Digital Publications
Baya: Woman of Algiers (2018)
Baya: Woman of Algiers, published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, features new scholarship on the self-taught Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine (1931–1998). Baya’s colorful depictions of women, rhythmic patterns, and bright palette drew the attention of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, with whom she later collaborated in the renowned Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris. Celebrated in both Algeria and France, Baya has yet to gain international recognition. Woman of Algiers reexamines Baya’s career within contemporary, Surrealist, “outsider,” and Maghreb post-colonial art contexts. The four-color illustrated catalogue includes an essay by Natasha Boas, an art historian and independent curator based in Paris and San Francisco, and features a contribution by the Egyptian writer and director Menna Ekram. Also included are reprinted and translated texts by André Breton and the late Assia Djebar, an Algerian novelist, translator, and filmmaker, and former Silver Professor of Francophone literature at New York University.
Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt (2018)
Since 1984, self-taught artist Wally Reinhardt (born 1935) has focused solely on interpreting the epic poem’s various tales in his witty and whimsical series titled Pages from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This 128-page illustrated catalogue features an introduction by Matthew S. Santirocco, Professor of Classics and Angelo J. Ranieri Director of Ancient Studies at New York University, as well as a published conversation between Wally Reinhardt and co-curators Dennis Geronimus, associate professor and chair of the Department of Art History at NYU, and Lynn Gumpert, director of the Grey Art Gallery. Also included are catalogue entries on Reinhardt’s works—many of which have never before been published or seen by the public—by Marlee Miller, a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, and Hannah Kate Simon, the exhibition’s graduate research assistant.
Global/Local 1960-2015: Six Artists from Iran (2016)
Organized by New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, the exhibition Global/Local 1960–2015: Six Artists from Iran features works by three generations of Iranian artists born between 1937 and 1982. The publication presents sample works by each of the six artists—Faramarz Pilaram (1937–1983), Parviz Tanavoli (b. 1937), Chohreh Feyzdjou (1955–1996), Shiva Ahmadi (b. 1975), Shahpour Pouyan (b. 1980), and Barbad Golshiri (b. 1982). Global/Local illuminates how these artists have participated in international discourses, merging global with local over a 55-year span that was punctuated by the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent eight-year war with Iraq. The catalogue includes a foreword and essay by Lynn Gumpert; an essay by New York-based critic and art historian Media Farzin, who examines the ways in which Iranian contemporary art has, from its beginnings in the 1960s, borrowed extensively from ancient visual traditions of the region; and introductory essays on each artist by NYU graduate students.
Abby Grey and Indian Modernism: Selections from the NYU Art Collection (2015)
In the wake of India’s independence from British rule in 1947, the country’s artists experimented with new approaches, forming its first modernist schools. During four trips to India from 1960 to 1968, Abby Weed Grey—founder of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery—set out to explore this burgeoning art scene. Abby Grey and Indian Modernism: Selections from the NYU Art Collection spotlights her pioneering collecting efforts, which resulted in a significant trove of post–Indian Independence art in the United States. Featuring 29 works alongside documentation of Mrs. Grey’s travels, the exhibition examines Indian modernism through the lens of her ardent engagement with India and its art. Curated by Susan Hapgood and Ranjit Hoskote, Abby Grey and Indian Modernism is accompanied by this illustrated publication. With essays by Susan Hapgood and Ranjit Hoskote, catalogue entries by Rashmi Viswanathan, and an introduction by Lynn Gumpert.
Modern Iranian Art: Selections from the Abby Weed Grey Collection (2013)
Highlighting the creativity of artists who drew on their cultural heritage to redefine Iran’s visual identity during the decades leading up to the 1979 Revolution, Modern Iranian Art: Selections from the Abby Weed Grey Collection presents key works of Iranian modernism from the 1960s and ’70s. Housed here, these paintings, sculptures, drawings, and jewelry are part of the Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art, and comprise the largest public holding of Iranian modern art outside Iran. With essays by Shiva Balaghi and Leili Sreberny-Mohammadi and a foreword by Lynn Gumpert.