By Yang Lian Discussion Leader: TBA From the publisher: Before and since his enforced exile, Yang Lian has been one of the most innovative and influential poets in China. Widely hailed in America and Europe as a highly individual voice in world literature, he has been translated into many languages. Yang Lian has written that…
From the publisher: One of the hallmarks of Surrealism is the encounter, often by chance, with a key person, place, or object through a trajectory no one could have predicted. Penelope Rosemont draws on a lifetime of such experiences in her collection of essays, Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields. From her youthful forays as a…
Book Discussion Leader: Shannon Karol, Director of Museum Education and Community Engagement From the publisher: It’s 1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows that he hopes will earn him a place on the international artistic stage. But behind the scenes in his…
Shape-ups at Delilah’s is a short story by Rion Amilcar Scott, first published in the October 2019 issue of The New Yorker Magazine, and in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020. The story takes place in the world of Crossriver, a town and characters created by Scott in his other publications. The town’s premise…
From the publisher: Pretty Boys unearths diverse and surprising beauty icons who have redefined what masculinity and gender expression look like throughout history, to empower us to live and look our truths. From Frank Ocean’s skin-care routine to Clark Gable’s perfectly styled hair, Rami Malek’s subtle eyeliner to a face beat to the gods à…
When Rosa (aka Red Riding Hood) and Hou Yi the Archer join forces to stop the deadly sunbirds from ravaging the countryside, their quest will take the two women, now blessed and burdened with the hindsight of middle age, into a reckoning of sacrifices made and mistakes mourned, of choices and family, and the quest…
Ai Weiwei's sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe. His architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, Weiwei explores the origins…
In The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from…
In this captivating dual narrative novel, a modern-day woman finds inspiration in hidden notes left by her home’s previous owner, a quintessential 1950s housewife. As she discovers remarkable parallels between this woman’s life and her own, it causes her to question the foundation of her own relationship with her husband–and what it means to be…
This enchanting novel, from a writer who worked at the Metropolitan Museum for more than twenty-five years, shows us the Met that the public doesn’t see. A surreal love letter to this private side of the museum, Metropolitan Stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant vignettes in which we discover larger-than-life characters, the…
At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved to New York City. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings…
by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in…