July | 2023 | University of Washington Press Blog

The University of Washington Press is proud to co-publish and distribute a number of catalogs in conjunction with key exhibitions currently on view or forthcoming at art museums in the Pacific Northwest, United States, and around the world. These books bring extraordinary exhibitions to the page through high-quality reproductions and illuminating essays by curators, academics, and artists. We hope you’ll have a chance to see some of these exhibitions in person, and we invite you to explore the accompanying catalogs below.

Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec

Both the Edo period (1603–1868) in Japan and the late nineteenth century in France witnessed a multitude of challenges to the status quo from the rising middle class. In Edo (present-day Tokyo), townspeople pursued hedonistic lifestyles as a way of defying the state-sanctioned social hierarchy that positioned them at the bottom. Their new pastimes supplied subject matter for ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world). Many such pictures arrived in France in the 1860s, a time when French art and society were undergoing substantial changes. Fin-de-siècle Paris, like Edo before it, saw the rise of antiestablishment attitudes and a Bohemian subculture. As artists searched for fresh and more expressive forms, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) and his contemporaries were drawn to novel Japanese prints.

While ukiyo-e’s formal influences on Toulouse-Lautrec and his peers have been well studied, the shared subversive hedonism that underlies these artworks has been less examined. Drawing from the Seattle Art Museum’s Japanese prints collection and from one of the most extensive private holdings of Toulouse-Lautrec prints, the catalog offers a critical look at the renegade spirit inhabiting the graphic arts in both Edo and Paris, highlighting the social impulses behind a burgeoning art production.

The exhibition is on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum through December 3, 2023.

Barbara Earl Thomas: The Illuminated Body

A talented visual storyteller, Barbara Earl Thomas has drawn from history, literature, folklore, mythology, and biblical stories over her forty-year career to reflect the social fabric of our times. Thomas’s figural and narrative imagery has a deeply philosophical and emotional force, and light and dark have been especially potent concepts in her work.

This book of new works meditates on the visual experience of the body within a physical and metaphorical world of light and shadow. Based on real people, the portraits “elevate to the magnificent” her family, friends, and neighbors, as well as cultural icons of the African American literary landscape. Thomas’s illumination of the human figure through her light-filled artworks and portraiture encourages the viewer to reflect on how we communicate ourselves to the world and how we perceive those among us.

The catalog also examines the conceptual, visual, and processual links Thomas makes between various media, contextualizing the artist’s newest body of work in light of her personal artistic path, and also in terms of her larger creative influences and art historical connections. Significantly, this is the first time the artist’s glass artworks will be brought into dialog with her works on paper and sculptural media.

The exhibition is on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art through August 20, 2023; the Wichita Art Museum, October 7, 2023–January 14, 2024; and the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, February 17–May 21, 2024.

Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023

Featuring all Native American and Alaska Native artists for the first time in the invitational’s history, Sharing Honors and Burdens focuses on fresh and nuanced visions by six artists from Indigenous Nations. Their craft speaks to the responsibility of ushering forward cultural traditions while shaping the future with innovative works of art. Through these works, the artists share the honors and burdens that they carry.

The exhibition and accompanying catalog feature the work of Joe Feddersen (Arrow Lakes/Okanagan), Erica Lord (Athabascan/Iñupiat), Geo Neptune (Passamaquoddy), sisters Lily Hope and Ursala Hudson (Tlingit), and Maggie Thompson.

While the artists’ contemporary craft is rooted in tradition, their art exemplifies responsibilities and relationships shared by everyone today. Contributions from Lara Evans (Cherokee), Miranda Belarde-Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit), and Anya Montiel (Mexican/Tohono O’odham descent) contextualize how Indigenous worldviews are shaping the art world.

The exhibition is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery through March 31, 2024.

Myrlande Constant: The Work of Radiance

A retrospective of the groundbreaking 30-year-long career of Myrlande Constant, an artist renowned for her monumental, hand-beaded textiles, The Work of Radiance is the first solo show of a Haitian woman in a major U.S. museum. Similarly, the accompanying catalog is the first monograph devoted solely to a Haitian woman artist. In an interview with NPR, co-curator Jerry Philogene noted how it will continue to advance the study of Caribbean art.

Constant’s intricately beaded pieces build on the drapo Vodou tradition, depicting the lwa (spirits) as well as scenes of everyday life conducted in their company, unabashedly visualizing the permeable boundaries between spirits and humans. Few drapo artists have been as influential or ambitious as Constant. Her introduction of the tambour stitch to the drapo genre added narrative and history to the art form and enabled her to create densely detailed imagery.

Essays in the book written by curators, academics, artists, and literary specialists examine Constant’s oeuvre through interdisciplinary lenses; situate her hand-made, beaded textiles within Haitian Vodou practices and contemporary art of the African diaspora; spotlight the evolution of her artistic vision and innovative techniques; and reflect on her impact on art making in Haiti and beyond.

The exhibition is on view at the Fowler Museum at UCLA through August 27, 2023.

China’s Hidden Century

In a global first, the resilience and innovation of 19th-century China is revealed in a major new exhibition at the British Museum, lauded as “atmospherically designed” (The Guardian) and a “revelation” (The Observer).

Cultural creativity in China between 1796 and 1912 demonstrated extraordinary resilience in a time of warfare, land shortages, famine, and uprisings. Innovation can be seen in material culture (including print, painting, calligraphy, textiles, jewelry, ceramics, lacquer, arms and armor, and photography) during a century in which China’s art, literature, crafts, and technology faced unprecedented exposure to global influences.

Until recently the nineteenth century in China has been defined as an era of cultural stagnation. Built on new research, this “superlative” book (The Observer) sets out a fresh understanding of this important period and creates a detailed visual account of responses to war, technology, urbanization, political transformations, and external influences.

The narratives are brought to life and individualized through illustrated biographical accounts that highlight the diversity of voices and experiences contributing to this fascinating, turbulent period in Chinese history.

The exhibition is on view at the British Museum through October 8, 2023.

Park Dae Sung: Ink Reimagined

Contemporary Korean artist Park Dae Sung works in the traditional medium of ink painting while transforming familiar Korean landscapes with his modern and imaginative interpretations of the natural world. Park, who lost his left arm and both parents at the age of five and is entirely self-taught, has said, “Nature is my teacher.” He devoted sixty years to mastering traditional brush and ink techniques and established his own innovative landscape style, broadening his knowledge through extensive global travel and endless practice. His visually striking paintings are gigantic in size yet contain an aesthetic sensibility.

Ink Reimagined illuminates the artist’s paintings through 150 full-color images, an interview with Park, and six scholarly essays exploring his diverse subjects, such as calligraphy, landscape, animals, and still life. In addition to telling the artist’s remarkable life story, the contributors trace the rich history of Korean ink painting from the 1950s to today. This book will enlighten Western readers, deepen the understanding of Park’s modernized style of Korean ink painting, and inspire interest in the long tradition of East Asian ink painting, as well as contemporary Korean art and culture.

The exhibition will be on view at the Charles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University, September 14–December 10, 2023; and the Ridderhof Martin Gallery and duPont Gallery at the University of Mary Washington, October 26–December 10, 2023.

The University of Washington Press is thrilled to welcome Caitlin Tyler-Richards as our newest acquisitions editor.

Most recently, Caitlin was an acquiring editor for Michigan State University Press in African and African Diaspora studies, environmental justice, digital humanities and several other areas. Prior to her tenure at MSUP, she was the 2018–19 Mellon University Press Diversity Fellow here at UW Press.

A PhD candidate in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her research focused on the history of publishing in Nigeria and Black digital humanities, Caitlin brings a wealth of experience to the press. She will acquire in the fields of anthropology; Native and Indigenous studies; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; and Asian studies.

Read our Q&A with Caitlin to learn more about her work and areas of interest.

Can you tell us about your background and what led you to academic publishing?

I’m originally from Maryland and first became aware of academic publishing in high school when looking for literary jobs that didn’t require moving to New York City. I ended up interning with a small history magazine company, which helpfully confirmed I could get excited about any kind of editorial work if given the opportunity.

Much later, I applied to graduate school to study the history of Nigerian publishing. My plan was to turn this into a job publishing African fiction, but I realized when doing dissertation research such a career would in fact reinforce the global publishing inequities I was hoping to challenge. Fortunately, around the same time I happened to meet Duke editor Elizabeth Ault, who told me about the Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship. I applied and spent over a year serving as an assistant editor at the University of Washington Press!

What were some of your biggest takeaways from your experience as a Mellon fellow?

One aspect of the Mellon fellowship I really appreciated was the program’s length, which allowed me to have “big takeaways”—and then keep learning. Or to put it another way, publishing is a learn-as-you-go profession, yet the industry’s slow-moving, cyclical nature makes it difficult to grasp in a single summer or academic year. Being able to work at UW Press for nearly fourteen months allowed me to see so many more projects through the publishing process, each of which expanded my understanding of scholarly publishing in a new way.

The fellowship also connected me with other people of color and allies working to make scholarly publishing a more just and equitable industry. This is something I care about on a personal, scholarly, and professional level, so I am forever grateful to the Mellon program for helping me find that community.

What excited you about coming back to UW Press?

The opportunity to work on UW Press’s phenomenal lists in Asian and Native and Indigenous studies, as well as to expand its list in anthropology. While I am new to these fields, I am familiar with the kind of projects UW Press attracts and could not be more excited at the prospect of handling them. I am looking forward to continuing the good work that has already been done and to contributing something of my own.

What types of projects do you look for? How should potential authors reach out to you?

One of the things that I think makes me a good editor is my readiness to consider all kinds of projects. Prospective authors should feel free to send me a query email or stop by the conference booth to see if their project is a good fit. Please don’t be shy! I am legitimately always happy to talk books.

That being said, I am particularly drawn to projects in which authors push the boundaries of their method, critical lens, or discipline, without losing sight of their evidence or readers. I also like projects with a clear argument, that foreground individual experiences, and can contribute to UW Press’s mission to publish transformative work with regional, national, and global impact.

Finally, we have to ask: what are you reading and enjoying right now?

But of course! I recently finished Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke, which I recommend if you’re looking to dip your toe (back) into experimental fiction, are in the mood for something silly, and/or work an office job and The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality by Anna-Lisa Cox, which I recommend if you are from the Midwest or have been looking for some good popular history writing.

I’m tenth on my library’s waitlist for R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and passing the time by watching Fringe for the first time.

Caitlin Tyler-Richards can be reached at ctylerri@uw.edu.