Download a PDF Sample (400 KB)
A new work, never before published, Museum Legs is an irreverent and witty but also warm and engaging collection of essays—ranging from "First Friday" (a visit to museum parties) to "Revenge of the Homunculus" (a word or two about wall labels).  The essays culminate in "Dumb, Basic Ideas" for what museums might consider doing differently and "Crib Notes for a Museum Visit" (on-the-ground suggestions for museum-going).  The larger, embedded political idea—that boredom is a proxy for disenfranchisement—leads to the real question, not just of how people go to museums, but of how people have a sense of art in their everyday lives, what that art is, and who is making it in the first place.

The project started as "why my friends get bored in art museums and why that matters."  The reason it matters is that museums are an insulated judiciary in a larger visual culture.  The reason people were getting bored or tired was that what museums are doing now—competing with movies and amusement parks and competing with leisure activities—is to the side of their higher purpose. No matter how much you shine a strobe light on a van Gogh, it won't be a reality television program.  Relative to the leisure industry—and the fact we live in one of the most visual cultures of all time—museums are a little like the person on the soccer field who is going to where the ball is instead of staying open for the pass.

Project Notes:
The author has an MFA and MBA and years of work experience in art museums.  The project exists currently as a full-length manuscript.  It is estimated that two additional chapters would be written.  The author is particularly interested in finding a dynamic and talented editor to help shape the final work.

The Project Team (Contact ):

• Author & Project Manager: Amy Whitaker
  
• Editor: apply
• Publicist: apply
• Designer: apply
• Bookstore Sponsor: apply

Download a PDF Sample (600 KB)"As a first-hand account of life with one of the major artists of our century [Max Ernst, 1891-1976], as the autobiography of a distinctive and original American painter [Dorothea Tanning, b.1910], and as a poetic evocation of the ways in which dream and reality can mate and mingle [Dada/Surrealism], Birthday is a book to read and re-read, an 'Alice in Wonderland' for grown-ups." —The New York Times

Project Notes:
First published in 1986, Birthday is out of print, but still in copyright. If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to contact the author (perhaps through the previous publisher, or a more recent publisher of another of her books) to determine copyright status and seek her approval of the project.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.

Download a PDF Sample (700 KB)Comprised of essays published primarily in The New Yorker from the 1970s to mid-90s -- covering photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Richard Avedon, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and more -- Diana & Nikon is the complete collection of Janet Malcolm's writings on photography.

"I admit to an acolytes devotion to Malcolm, to a thirst for everything she writes. There's a thrill to reading her that comes from the moments when her writing breaks ever so subtly with the decorum of journalistic worldliness to hint at something personal, painful even, about Malcolm herself." —photographer and writer Moyra Davey, Long Life Cool White

Project Notes:
First published in 1980 and then expanded and reissued in 1997, Diana & Nikon has again fallen out of print. If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to contact the author to determine copyright status and seek her involvement in the project.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.

Download a PDF Sample (1 MB)"With running comments, often caustic and sometimes witty, on such abstract schematizations [mentioned previously] interpolated among his own personal observations covering some forty years of study and appreciation of art and nature, Professor Mather comes to the conclusion in this book that most theories of esthetics are so much moonshine and worthless to aid any one in experiencing beauty. Only direct personal experience of concrete works of art or forms in nature, he says in effect, can awaken the spectator to a genuine esthetic pleasure... Professor Mather's cogent and mature observations 'Concerning Beauty' are well worth the serious attention of the reader." —The New York Times, 1935

Mather is the namesake of the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism. Awarded annually by the College Art Association, it remains one of the most important honors for writings in visual art. 

Project Notes:
Concerning Beauty is out of print. First published in 1935, the work would still be under copyright. If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to contact the author's estate or previous publisher to determine copyright status and seek their involvement in the project.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.

Download a PDF Sample (1.7 MB)"Ernst Fischer [1899-1972], the Austrian poet and critic, surveys the whole history of artistic achievement through Marxist eyes. People have always needed art: but why have they needed it? And what shaped the forms whereby they satisfied their need? Fischer's answers to these questions should be as voraciously studied and debated here as they have been on the Continent." —Kenneth Tynan, 1960s

Project Notes:
The Necessity of Art is out of print. First published in English in 1961, the work in its original German and the English translation first done by Anna Bostock, are still under copyright. If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to contact the author's estate, previous publisher, and/or translator to determine copyright status and seek their involvement in the project. This project could be a republication of the original translation with Bostock's participation, or a new translation of the original work.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.

Download a PDF Sample (700 KB)"...writer Roger Cardinal coined the term 'Outsider Art' as an equivalent for the French term 'Art Brut' in his now seminal book Outsider Art, more than a quarter of a century ago.... Taking his lead from [Jean] Dubuffet, he constructed a canon of Outsiders measured by the extent of their perceived anti-cultural position. Since that time Cardinal has been a key figure in defining and reviewing the territory..." (Colin Rhodes, Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives)

Widely considered one of the premier works in the category -- second only to Dubuffet's earlier Asphyxiating Culture -- Cardinal's Outsider Art includes a series of introductory overview essays followed by profiles of nearly thirty Outsider artists.

Project Notes:
Outsider Art is out of print. First published in 1972, it would still be under copyright, presumably with the author. If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to contact the author to determine copyright status and seek his involvement in the project. Edited, packaged and marketed together as foundational Outsider Art texts, this book and Dubuffet's Asphyxiating Culture, might make a good two-book project for a team.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.

Download a PDF Sample (1.4 MB)Considered by most to be the missing artistic link between Surrealism and Dada, only four art critics have ever interviewed the highly-acclaimed (and equally reclusive) artist, Jacques Debierue. In fact, not many more people than those four have ever been allowed to see the artist's work beyond his first reputation-making piece "No. One". Set in South Florida in the 70s, The Burnt Orange Heresy is the story of Jamers Figueras, a hyper-ambitious art critic given the rare chance to interview Debierue, and thus securing his entire career in a single stroke. The opportunity though, doesn't come without costs.

This fictional work has proven difficult to categorize, and the oft-used mystery or crime-fiction labels don't capture the numerous possible psychological and satirical readings of the book -- really a modern-day literary heir to Balzac's famous The Unknown Masterpiece.

Project Notes:
The Burnt Orange Heresy is out of print. First published in 1971, it would still be under copyright, presumably with the author's estate. If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to locate and contact the estate to determine copyright status and seek his involvement in the project.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.

Download a PDF Sample (800 KB)This is the Hour is a novel about Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Though generally framed as a biography of the artist, the key plot of the novel revolves around an imagined relationship between Goya and the Duchess of Alba, who the artist painted a number of times. This focus on their relationship has proved the cause of the book's sometime condemnation in art historical circles. For while outside the confines of the novel, the relationship between Goya and the Duchess has indeed been discussed, it is generally dismissed as a flight of fancy at best, or as base gossip at worst. In the hands of Feuchtwanger however, it is undoubtedly a compelling twist on the oft-told story of Goya's life.

Project Notes:
This is the Hour is out of print. First published in English in 1951, it was originally written in German and may have been previously published in that language. It would still be under copyright. If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to locate and contact the author's estate to determine copyright and translation status and to seek their involvement in the project.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.

Download a PDF Sample (600 KB)"Asphxiating Culture is Dubuffet's credo that decries conventional art instruction while extolling an untaught, 'brut' art. The willfulness of his opinions, the combativeness with which he pursues his creative and intellectual position, the strength and clarity of his expression are all part of his redoubtable armory and shows us the artist/writer at his idiosyncratic best." --Thomas M. Messer, former director of the Guggenheim Museum.

Project Notes:
There is no English edition of Asphyxiating Culture currently in print. First published in France 1986, it was first translated into English by Carol Volk in 1988. If a project team were to work on this book, they would work with the original French publisher and either produce a new translation, or contact Volk to reprint her original translation.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.

Download a PDF Sample (1 MB)In as many chapters, The Proud Possessors chronicles 12 individual art collectors (from Isabella Stewart Gardner to Joseph Hirshhorn) and 3 families (the Steins, Havemeyers, and Rockefellers). Focused on American collectors from the late 19th Century to the mid 20th, this lively book finds its way into collections now housed in nearly every major American museum. Saarinen (married to the architect Eero) won both the prestigious Frank Jewett Mather award and the American Federation of Arts award for art criticism. More than writing for only art publications, she was well known for intelligent and engaging work appearing in popular lifestyle magazines and on television. In fact, a shorter version of the chapter on the Havemeyers in this book originally appeared in Vogue magazine.

Project Notes:
The Proud Possessors is out of print. First published in 1958, it would still be under copyright, presumably with the author's estate. If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to locate and contact the estate to determine copyright status and seek his involvement in the project.

Project Team Members:
None. This project was submitted by the Hol Editors and is open for anyone to take the lead on. Apply to work on this team.