Catharina Manchanda

A revered Seattle-based artist calls for hope, faith, and truthBarbara Earl Thomas's new body of work carries within it the sediments of history and grapples with race and the color line. At the heart of it lies a story of life and death, hope and resilience—a child's survival. With her quietly glowing portraits of young Black boys and girls, Thomas puts before us the humble question: can we see, and be present to, the humanity, the trust, the hopes and dreams of each of these children?The Geography of Innocence offers a reexamination of Black portraiture and the preconceived dichotomies of innocence and guilt and sin and redemption, and the ways in which these notions are assigned and distorted along cultural and racial lines. Two interconnected visual arguments unfold: a portrait gallery of children from the artist's extended community and an illuminated environment that appears like a delicate paper lantern. To accompany the visual elements, the book's essays examine Thomas's work in the context of different art historical portraiture traditions and political relevance. Thomas also contributes an interview and an essay reflecting on the current climate in which the work exists.

Artists and architects have long used sketches, notes, and sculptural models to explore or test new ideas and designs. But in the twentieth century, as Western art moved away from straightforward depictions of the natural world, models and prototypes began to evolve from preparatory steps in the creative process to, increasingly, autonomous artworks. "Models and Prototypes", the companion publication to the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum exhibition of the same name, draws on the works of modernist pioneers and major contemporary figures alike to explore how artists in a variety of media have redefined artistic practice by expanding the use of the model as a new visual force. Lavishly illustrated with dozens of pieces by such luminaries as Kandinsky, Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Thomas Demand, and Jenny Holzer, "Models and Prototypes" also features a fascinating essay by curator Catharina Manchanda. Ultimately, this first volume in the museum's collection-based "Focus" series illuminates the centrality of models in contemporary art, asking why they remain so compelling as both tools and subjects.