I can’t stop thinking about this one photo of Dolores Huerta in 1974. She’s speaking at a rally onstage, with a sweater vest bearing the iconic United Farmworkers logo — a white circle with a black thunderbird referencing the Mexican flag.
It’s one of a trove of photos in Chicano Camera Culture, a must-read on our book list this spring, which happens to include several other titles that explore visual culture and activism. Feminist artist and environmental activist Susan Simensky Bietila has a new memoir out, while tomorrow marks publication day for organizer and painter Molly Crabapple’s book on the Jewish Bund (she’ll be giving a talk with Naomi Klein at the New York Public Library as the first stop on her book tour). We’ve also got a Theresa Hak Kyung Cha catalog on our list, marking the first major publication on her work in over two decades.
Find more for your spring reading below, including a fun comic by Nathan Gelgud about a book chronicling poet Frank O’Hara’s curatorial work at the Museum of Modern Art, and don’t forget to let us know what’s on your list this season!
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin
10 Art Books for Your Spring Reading List
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s first catalog in 25 years, Molly Crabapple chronicles the Jewish Bund, a photographer captures a Black Southern waterway, and more.
“Art doesn’t interest me. Artists interest me.” —Marcel Duchamp
From Our Critics
Frank O’Hara’s Curatorial Eye
Though best remembered for his poetry, O’Hara championed artists like Helen Frankenthaler and organized several shows at the Museum of Modern Art during the Cold War. | Nathan Gelgud
Frank O’Hara and MoMA: New York Poet, Global Curator (2025) by Matthew Holman
Previews & Interviews
Joel Meyerowitz on Photographing Giorgio Morandi’s Studio
“He was assembling a force field of geometric objects,” said Meyerowitz, whose book of images exploring the painter’s famous still lifes is being rereleased this spring. | Greta Rainbow
Nine Lessons on My Path From Engagement to Leadership
My career has been defined by a steady effort to collapse silos: between curatorial and educational work, between institutions and communities, between what museums have been and what they might yet become. | Ryan N. Dennis
More Meyerowitz
Joel Meyerowitz’s Wild Flowers Is a Reminder That the World Is Still Blooming
In its expanded new edition, Meyerowitz’s photo book makes incidental details the leading characters. | Esmé Hogeveen
