Four siblings discover truths about their late mother, a troubled artist—and themselves—in this “uplifting, immensely empathetic novel” (The Guardian). Gifted painter Rachel Kelly lived a life of manic highs and suicidal lows. Her husband, a gentle, devout Quaker, gave her a safe haven where she could create and be herself, but her mental illness still took its toll on her family. Now, after a fatal heart attack, a retrospective of Rachel’s work attracts art lovers who marvel at her skill, but her grown children are busy coping with the shattering effects of her death—and her life. Her eldest son has been bequeathed a letter that shakes him to his core. Another son reflects on the years he spent trying not to upset his mother’s delicate equilibrium while negotiating his own relationship with his lover. The youngest son was much beloved by Rachel, for reasons not everyone knows. And Rachel’s only daughter seems to have inherited her talent—but also her demons. Set against the wild and beautiful landscape of Cornwall, this novel by the acclaimed author of A Place Called Winter and A Perfectly Good Man shifts back and forth in time and place as it moves effortlessly between characters, offering a revealing window into the symbiotic relationship between genius and mental illness and the effects both have on maternal love and the creation of enduring art. In the words of Armistead Maupin, “few writers have grasped the twisted dynamics of family the way Gale has. There’s really no one he can’t inhabit, understand, and forgive.”

An in-depth exploration into the immense popularity of William-Adolphe Bouguereau's work in America throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries Seeking to bring Gallic sophistication and worldly elegance into their galleries and drawing rooms, wealthy Americans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries collected the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) in record numbers. This fascinating volume offers an in-depth exploration of Bouguereau's overwhelming popularity in turn-of-the-century America and the ways that his work--widely known from reviews, exhibitions, and inexpensive reproductions--resonated with the American public. While also lauded by the French artistic establishment and a dominant presence at the Parisian Salons, Bouguereau achieved his greatest success selling his idealized and polished paintings to a voracious American market. In this book, the authors discuss how the artist's sensual classical maidens, Raphaelesque Madonnas, and pristine peasant children embodied the tastes of American Gilded Age patrons, and how Bouguereau's canvases persuasively functioned as freshly painted Old Masters for collectors flush with new money. Published in association with the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Milwaukee Art Museum (02/15/19-05/12/19) Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (06/22/19-09/22/19) San Diego Museum of Art (11/09/19-03/15/20)

The first compendium of writing and art to present the case for the role of sex in environmental and social justice. Sex Ecologies explores pleasure, affect, and the powers of the erotic in the human and more-than-human worlds. Arguing for the positive and constructive role of sex in ecology and art practice, these texts and artistic research projects attempt nothing short of reclaiming the sexual from Western erotophobia and heteronormative narratives of nature and reproduction. The artists and writers set out to examine queer ecology through the lens of environmental humanities, investigating the fluid boundaries between bodies (both human and nonhuman), between binary conceptions of nature as separate from culture, and between disciplines. In newly commissioned texts from such writers as Mel Y. Chen and Jack Halberstam and a selection of influential essays—including an annotated version of Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”—as well as images and sketches from works in progress by a diverse group of artists, Sex Ecologies combines insights from the fields of art, environmental humanities, ecofeminism, gender studies, science, technology, political science, and indigenous studies. Sex Ecologies, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at Kunsthall Trondheim, emerges from an arts-driven research project collaboratively developed between the art center and the Seed Box environmental humanities collaboratory. Conceived not as a result but as a seed arising from this transdisciplinary fertilization, the volume presents a case for the role of sex in environmental and social justice. Copublished with Kunsthall Trondheim (Norway) and the Seed Box (Sweden)

"Published on occasion of the exhibition 'The Cheapside Hoard: London's Lost Jewels', the Museum of London (11 October 2013-27 April 2014)"--T.p. verso.

"In cooperation with the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, The Ohio State University Libraries."

A revealing exploration of Spain's significant impact on American painting in the 19th and early 20th century

A blistering debut that does for the Iraqi perspective on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan what Phil Klay’s Redeployment does for the American perspective “[A] wonderful collection.” —George Saunders, The New York Times Book Review The first major literary work about the Iraq War from an Iraqi perspective—by an explosive new voice hailed as “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive” (The Guardian)—The Corpse Exhibition shows us the war as we have never seen it before. Here is a world not only of soldiers and assassins, hostages and car bombers, refugees and terrorists, but also of madmen and prophets, angels and djinni, sorcerers and spirits. Blending shocking realism with flights of fantasy, The Corpse Exhibition offers us a pageant of horrors, as haunting as the photos of Abu Ghraib and as difficult to look away from, but shot through with a gallows humor that yields an unflinching comedy of the macabre. Gripping and hallucinatory, this is a new kind of storytelling forged in the crucible of war.