Begun in 2014, Njideka Akunyili Crosby's ongoing series, The Beautyful Ones is comprised of portraits of Nigerian children, including members of the artist's family, derived from personal photographs and, more recently, from images taken during her frequent visits to Nigeria, where Akunyili Crosby lived until the age of sixteen.Its title is taken from the 1968 novel by the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, a book whose influence endured during the artist's adolescence in the 1990s and is still felt today. In it, the author laments the lost idealism of a generation in the 1960s for a better Africa, post-independence.In, The Beautyful Ones the artist reinstates this optimism in her own and subsequent generations while offering a powerful perspective on the complexities of a contemporary diasporic experience.Crosby is one of the most distinctive voices of her generation, and this book, only the second publication on the Los-Angeles based artist. It features extensive illustrations of works in the series and an essay by Siddhartha Mitter, who, reflecting on the work's complex history, weaves together the social, cultural, personal and political strands of its making.Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Njideka Akunyili Crosby: The Beautyful Ones at Victoria Miro, Venice (8 May - 13 July 2019).

Among Others: Blackness at MoMA begins with an essay that provides a rigorous and in-depth analysis of MoMA's history regarding racial issues. It also calls for further developments, leaving space for other scholars to draw on particular moments of that history. It takes an integrated approach to the study of racial blackness and its representation: the book stresses inclusion and, as such, the plate section, rather than isolating black artists, features works by non-black artists dealing with race and race- related subjects. As a collection book, the volume provides scholars and curators with information about the Museum's holdings, at times disclosing works that have been little documented or exhibited. The numerous and high-quality illustrations will appeal to anyone interested in art made by black artists, or in modern art in general.

The first monograph on the internationally celebrated Nigerian American painter who blends her personal history and African diasporic identity in layered compositions “Critics have often (and rightly) marveled at the care and finesse with which Akunyili Crosby assembles vast multiplicities of time and place into singular sites of visual contestation.” —Frieze Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s work unites multiple places and temporalities, reflecting both personal and universal dimensions of contemporary life and, in particular, the intricacies of the African diasporic identity. This first monograph on Akunyili Crosby brings together nearly fifty paintings, made from 2010 to 2023, that chart her methodical practice of layering painted representations of people, locales, and aspects of her own experiences with transferred images sourced from her personal collection, Nigerian publications, and other outlets. Akunyili Crosby reveals and revisits distinct realms, from lush gardens to domestic, interior worlds related to motherhood, family, marriage, the body, and personal identity. New texts from Jareh Das, Helen Molesworth, Jason Rosenfeld, and Drew Thompson focus on a range of themes in Akunyili Crosby’s work, including her visual language and material practice, her mixing of Western and Nigerian imagery and forms, and her use of photography in portraiture and figuration.

In this innovative and intimate memoir, a daughter tells the story of her mother, a pan-African hero who faced down misogyny and battled corruption in Nigeria. Inspired by the African philosophy of Ubuntu — the importance of community over the individual — and outraged by injustice, Dora Akunyili took on fraudulent drug manufacturers whose products killed millions, including her sister. A woman in a man’s world, she was elected and became a cabinet minister, but she had to deal with political manoeuvrings, death threats, and an assassination attempt for defending the voiceless. She suffered for it, as did her marriage and six children. I Am Because We Are illuminates the role of kinship, family, and the individual’s place in society, while revealing a life of courage, how community shaped it, and the web of humanity that binds us all.

Seneca Village—a vibrant nineteenth-century community of predominantly Black landowners and tenants—flourished just west of The Met's current location until the city used eminent domain to seize the land in 1857, displacing its residents to make room for the construction of Central Park. The Met's latest Bulletin, Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, imagines a different history in the form of a new type of installation that departs from traditionally Eurocentric period displays to present a fictional but resonant domestic space. Texts by Ian Alteveer, Hannah Beachler, Michelle Commander, and Sarah Lawrence honor the real, lived history of the Seneca Village residents, while also exploring works by Black creators from the eighteenth century to the present day through the empowering lens of Afrofuturism. Including images of new works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Roberto Lugo, and Cyrus Kabiru, as well as an original graphic novella by New York Times bestselling author and illustrator John Jennings, this publication foregrounds generations of Black creativity and looks forward to a resilient future.