The Soul of a Nation Reader

A veritable treasure trove of material, garnered from art journals, some long-defunct, self-published pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, exhibition statements and newspaper articles, as well as transcripts from interviews and public round table discussions. -- Chris McCormack * Art Monthly *
The book highlights the vital and transformative contributions of Black artists over two decades. -- Harriet Lloyd-Smith * Wallpaper* *
The texts each stake a position in the still vital debates on the roles of Black artists and their relationships to art institutions. * BLAU International No. 4 *
Revisiting an earlier era of unrest, this book gathers texts from Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison and more on Black art. -- Abdi Latif Dahir * New York Times Book Review *
Arts educator and founder of Black Art Library Asmaa Walton says this book, a companion to the art exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” is a must-have, particularly for anyone who loves visual art and history. -- Tembe Denton-Hurst * New York Magazine *
Clearly, Black culture is not a monolith. Disputes about the status of Black artists and their liberation, or obligations, have rumbled through intellectual circles for generations. In shouts and murmurs, with protests and manifestos, artists and political activists have made their positions known. For the first time, a broad selection of the arguments covering the 1960s to 1980s has been compiled in a single volume. Now, anybody interested in understanding what is still at stake can do so with The Soul of a Nation Reader. -- Kerry James Marshall
Just as the exhibition curated by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley reinvigorated so many necessary art practices and introduced them to new publics, The Soul of a Nation Reader revives the aesthetic debates swirling around Black art starting six decades ago. In so doing, it demonstrates the high stakes of these arguments: from the popular press to academic studies, debaters saw themselves as building new societies as well as writing the first drafts of contemporary Black art history. -- Naomi Beckwith
Like the exhibition whose title it shares, The Soul of a Nation Reader revivifies our understanding of the range, complexity and sophistication of Black artistic praxis since the long 1960s. Gathering both often referenced and out-of-print texts from across the ideological spectrum, this anthology not only provides an unprecedented view of the ambitions and constraints of African American art but also makes essential reading for anyone invested in thinking critically and capaciously about the politics of contemporary cultural practice. -- Huey Copeland
In 2017 the exhibition "The Soul of a Nation" traveled...garnering rave reviews along the way. Now comes [this] companion anthology of writings focused on art's relationship to the Black Power movement of the '60s and '70s. Many of these writings...are a half-century old, but they still resonate. * ARTnews *
Between 1960 and 1980 was a transformative time in the American narrative when Black leaders sought radical solutions to racism, injustice, and inequality, and artists often struggled to figure out their role in the quest for change. What is “Black art” and does such a category exist? Artists, curators, and critics considered these matters repeatedly, during the time, offering a spectrum of artistic responses, theories, opinions. Complementing the landmark traveling exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” this comprehensive volume gathers more than 150 rare and out-of-print text and newly published material from artists and writers addressing “questions of Black identity, activism and social responsibility in the age of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. -- Victoria Valentine * Culture Type *