A critical analysis of contemporary art collections and the value form, this book shows why the nonprofit system is unfit to administer our common collections, and offers solutions for diversity reform and redistributive restructuring. In the United States, institutions administered by the nonprofit system have an ambiguous status as they are neither entirely private nor fully public. Among nonprofits, the museum is unique as it is the only institution where trustees tend to collect the same objects they hold in “public trust” on behalf of the nation, if not humanity. The public serves as alibi for establishing the symbolic value of art, which sustains its monetary value and its markets. This structure allows for wealthy individuals at the helm to gain financial benefits from, and ideological control over, what is at its core purpose a public system. The dramatic growth of the art market and the development of financial tools based on art-collateral loans exacerbate the contradiction between the needs of museum leadership versus that of the public. Indeed, a history of private support in the US is a history of racist discrimination, and the common collections reflect this fact. A history of how private collections were turned public gives context. Since the late Renaissance, private collections legitimized the prince's right to rule, and later, with the great revolutions, display consolidated national identity. But the rise of the American museum reversed this and re-privatized the public collection. A materialist description of the museum as a model institution of the liberal nation state reveals constellations of imperialist social relations.

Angelic Troublemakers is the first detailed account of what happens when religious ethics, political philosophy, and the anarchist spirit intermingle. Wiley deftly captures the ideals that inspired three revered heroes of nonviolent disobedience-Henry Thoreau, Dorothy Day, and Bayard Rustin. Resistance to slavery, empire, and capital is a way of life, a transnational tradition of thought and action. This book is a must read for anyone interested in religion, ethics, politics, or law.

A kaleidoscopic tribute to San Francisco by a life-long Bay Area resident and co-founder of Salon explores specific city sites including the Golden Gate Bridge and the Land's End sea cliffs while tying his visits to key historical events. By the author of Shadow Knights. 30,000 first printing.

This collection of original essays takes a multi-disciplinary approach to explore the theme of failure through the broad spectrum of public art and social practice. The anthology brings together practicing artists, curators, activists, art writers, administrators, planners, and educators from around the world to offer differing perspectives on the many facets of failure in commissioning, planning, producing, evaluating, and engaging communities in the continually evolving field of art in the public realm. As such, this book offers a survey of currently unexplored and interconnected thinking, and provides a much-needed critical voice to the commissioning of public and participatory arts. The volume includes case studies from the UK, the US, China, Cuba, and Denmark, as well as discussions of digital public art collections. The Failures of Public Art and Participation will be of interest for students and scholars of visual arts, design and architecture interested in how art in the public realm fits within social and political contexts.

A critical analysis of contemporary art collections and the value form, this book shows why the nonprofit system is unfit to administer our common collections, and offers solutions for diversity reform and redistributive restructuring. In the United States, institutions administered by the nonprofit system have an ambiguous status as they are neither entirely private nor fully public. Among nonprofits, the museum is unique as it is the only institution where trustees tend to collect the same objects they hold in “public trust” on behalf of the nation, if not humanity. The public serves as alibi for establishing the symbolic value of art, which sustains its monetary value and its markets. This structure allows for wealthy individuals at the helm to gain financial benefits from, and ideological control over, what is at its core purpose a public system. The dramatic growth of the art market and the development of financial tools based on art-collateral loans exacerbate the contradiction between the needs of museum leadership versus that of the public. Indeed, a history of private support in the US is a history of racist discrimination, and the common collections reflect this fact. A history of how private collections were turned public gives context. Since the late Renaissance, private collections legitimized the prince's right to rule, and later, with the great revolutions, display consolidated national identity. But the rise of the American museum reversed this and re-privatized the public collection. A materialist description of the museum as a model institution of the liberal nation state reveals constellations of imperialist social relations.

In the late 1960s, student protests broke out throughout much of the world, and while Britain’s anti-Vietnam protestors and China’s Red Guards were clearly radically different, these movements at times shared inspirations, aspirations, and aesthetics. Within Western popular media, Mao’s China was portrayed as a danger to world peace, but at the same time, for some on the counter-cultural left, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) contained ideas worthy of exploration. Moreover, because of Britain’s continued colonial possession of Hong Kong, Britain had a specific interest in ongoing events in China, and information was highly sought after. Thus, the objects that China exported—propaganda posters, paintings, Mao badges, periodicals, ceramics, etc.—became a crucial avenue through which China was known at this time, and interest in them crossed the political divide. Collecting the Revolution uses the objects that the Chinese government sent abroad and that visitors brought back with them to open up the stories of diplomats, journalists, activists, students, and others and how they imagined, engaged with, and later remembered Mao’s China through its objects. It chronicles the story of how these objects were later incorporated into the collections of some of Britain’s most prominent museums, thus allowing later generations to continue to engage with one of the most controversial and important periods of China’s recent history.

"Delightful." --People, Pick of the Week *Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Katie Couric Media, the CBC, the Globe and Mail, BookBub, POPSUGAR, SheReads, Women.com and more!* Natalie Jenner, the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society, returns with a compelling and heartwarming story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world in Bloomsbury Girls. Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare book store that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager's unbreakable fifty-one rules. But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans: Vivien Lowry: Single since her aristocratic fiance was killed in action during World War II, the brilliant and stylish Vivien has a long list of grievances--most of them well justified and the biggest of which is Alec McDonough, the Head of Fiction. Grace Perkins: Married with two sons, she's been working to support the family following her husband's breakdown in the aftermath of the war. Torn between duty to her family and dreams of her own. Evie Stone: In the first class of female students from Cambridge permitted to earn a degree, Evie was denied an academic position in favor of her less accomplished male rival. Now she's working at Bloomsbury Books while she plans to remake her own future. As they interact with various literary figures of the time--Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Sonia Blair (widow of George Orwell), Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and others--these three women with their complex web of relationships, goals and dreams are all working to plot out a future that is richer and more rewarding than anything society will allow.

The bestselling book from two prizewinning, critically acclaimed contemporary chroniclers of San Francisco-a rich, illustrated, idiosyncratic portrait of this great city. In Spirits of San Francisco, #1 bestselling Cool Gray City of Love author Gary Kamiya joins forces with celebrated, bestselling artist Paul Madonna to take a fresh look at this one-of-a-kind city. Marrying image and text in a way no book about this city has done before, Kamiya's illuminating narratives accompany Madonna's masterful pen-and-ink drawings, breathing life into San Francisco sites both iconic and obscure. Paul Madonna's atmospheric images will awe: his wide-angle drawings offer a new perspective on the “crookedest street in the world” and vistas across the city. And Kamiya's engaging prose, accompanying each image, offers striking vignettes of this incredible city: witness his story of “Dumpville,” the bizarre community that sprang up in the 19th century on top of a massive garbage dump. Handsome and irresistible-much like the city it chronicles-Spirits of San Francisco is both a visual feast and a detailed, personal, loving, informed portrait of a beloved city.