Saturday, April 24, 2021

Museums as Agents of Change

I'm so pleased to see that my friend Mike Murawski's book Museums as Agents of Change: A Guide to Becoming a Changemaker will be available Monday from Rowman & Littlefield / American Alliance Of Museums. In this book, Mike looks at how we, as individuals, can expand the work of museums to live up to their potential to serve as agents of change--how they can bring people together, contribute to local communities, and change people’s lives. He asks how can we better recognize the meaningful work that museums are doing to enact change and how can we work together to build a stronger culture of equity and care within museums. Such questions are increasingly vital for all museum professionals to consider, and are also important questions for all of us as community members.

Museums as Agents of Change is available in hardback and paperback, and soon also as an e-book.

Monday, April 19, 2021

How Do Libraries Get Books?

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at libraries--how purchasing choices are made and how books, especially e-books, come to be available? Author Maggie Lynch writes about The Importance of Library Distribution on her blog and notes that with the pandemic, libraries have adapted to changes in demand by providing stronger e-book offerings. As a reader who waited until the pandemic to get a Kindle, I can attest to my public library's growing interest in e-books!

Now, speaking of e-books, you may wonder whether Magnetic Woman is available as an e-book. The answer is, unfortunately, no. Rights for the art for e-book editions would have been even more expensive than what I had to pay (that's me, the author, not my publisher!) for print rights. Besides which, do you really want to read an art history book on a screen if you can read it on paper? Probably not, although I do think it would be nice to have a copy handy on an e-reader for travel.

Friday, April 16, 2021

Toward a Concrete Utopia

Not precisely a new book at this point, but Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, edited by Martino Stierli and Vladimir Kulić, was just awarded the Society of Architectural Historians 2021 Exhibition Catalogue Award. Kudos to the editors and authors!

I regret to say it looks like this is no longer available from MOMA's design shop, but you can still get it on Amazon (for a high price).