Among Others: Blackness at MoMA

English (curator, New York’s Museum of Modern Art [MoMA]) put considerable effort into this massive book project, with selected artwork and thoughtful essays, to address the museum’s racist past. The lengthy opening essay is a critical examination of MoMA’s history of collecting and exhibiting black artists, beginning in 1934—the first showing of a black American artist—and considers how the art world perceived race over roughly 80 years. In a shorter essay, Mabel O. Wilson (architecture, African American & diaspora studies, Columbia Univ.) focuses on the lack of diversity in MoMA’s exhibitions of architecture and design. The book includes color images of nearly 200 works from the museum’s collection, almost all by black artists; a brief essay on each work weighs the racial and cultural significance of the artwork. Commissioned authors include MoMA curators, artists, and other scholars; an index allows readers to search by author.