in a comprehensive way that is accessible for children. This perfectly sized anthology is stunningly illustrated by collage artist Alice Lindstrom whose incredible artwork makes these stories dance to life before your very eyes.
128 pages
Published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2018
Hardcover
9.30 x 11.10 inches
A World Full of Nature Stories: 50 Folk Tales and Legends
$24.99
This beautiful book of stories takes readers on a journey with 50 tales, featuring themes of nature from all around the world.
Sit back, get comfortable, and delve into this beautifully illustrated collection of beloved nature stories from every corner of the globe.
This rich resource collects together folk tales from home and legends and myths from distant lands to commemorate the animals, plants, and the changing seasons that make planet Earth so beautiful.
The folktales and fables in this book will capture imaginations and take readers on a journey around the world. Learn about:
- The Peruvian tale of Cuniraya and the Magic Fruit,
- The story of how lightning began according to an ancient Khasi folk tale from India,
- From Ireland, the story of The Bee, the Mouse, and the Beetle,
- The Master of the Winds in the ancient Iroquois story of The Four Winds,
- Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack from North American folklore, and
- Spain's Queen of the Flowers, who is brought to life one night by a magical fairy.
Lively retellings from best-selling author Angela McAllister are brought to life with beautiful illustrations from Hannah Bess Ross, in this nature anthology to treasure for a lifetime. For story lovers young and old this is the perfect gift for all the family and nature lovers everywhere.
By Angela McAllister, illustrated by Hannah Bess Ross
128 pages
Published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2022
Hardcover
9.75 x 0.65 x 11.1 inches
Adam Pendleton
$49.95
The first encompassing publication on the work of the groundbreaking American artist Adam Pendleton (Gardner Artist-in-Residence, 2008)
Adam Pendleton's original and powerful body of work has been described as the embodiment of a new era. His multifaceted projects, which include painting, collage, film, and publishing, re-contextualize historical and theoretical positions on abstraction, blackness, and the avant-garde. Working predominantly in black-and-white, Pendleton often creates 'total works' that envelop viewers and push the limits of contemporary discourse.
Written by Adrienne Edwards, Alec Mapes Frances, Andréa Picard160 pages
Published by Phaidon, 2020
Paperback
11.38 x 9.88 inches
Adam Pendleton: As Heavy As Sculpture
$100.00
An artist's book exploring the language of protest
A new artist's book by Adam Pendleton (born 1984), As Heavy as Sculpture follows Pendleton's 2021 installation of the same title, exhibited at the New Museum in New York. The book collects, repeats and processes over 80 source collages, incorporating drawings, sketches, writing and marks, often in combination with images.
Much of the language in the collages is drawn from the protests against police brutality that swept the US in 2020: Pendleton has transcribed slogans sprayed on walls and windows, combining them with his own improvised language as well as photographs of art objects and artifacts (sculptures, masks and figures). The work points to the poetic pressure that uprisings place on language itself, compressing it in some cases into the barest of forms: simple sequences like “ACAB” or “1312,” further reducible to the elements “A, B, C,” “1, 2, 3.”
In parallel with these operations of decomposition and recomposition, the collages in As Heavy as Sculpture have been duplicated, laid out across 30 sheets and folded into book signatures, creating new displacements and cuts. This folding is in effect a chance operation, a procedure of recombination and translation, resulting in arrangements of images not planned out in advance.
By Adam Pendleton
480 pages
Published by D.A.P., 2021
Hardcover
6.5 x 8.74 inches
Adam Pendleton: Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths
$45.00
The sequel to Pendleton's acclaimed Black Dada Reader, compiling an anti-canon of radical experimentation and thought
In 2011, artist Adam Pendleton (born 1984) assembled Black Dada Reader, a compendium of texts, documents and positions that elucidated a practice and ethos of "Black Dada." Resembling a school course reader, the book was a spiral-bound series of photocopies and collages, originally intended only for personal reference, and eventually distributed informally to friends and colleagues. The contents―an unlikely mix of Hugo Ball, W.E.B. Du Bois, Adrian Piper, Gertrude Stein, Sun Ra, Stokely Carmichael, Gilles Deleuze―formed a kind of experimental canon, realized through what Pendleton calls "radical juxtaposition."
By Thomas Hirschhorn, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Joan Jonas Lorraine O'Grady, and Joan Retallack
448 pages
Published by DABA/Koenig Books, 2021
Hardcover
8.03 x 1.81 x 10.63 inches
Adam Pendleton: These Things We've Done Together
$60.00
Multimedia paintings and drawings from Pendleton’s acclaimed Untitled (WE ARE NOT) and Black Dada series and more
The catalog for Adam Pendleton’s (born 1984) 2022 exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, his first solo show in Canada, These Things We’ve Done Together features new monumental paintings from the Untitled (WE ARE NOT) series, which combine language and abstraction to erase distinctions between writing, drawing, painting and photography. Similar abstract gestures are reimagined and reexamined in a group of works on Mylar that combine layers of gestures and geometric shapes. In a third set of works―the latest iterations of Pendleton’s Black Dada drawings―he incorporates images of sprays, splatters and drips of paint from his studio walls. Supplementing these artworks is an interview between Pendleton and curator Mary-Dailey Desmarais, as well as a portfolio of 73 studio photos documenting traces of the physical and mental activity that drives his painting process.
By Adam Pendleton and Mary-Dailey Desmarais
144 pages
Published by Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2023
Hardcover
13.8 x 0.7 x 9.3 inches
Adam Pendleton: Who is Queen
$45.00
In this primer accompanying Adam Pendleton’s MoMA show, the artist behind “Black Dada” fuses musical counterpoint with the aesthetics of protest
Adam Pendleton draws on visual culture and historical archives to explore the ways in which context influences meaning. Referencing a broad range of artistic and cultural currents―including Dada, Minimalism and Black Power―Pendleton reconfigures words, forms and images to provoke critical questioning.
Published to accompany Pendleton's installation at the Museum of Modern Art, this reader serves as a primer and handbook to the exhibition and features a number of photocopied textual and visual sources, many of which directly relate to the concept, content and programming of the exhibition. The project questions the notion of the museum as repository and addresses the influence that mass movements, including those of the last decade such as Black Lives Matter and Occupy, could have on the exhibition as form. Drawing on the work of figures as disparate as Glenn Gould, Michael Hardt and Ruby Sales, Who Is Queen? seeks to explore the nexus of abstraction and politics.
Edited by Alec Mapes-Frances with introduction by Stuart Comer, and contributions by Adrienne Edwards, Mario Gooden, Danielle A. Jackson, Lynne Tillman
272 pages
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2021
Hardcover
Africa State of Mind
$60.00
A vibrant photographic anthology that presents the work of a generation of image makers who are forging new visions of Africa.
Africa State of Mind gathers together the work of an emergent generation of photographers from across the continent, exploring Africa as a psychological space as much as a geographical one. Both a summation of new photographic practice from the last decade and a compelling survey of the ways in which contemporary African photographers are engaging with ideas of “Africanness,” Africa State of Mind is a timely collection of those photographers seeking to capture the experience of what it means to “be African.”
Presented in four thematic sections―“Hybrid Cities,” “Inner Landscapes,” “Zones of Freedom,” and “Myth and Memory”―each part presents selections of work by a new wave of African photographers who are looking both outward and inward: capturing life among the sprawling cities of the continent, turning the continent’s history into the source of resonant new myths, and exploring questions of gender, sexuality, and identity.
With over 300 photographs by more than fifty photographers, Africa State of Mind is a mesmerizing survey of the most dynamic scenes in contemporary photography and an introduction to the creative figures making them.
By Ekow Eshun
272 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2020
Hardcover
9.1 x 1.2 x 11.4 inches
All the Flowers Kneeling
$18.00
A profound meditation on physical, emotional, and psychological transformation in the aftermath of imperial violence and interpersonal abuse, from a poet both “tender and unflinching” (Khadijah Queen)
Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran's debut poetry collection All the Flowers Kneeling investigates intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. imperialism in order to radically alter our understanding of freedom, power, and control. In poems of desire, gender, bodies, legacies, and imagined futures, Tran’s poems elucidate the complex and harrowing processes of reckoning and recovery, enhanced by innovative poetic forms that mirror the nonlinear emotional and psychological experiences of trauma survivors. At once grand and intimate, commanding and deeply vulnerable, All the Flowers Kneeling revels in rediscovering and reconfiguring the self, and ultimately becomes an essential testament to the human capacity for resilience, endurance, and love.
By Paul Tran
112 pages
Published by Penguin Books, 2022
Paperback
6.19 x 0.32 x 8.98 inches
All This Could Be Different: A Novel
$18.00
From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first-century America
Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She’s moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, grueling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, and send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women—soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach.
But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It’s then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.
A beautiful and capacious novel rendered in singular, unforgettable prose, All This Could Be Different is a wise, tender, and riveting group portrait of young people forging love and community amidst struggle, and a moving story of one immigrant’s journey to make her home in the world.
By Sarah Thankam Mathews
320 pages
Published by Penguin Books, 2023
Paperback
5.14 x 0.66 x 8 inches
American Victorians and Virgin Nature
$16.00
This volume draws on cultural geography, museology, gender studies, and art history to explore nineteenth-century attitudes towards the American landscape in the broadest sense. The subjects range from the Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau, and Winslow Homer's illustrations of contemporary women, to dioramas of prehistoric life in the American Museum of Natural History. The "invention" of the Grand Canyon as a tourist destination and even the films of John Ford are used to illustrate the Victorian era's obsessions with nature. These six essays were originally presented at a symposium organized by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Edited by T. J. Jackson LearsEssays by Richard White, Sarah Burns, Michele Bogart, Elizabeth Johns, Stephen Pyne, and Richard Slotkin
128 pages
Published by Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2002
Paperback
7.5 x 10 inches
An American Story
$18.99
#1 New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author of The Undefeated, Kwame Alexander, pens a powerful picture book that tells the story of American slavery through the voice of a teacher struggling to help her students understand its harrowing history.
From the fireside tales in an African village, through the unspeakable passage across the Atlantic, to the backbreaking work in the fields of the South, this is a story of a people's struggle and strength, horror and hope. This is the story of American slavery, a story that needs to be told and understood by all of us. A testament to the resilience of the African American community, this book honors what has been and envisions what is to be.
With stunning mixed-media illustrations by Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award-winning artist Dare Coulter, this is a potent book for those who want to speak the truth. Perfect for family sharing, the classroom, and homeschooling.
By Kwame Alexander with illustrations by Dare Coulter
56 pages
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2023
Hardcover
10.75 x 0.5 x 10.75 inches
Recommended for ages 4+
Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America
$21.95
This publication re-evaluates the artistic achievements of the Swedish painter Anders Zorn (1860-1920). Bringing his subjects to life with broad brushstrokes, Zorn experimented with different subjects and styles, painting portraits of high society, self-portraits and fellow artists' in their studios, and genre scenes of modern Parisian and rural Swedish life. Moreover, he was crucial in disseminating Swedish art, connecting Scandinavia with Western Europe and with the United States. If we follow the breathless media coverage during Zorn's multiple stays in the States, we might well come to the conclusion that he seduced the nation. America was entirely taken by this "Prince of Art," who exhibited widely, showcasing his sweeping portraits of socialites, unashamed nudes, and brilliant genre scenes.Zorn's clients in the United States, especially his friendship with Isabella Gardner, forms a major focus of the book. Gardner was one of his most important patrons and a lifelong friend.
This book, based on the exhibition held at the Museum in 2013, illustrates how mutually beneficial and inspiring this relationship was to both Gardner and Zorn. Gardner helped Zorn procure commissions in and outside Boston, and by presenting new archival material, it will become clear just how much Zorn relied on her. The new evidence and interpretations in this book will allow reassessment of Zorn's inspired but often overlooked accomplishments, presenting him instead as an intoxicating artist, someone who is still able to seduce the public.
Edited by Oliver Tostmann
200 pages
Published by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2013
Paperback
9.5 x 0.8 x 11.2 inches
Antiracist Baby
$8.99
Take your first steps with Antiracist Baby! Or rather, follow Antiracist Baby's nine easy steps for building a more equitable world.
With bold art and thoughtful yet playful text, Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Providing the language necessary to begin critical conversations at the earliest age, Antiracist Baby is the perfect gift for readers of all ages dedicated to forming a just society.
By Ibram X. Kendi; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
32 pages
Published by Kokila, 2020
Hardcover
9.25 x 0.29 x 9.31 inches
Art as Therapy
$19.95
Two authorities on popular culture reveal the ways in which art can enhance mood and enrich lives - now available in paperback
This passionate, thought-provoking, often funny, and always-accessible book proposes a new way of looking at art, suggesting that it can be useful, relevant, and therapeutic. Through practical examples, the world-renowned authors argue that certain great works of art have clues as to how to manage the tensions and confusions of modern life. Chapters on love, nature, money, and politics show how art can help with many common difficulties, from forging good relationships to coming to terms with mortality.
Written by Alain de Botton & John Armstrong240 pages
Published by Phaidon Press, 2016
Paperback
7.75 x 5.13 inches
Art Cat: Fine Felines of the Art World
$16.95
Art Cat is a collection of these painted felines, featuring works from artists across the ages and continents. Japanese prints and German oils, American sketches and Italian murals are all included. The work spans eras and styles, but as different as these cats are, one thing shines through: that we have been obsessed with cats for far longer than the Internet.
96 pages
Published by Smith Street Books, 2023
Hardcover
7.83 x 0.58 x 9.31 inches
Art Dog: Clever Canines of the Art World
$16.95
Dogs have been man’s best friend for as long as we’ve been sketching on canvas. In the background, behind the table, or right at the forefront, dogs of the past peer out from paintings and sketches, frescoes and prints across art history.
Art Dog is a collection of these painted pooches, featuring works from artists across the ages and continents. Japanese prints and German oils, American sketches and Italian murals are all included. The works spans eras and styles, but as different as these dogs are, one thing shines through: the love we’ve always had for them.
96 pages
Published by Smith Street Books, 2023
Hardcover
7.76 x 0.59 x 9.35 inches
Art is the Highest Form of Hope
$29.95
Advice, strong opinions, and personal revelations by the world's greatest artists - exclusively researched for this new book
Featuring the most inspirational and insightful collection of quotes by artists through the ages and across the globe, this exquisite keepsake is the ideal book for artists, collectors, and armchair enthusiasts. As painters, sculptors, photographers, and other visual artists see and experience the world through a unique lens, Art Is the Highest Form of Hope & Other Quotes by Artists shows that their life lessons, private revelations, and frank, often irreverent, opinions can guide us all.
This unique and carefully curated book, packed with totally original research, is a go-to resource for revealing thoughts and personal advice on subjects as diverse as beauty, color, light, chance, discipline, money troubles, originality, fear of failure, danger of success, the creative process, and more – all messages transmitted from the artistic trenches.
Created and edited by Phaidon Editors336 pages
Published by Phaidon, 2016
Hardcover
8 x 5.4 inches
Astrid Lindgren
$15.99
Discover how Astrid Lindgren grew up to become one of the world's best-loved authors, and the creator of the irresistible Pippi Longstocking.
Little Astrid grew up on an old farm in Sweden. Her childhood was very happy, so happy that she never wanted to grow up. When she was four, her friend Edit read Astrid her first story. Suddenly, the entire place was filled with giants, witches and fairies. They all came out from a magic object call a book. Astrid did her best to learn how to read, and once she started, she couldn't stop! Soon, there were no books left to borrow from the library and her friends. Learn how Astrid turned her love of books and telling stories into a career as a world-renowned author. This moving book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the inspiring writer's life.
Little People, Big Dreams - Discover the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.
Written by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara, Illustrated by Linzie HunterFrom the Little People, Big Dreams Series
32 pages
Published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2020
Hardcover
8 x 9.8 inches
Barbara Lynch: Out of Line - A Life of Playing with Fire
$26.00
Blood, Bones, & Butter meets A Devil in the Kitchen in this funny, fierce, and poignant memoir by world-renowned chef, restaurateur, and Top Chef judge Barbara Lynch (Gardner Artist-in-Residence, 2014), recounting her rise from a hard-knocks South Boston childhood to culinary stardom.Celebrated chef Barbara Lynch credits the defiant spirit of her upbringing in tough, poor “Southie,” a neighborhood ruled by the notorious Whitey Bulger gang, with helping her bluff her way into her first professional cooking jobs; develop a distinct culinary style through instinct and sheer moxie; then dare to found an empire of restaurants ranging from a casual but elegant “clam shack” to Boston’s epitome of modern haute cuisine.
One of seven children born to an overworked single mother, Lynch was raised in a housing project. She earned a daredevil reputation for boosting vehicles (even a city bus), petty theft, drinking and doing drugs, and narrowly escaping arrest—haunted all the while by a painful buried trauma.
Out of Line describes Lynch’s remarkable process of self-invention, including her encounters with colorful characters of the food world, and vividly evokes the magic of creation in the kitchen. It is also a love letter to South Boston and its vanishing culture, governed by Irish Catholic mothers and its own code of honor. Through her story, Lynch explores how the past—both what we strive to escape from and what we remain true to—can strengthen and expand who we are.
By Barbara Lynch
304 pages
Published by Atria Books, 2017
Hardcover
6 x 1 x 9 inches
Before We Were Trans
$30.00
A groundbreaking global history of gender nonconformity
Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.
Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures.
By Dr. Kit Heyam
352 pages
Published by Seal Press, 2022
Hardcover
6.4 x 1.4 x 9.55 inches
Benny's True Colors
$18.99
Discover the joy of being your true self in this uplifting and empowering picture book about Benny, who looks like a bat but knows that he really is a butterfly.
Benny may look like a bat, but Benny doesn’t like flying at night, or eating bugs, or hanging upside down. Benny does like sunshine and fluttering and colorful wings. On the inside, Benny knows he is a butterfly!
“I want my outside to match who I am inside!” With the help of some butterfly friends in the garden, Benny makes a happy change. And his friends and his Momma all love him just the same.
Writer Norene Paulson and illustrator Anne Passchier's Benny’s True Colors is a transformative story about knowing your true self, and the joy of letting the world know you, too.
By Norene Paulson with illustrations by Anne Passchier
40 pages
Recommended for ages 3 - 6
Published by Imprint, 2020
Hardcover
10.33 x 0.45 x 10.33 inches
Betye Saar: Black Doll Blues
$60.00
This volume features new watercolor works on paper and assemblages by Betye Saar (born 1926) that incorporate the artist’s personal collection of Black dolls. These watercolors showcase the artist’s experimentation with vivid color and layered techniques, and her new interest in flat shapes. While Saar has previously used painting in her mixed-media collages, this is the first publication to focus on her watercolor works on paper.
“Watercolor is something that children use, so I decided, maybe I’ll paint something about children, maybe I’ll paint the dolls,” Saar says. Referencing the underrepresented history of Black dolls through Saar’s artistic lens, this catalog distills several intersecting themes, imagery, and objects in Saar’s oeuvre, highlighting her prominent usage and reinvention of Black imagery. It contains 90 color images, including early assemblage works that feature Black dolls, such as Gris-Gris Box (1972) and Mti (1973), plus early sketchbooks and a curated selection of Saar’s Black doll collection. It also includes original essays by Rachel Federman, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum, and Katherine Jentleson, Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art at the High Museum of Art, and an interview with the artist by her granddaughter, Maddy Inez Leeser.
Edited by Katherine Jentleson and Rachel Federman
223 pages
Published by Roberts Projects, 2022
Hardcover
9.25 x 1 x 12.25 inches
Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer
$45.00
Betye Saar (b. 1926) is an artist whose assemblages tell visual stories and convey powerful political messages. A leading figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, she works with found objects—many of which she gathers on her extensive travels—to explore themes like symbolic mysticism, feminism, racism, and Eurocentric chauvinism. Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer sheds new light on Saar’s unique creative process, her trips around the world, and the diverse ways in which her artworks engage with global histories of travel and forced migration. It presents how the artist’s work conjures the transporting experience of a voyage to a faraway place.This beautifully illustrated book draws on original, in-depth interviews with Saar and the companions who accompanied the artist in her travels across four continents over several decades. Essays by leading scholars contextualize Saar’s journeys within her broader life and career, as well as how her practice fits into broader traditions—such as scrapbooking—in African American visual culture. In addition to providing this context, this book explores how Saar’s assemblage practice both echoes and provides a critical counterpoint to the collecting practices of Gilded Age American art collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner.
Featuring a wealth of previously unpublished material—including almost thirty travel sketchbooks and two dozen finished assemblages—Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer provides a fresh look at a groundbreaking American artist while offering a timely social history of the impact of travel on the African American experience.
Edited by Diana Seave Greenwald (William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Collection) with contributions by Makeda Best and Stephanie Sparling Williams
208 pages
Published by Princeton University Press, 2023
Hardcover
8" x 14"
Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections
$58.00
Beyond Words accompanies a collaborative exhibition held at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; Harvard University’s Houghton Library; and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Featuring illuminated manuscripts from nineteen Boston-area institutions, this catalog provides a sweeping overview of the history of the book in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and serves as a guide to their production, illumination, functions, and readership. Entries by eighty-five international experts document, discuss, and reproduce more than two hundred and sixty manuscripts and early printed books, many of them little known before now. Beyond Words also explores the history of collecting such books in Boston, an uncharted chapter in the history of American taste.
Of broad appeal to scholars and amateur enthusiasts alike, this catalog documents one of the most ambitious exhibitions of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts ever to take place in North America.
Edited by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Lisa Fagin Davis, and Anne-Marie Eze
378 pages
Published by McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2016
Paperback
9 x 1.1 x 12 inches
Bharti Kher (Jack Shainman Gallery)
$80.00
London-born, Delhi-based Bharti Kher is becoming known for her evocative, layered sculptures and paintings, which explore identity and multiplicity. Featured here is a series inspired by a 1928 autopsy of a blue sperm whale, which Kher has spun into imagery conflating Indian traditions with gothic, punk and camp elements.
Text by Ranjit Hoskote219 pages
Jack Shainman Gallery, 2010
Hardcover
9.25 x 10.75 inches
Bharti Kher: Chimeras
$49.95
‘I like the word ‘unpleasant’’ says UK-born, Indian contemporary artist Bharti Kher, whose heterogeneous oeuvre of work comprises painting, sculpture and installation.
She works primarily with representations of the female body and plays with the varied roles of women in society and culture. In her work from the last twenty years, time and again we see the motif of the bhindi, the dot painted on the forehead between the eyebrows that comes from Hindu tradition.
Chimera, the title of the exhibition at the Kunsthaus Pasquart in Biel, can be understood in relation to mythology as well as genetics. Bharti Kher sees her artistic practice as the search for the chimera, and in her works she hovers on the dividing line between reality and illusion.
Her monumental pieces encompass ideas of identity, social roles and gender. In interplay with clear references to the anatomy of humans and animals, they trigger strong emotions in observers such as alarm, confusion, shock or amusement.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Bharti Kher: Chimeras at Kunsthaus Centre d’art Pasquart Biel/Bienne (26 June – 28 August 2018).
Written by Aveek Sen, Susan Silas, Chrysanne Stathacos176 pages
Published by Kunst
Hardcover
7.8 x 10 inches
Bharti Kher: Sketchbooks and Diaries
$36.00
Bharti Kher, 2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Gardner, was enriched and recharged by spending time thinking and living amongst the Museum’s extraordinary building and art treasures.The focus of this show—on view in the Fenway Gallery from September 20, 2017 to September 10, 2018—is a series of drawings and notebooks Kher made during that time. All the drawings in this artist's book were made by Bharti Kher between 2013 and 2015. The drawings are very tactile, often provocative, and charged with humor and a capriciousness that is smart and mischievous at the same time. They reflect on gender and motherhood, anatomy, and the physiology of pregnancy. They speak of empathy and love while investigating the enigmatic paradoxes and ambiguities of what it means to be human.
By Bharti Kher, edited by Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Diana C Stoll
64 pages
Published by the Corraini Edizioni, 2017
Hardcover
9 x 0.5 x 6 inches
Bharti Kher: This Breathing House
$30.00
Published on occasion of the exhibition of the same name held at the Freud Museum from September to November 2016, ‘This Breathing House’ offers an intimate view of Indian artist Bharti Kher‘s installation in Sigmund Freud’s final home in London.
Following a foreword from the museum’s director, the essay by Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator of the Hayward Gallery, explores Kher’s work, its themes and dialogue with its setting. The essay, separated into enumerated sections, unfolds the vivid and history-laden artworks, interpreting their forms while also leaving room for interpretation. Quotes feature from the artist herself as well as Sigmund and Anna Freud, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Didi-Huberman and Maggie Nelson among others. Replete with installation views as well as detail shots of individual works, the publication reads like a thoughtful measured walkthrough of the exhibition itself.
Text by Stephanie Rosentha, foreword by Carol Seigel88 pages
Published by Hauser & Wirth, 2016
Hardcover
8.25 x 8 inches
Big
$19.99
This deeply moving story shares valuable lessons about fitting in, standing out, and the beauty of joyful acceptance, from an award-winning creator.
The first picture book written and illustrated by award-winning creator Vashti Harrison traces a child’s journey to self-love and shows the power of words to both hurt and heal. With spare text and exquisite illustrations, this emotional exploration of being big in a world that prizes small is a tender portrayal of how you can stand out and feel invisible at the same time.
By Vashti Harrison
60 pages
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2023
Hardcover
9.4 x 0.7 x 10.85 inches
Recommended for ages 4+
Black Women Taught Us
$30.00
Jenn M. Jackson, PhD, has been known to bring historical acuity to some of the most controversial topics in America today. Now, in their first book, Jackson applies their critical analysis to the questions that have long energized their work: Why has Black women’s freedom fighting been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost because of our refusal to engage with our forestrugglers’ lessons?
A love letter to those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection repositions Black women’s intellectual and political work at the center of today’s liberation movements.
Across eleven original essays that explore the legacy of Black women writers and leaders—from Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells to the Combahee River Collective and Audre Lorde—Jackson sets the record straight about Black women’s longtime movement organizing, theorizing, and coalition building in the name of racial, gender, and sexual justice in the United States and abroad. These essays show, in both critical and deeply personal terms, how Black women have been at the center of modern liberation movements despite the erasure and misrecognition of their efforts. Jackson illustrates how Black women have frequently done the work of liberation at great risk to their lives and livelihoods.
For a new generation of movement organizers and co-strugglers, Black Women Taught Us serves as a reminder that Black women were the first ones to teach us how to fight racism, how to name that fight, and how to imagine a more just world for everyone.
By Jenn M. Jackson
368 pages
Published by Random House, 2024
Hardcover
5.76 x 1.34 x 8.52 inches
Bleak House
$29.00
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens’s most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.
Written by Charles Dickens
1088 pages
Published by Penguin Classics, 2011
Hardcover
5 x 7.75 inches
Bob Dylan
$15.99
Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota. As a teenager, he played in various bands and, over time, his interest in music deepened, with a particular passion for American folk music and blues. Dylan moved to New York City in 1961, where he began to perform poetry and music in clubs and cafés in Greenwich Village. There, he recorded a number of albums that made him one of the most influential musicians in history. This fascinating book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the musician's life.
By Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara, illustrated by Lucilla Perini
From the Little People, Big Dreams Series
32 pages
Published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2022
Hardcover
7.87 x 0.39 x 9.65 inches
Body: The Photography Book
$65.00
The landmark photographic survey of the human body at a moment when body image and body politics are being redefined.
In a world of selfies and body shaming, Photoshopping and gender fluidity, body image has never been more at the forefront of popular cultural dialogue. Body is a definitive, democratic statement at a time when our fixation with images of the human form is greater than ever before.
Curator and art historian Nathalie Herschdorfer brings together over three hundred and fifty images created predominantly in the twenty-first century that explore our relationship with the body. This watershed publication presents work from major names in art photography, including Bettina Rheims, Lauren Greenfield, Cindy Sherman, Viviane Sassen, and Sally Mann, alongside others whose fashion work has shaped our view of the human form, such as Solve Sundsbo and Daniel Sannwald. Interwoven with these major works are images that explore the numerous other ways in which we have represented the body, and the ways in which imaging of the body has been used, shared, and changed over the last quarter-century.
Capturing the complex and often paradoxical relationship we have with our bodies—from fantasy to reality and curiosity to obsession—Body is a timely homage to, and introspection of, the human form as it sits in our current culture.
By Nathali HerschdorferPublished by Thames & Hudson, 2022
Hardcover
Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote
$18.99
A hundred years ago, women won the right to vote. They fought hard for decades to make their voices heard and their choices count. And they prevailed.
United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is inspired by these heroes every day. Here she looks at ten of the fearless women who paved the way toward justice and equality. From well-known historical figures like Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth to less familiar ones like Jovita Idar and Mary Church Terrell, these women were bold and brave - and can teach us to be bold and brave, too.
With stunning art by Maira Kalman, this inspiring picture book shows us all how to stand up, speak out, and fight for what we believe in.
Written by Kirsten Gillibrand, Art by Maira Kalman40 pages
Published by Random House Children's Books, 2018
Hardcover
9 x 11.3 inches
Book of the Bird: Birds in Art
$16.99
The Book of the Bird celebrates the bird in art with an elegant, international collection of paintings, illustrations and photographs, featuring all kinds of birds from the smallest tits and wrens to colorful exotics.
Interspersed though the illustrations are short texts giving background to the pictures and information on bird species. This is the perfect gift for all bird lovers.
160 pages
Published by Laurence King Publishing, 2016
Paperback
6 x 8 inches
Boston in the Golden Age of Spiritualism: Seances, Mediums & Immortality
$19.99
Spiritualism flourished in Boston from the first rumblings of the Civil War until the early twentieth century. Numerous clairvoyants claimed to bring messages from beyond the grave at seances and public meetings. Motives for belief were varied. Wealthy John Wetherbee sought business advice through supernatural means. Psychic Fannie Conant attributed her restored health to spirit intervention. Grieving theater manager Isaac B. Rich wanted to contact his deceased wife. While many earnestly believed in the movement, there were those who took advantage of naïve Bostonians. Determined to expose charlatans, world-renowned magician Harry Houdini declared the famous medium and Bostonian Mina "Margery" Crandon a fake. Join author Dee Morris as she navigates the complex history of Boston's spiritualist movement.
By Dee Morris128 pages
Published by Arcadia Press, 2014
Paperback
6 x 9 inches
© 2024 Gift at the Gardner.
