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# Bold New Books in Art and Visual Culture From the MIT Press
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/bold-new-books-art-visual-culture-from-mit-press/
- Published: 2025-01-23T19:02:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:04:02.000Z
- Description: Deep explorations of Ray Johnson, Ridykeulous, Tony Smith, Steina, Ruth Asawa, graffiti as monument, the art of mourning, and more.
- Author: MIT Press
- Tags: Announcement, Books, Book Announcements, MIT Press, Sponsored, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-large, #Import 2025-11-24 09:41 (2025)

“Visual culture is central to meaning making, and meaning making is central to the production of knowledge. The books we publish at the [MIT Press](https://bit.ly/4auH19D?ref=hyperallergic.com) probe the ways that visual culture is inscribed with power, and they unflinchingly examine what is at stake in that power. They amplify understudied subjects; they advance the field through inclusive contributions to knowledge; and they reveal how what we see *—* and what remains hidden from view *—* is related to equity and justice. Our readers know that visual culture is never neutral.”

*—Victoria Hindley, Art, Architecture, and Design, Senior* *Acquisitions Editor*

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![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/01/mit-press_black-elegies.jpg)

[***Black Elegies***](https://bit.ly/3EfNUPY?ref=hyperallergic.com) by Kimberly Juanita Brown is an unflinching study of black grief as a form of elegy. Brown asks: How do you mourn those you are not supposed to see? And where does the grief go? She shows us that grief is everywhere: “It spills out of photographs and modulates music. It hovers in the tenor and tone of cinematic performances. It resides in the body like an inspired concept, waiting for its articulation.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/01/mit-press_graffiti.jpg)

In [***Monumental Graffiti***](https://bit.ly/3WvhMhM?ref=hyperallergic.com), curator and anthropologist Rafael Schacter focuses on the material, communicative, and contextual aspects of graffiti and monuments to provide a timely perspective on public art, citizenship, and the city today. Applying monument as a lens to understand graffiti, and graffiti as a lens to comprehend monument, he challenges readers to consider what the appropriate monument for our contemporary world could be.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/01/mit-press_ray-johnson.jpg)

Ray Johnson (1927–1995), aka “[New York’s most famous unknown artist](https://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/attachment/en/6115ed1ce1743c7ca22a7462/Press/6322718c182399c5980087cb?ref=hyperallergic.com),” was notorious for the elaborate games he played with art world institutions, soliciting their attention even as he rejected their invitations. In [***A Book about Ray***](https://bit.ly/4h4wftg?ref=hyperallergic.com), Ellen Levy offers the first comprehensive study of the artist who turned the business of career-making into a tongue-in-cheek performance, tracing his artistic development from his arrival at Black Mountain College in 1945 to his death in 1995.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/01/mit-press_ruth-asawa.jpg)

For most of modern history, artmaking was pitted against caretaking. But in San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s, a group of artists gathered around Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) began to reject this dominant narrative. In [***Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury***](https://bit.ly/4h6Dd0Q?ref=hyperallergic.com), Jordan Troeller analyzes how their labor as mothers fueled their labor as artists, redefining key aesthetic concerns of their era, including autonomy, medium specificity, and originality.

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To learn more about these new releases and other books from the MIT Press, visit [mitpress.mit.edu](https://bit.ly/4auH19D?ref=hyperallergic.com).

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