PUBLICATIONS
Books
Michael Ray Charles is the most comprehensive presentation yet of the work of an artist who rose to prominence in the 1990s for works that engaged American stereotypes of African Americans. With a background in advertising and an archivist’s inquisitiveness, Charles developed an artistic practice that made startling use of found images and offered critiques of the narratives they fostered. Immersing readers in the imagination of this daring painter, Michael Ray Charles celebrates and contextualizes a singular, major figure in the art world.
“Michael Ray Charles Engages Black Studies,” in Collecting Black Studies: The Art of Material Culture at The University of Texas at Austin, edited by Cherise Smith and Lise Ragbir (Austin: Art Galleries at Black Studies and University of Texas Press, 2020). Forthcoming.
Enacting Others: Politics of Identity in Eleanor Antin, Nikki S. Lee, Adrian Piper, and Anna Deavere Smith. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.
Chapters in Books
“Moneta Sleet, Jr. as Active Participant: The Selma March and the Black Arts Movement.” In T. Jeffreys (Ed.), Walking (Documents of Contemporary Art). (London, UK and Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2024), 34-42. (Reprinted extracts from New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement, by Lisa Gail Collins and Margo Natalie Crawford, Eds., 2006, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 210–226).
“Collaboration: Nikki S. Lee.” In A. Azoulay, W. Ewald, S. Meiselas, L. Raiford, L. Wexler (Co-Authors), Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography. London, UK: Thames and Hudson.
“Follow the Figure: Cauleen Smith Confronts Land Art,” in Humans: Terra Foundation Essays Vol 6. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
“Charles Gaines: Interview,” in Charles Gaines: Palm Trees and Other Works (New York: Hauser and Wirth Publishers, 2019).
“Homage to Sterling Brown (1972)” and “Interview with Edmund W. Gordon and Edmund T. Gordon,” in Charles White: The Susan G. and Edmund W. Gordon Gift to The University of Texas at Austin, edited by Veronica Roberts (Austin: Blanton Museum of Art and Tower Press, 2019).
“Good Fences, Good Neighbors: Rodney McMillian’s Takes on History,” in Rodney McMillian: History is Present Tense (Austin, Texas and Santa Fe, New Mexico: The Contemporary and Radius Books, 2018).
“Bittersweet Blackness: Humor and the Assertion of Ethnic Identity in Eleanor Antin’s Eleanora Antinova,” in No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality and Ethnicity (Dartmouth University Press, 2015), 242- 269.
“Under Duress: If Everybody’s Work is Equally Important,” in LaToya Ruby Frazier (Nimes, France: Carré d'Art-Musée d'art contemporain, 2015), 30-37.
“John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies Collection” in The Collections: The University of Texas at Austin (Austin: University of Texas Press, Tower Books, 2015).
“What is the Relevance of Museums? Can you Imagine a World Without Them?” in Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values, edited by Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Alvarez (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2009), 44-48. Co-authored with Gary Matthews, Jr.