Research Guides: Contemporary Art: Books

American Decades

American Decades
Call Number: Cabell Library Reference E169.12 .A419 1994
American social history: people, events and ideas.
11 volumes, 1900-2009

Changes and challenges unique to each 10-year period in 20th Century America from 1900-2009. Each volume begins with a chronology of world events to provide a context for the American experience, then explores American life during the decade from 12 separate perspectives including the Arts.

Art Browsery

Look. Learn. Create.
Visit the Art Browsery on the 4th floor of Cabell Library to see a selection of new visually rich books available for checkout.

Browsing Contemporary Art Books

Try browsing the N500's to N6000's in

Reference (1st floor)
General Collection (3rd floor) &
Oversized section (4th floor)

This area includes:

Major biennial/triennial exhibition catalogs
e.g. Whitney Biennial, Documenta, Venice Biennial (Biennale di Venezia), Carnegie International…
Contemporary or modern art history surveys
Subject-specific surveys
Selected major gallery or museum catalogs

Featured Contemporary Art Books

Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art Series
A collaboration between the Whitechapel Gallery in London and MIT Press. " Each volume in the series is a definitive anthology on a particular theme, practice, or concern that is of central significance to contemporary visual culture. The artists and writers included in these books, like the guest editors who conceive them, represent the diversity of perspectives, generations, and voices defining art today."

Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art
Call Number: N6490 .T492 2012
Contemporary art throughout the world from the U.S. and Europe to the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and AustraliaThe writings, which take the form of artists' statements, interviews, and essays, make vivid each artist's aesthetic approach and capture the flavor and intent of his or her work.
Art Since 1900: modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism
Call Number: N6490 .A7186 2016
Introduces students to the key theoretical approaches to modern and contemporary art art since 1900 by medium, theme, country, or region.
Critical Terms for Art History
Call Number: N34 .C75 2003
Essays that cover a wide variety of "loaded" terms in the history of art, from sign to meaning, ritual to commodity. Each essay explains and comments on a single term, discussing the issues the term raises and putting the term into practice as an interpretive framework for a specific work of art.
How to Write about Contemporary Art
Call Number: N7476 .W544 2014
Tips that range across the complete spectrum of art-writing. Includes academic essays; press releases and news articles; texts for auction and exhibition catalogues, gallery guides and wall labels; op-ed journalism and exhibition reviews; and writing for websites and blogs.
Biennials, Triennials, and Documenta : the exhibitions that created contemporary art
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2016
Provides a comprehensive global history of biennialization from the rise of the European star-curator in the 1970s to the emergence of mega-exhibitions in Asia in the 1990s Introduces a global array of case studies to illustrate the trajectory of biennials and their growing influence on artistic expression.
Also in print: N72.G55 G74 2016

How to Find Ebooks

To find ebooks in VCU Libraries collections:

Go to the homepage of the library website, library.vcu.edu
Type your search into the yellow bar and click Search.
On the right-hand side of your results page, filter by Material Type (Books) and Show Only (Access Online).
You may also want to filter by Publication Date.
View ebooks available to you through VCU Libraries across various platforms.

Google Books

Use Google Books to browse for relevant books, then search by title in VCU LIbraries to see if we have them in our collection. If not, request them via Inter-Library Loan.