{"id":6466,"date":"2015-08-20T19:56:14","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T19:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=6466"},"modified":"2019-11-22T15:19:52","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T15:19:52","slug":"bookshelf-matthew-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=6466","title":{"rendered":"Bookshelf: Matthew Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author’s Note: The pictures in this piece are not of my bookshelf. Instead, I chose to include pictures of the places that I have found myself reading (books, articles, or virtual versions of either on my iPhone) over the last year, for long periods or for barely a few minutes (in the image above I was not on the swing). All images are from my Instagram account<\/a>. \u2013Matthew Israel<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Swings<\/a>
Swings and a Ferris wheel in Cape Cod, Massachusetts (photograph \u00a9 Matthew Israel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m currently working on several projects: an article on art and climate change, a survey book on contemporary art since 2000, and developing a series of talks, discussions, and panels for Artsy<\/a> called OnSite. My real and virtual bookshelves reflect these projects.<\/p>\n

\"Reading<\/a>
Reading area in The New School\u2019s library, at 14th Street and 5th Avenue, New York (photograph \u00a9 Matthew Israel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve been reading Linda Weintraub\u2019s To Life!: Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet<\/em> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), Alain de Botton and John Armstrong\u2019s Art as Therapy<\/em> (New York: Phaidon, 2013), Suzanne Hudson\u2019s Painting Now<\/em> (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2015), and the catalogue for John Elderfield\u2019s \u201cIn the Studio\u201d exhibition at Gagosian Gallery (New York: Phaidon in Association with Gagosian Gallery, 2015), which was the subject of our first OnSite event.<\/p>\n

\"Empty<\/a>
Empty volleyball court by the Long Island Sound, Connecticut (photograph \u00a9 Matthew Israel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recently\u2014and this is not something I ever thought I would do\u2014I\u2019ve also been reading (or more accurately, rereading) my own book, Kill for Peace: American Artists Against the Vietnam War<\/em> (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013). I did this to prepare for talks I gave this spring and summer at Independent Curators International and the Whitney Museum of American Art.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>
View from the Artsy offices at 401 Broadway, New York (photograph \u00a9 Matthew Israel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Outside of the reading directly related to my current projects, there are the books that I have either started, am waiting to start, or am rereading\u2014both art-historical and not\u2014such as Molly Nesbit\u2019s The Pragmatism in the History of Art<\/em> (Pittsburgh, PA: Periscope, 2013), Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern\u2019s The Photographer\u2019s Playbook: 307 Assignments and Ideas<\/em> (New York: Aperture, 2014), Thomas Crow\u2019s The Long March of Pop: Art, Music, and Design, 1930\u20131995<\/em> (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), Adam Grant\u2019s Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success<\/em> (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), Erik Larson\u2019s Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania<\/em> (New York: Crown, 2015), Frances Flaherty\u2019s The Elements of Story<\/em> (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), and Jonathan Fenby\u2019s History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present<\/em> (London: Penguin, 2013).<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>
View from flying at 30,000 feet (photograph \u00a9 Matthew Israel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The stacks in the Institute of Fine Arts\u2019s library at 1 East 78th Street, New York (photograph \u00a9 Matthew Israel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are also the books I don\u2019t have on my shelves yet, but am looking forward to reading: Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter\u2019s Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), Briony Fer and Tiffany Bell\u2019s Agnes Martin<\/em> (New York: D.A.P.\/Tate, 2015), Atul Gawande\u2019s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End<\/em> (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014), Evan Osnos\u2019s Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China<\/em> (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), and Ta-Nehisi Coates\u2019s Between the World and Me<\/em> (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2015).<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The library at the Artsy offices, New York (photograph \u00a9 Matthew Israel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This leads to the question: what does my actual bookshelf look like? That\u2019s difficult to present because (like most people researching and writing today) I use many bookshelves\u2014at libraries, at home, and at work\u2014and don\u2019t really consider any of them my primary one. More importantly, I don\u2019t feel any of these physical shelves are representative of what I am working on right now because so much of what I read today is digital. In many ways, my bookshelf is composed of books, articles, and other documents in a series of virtual locations: Gmail and Google Docs, Scrivener, Workflowy, Trello, Instapaper, Kindle, JSTOR, Dropbox, YouTube, Vimeo, my Mac\u2019s desktop, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Goodreader, and more. I\u2019m sure if I wrote this piece again in a few months, I\u2019d mention even more new homes for my reading on the web.<\/p>\n

\n

Matthew Israel<\/strong> is an art historian, writer, and educator based in New York City. Currently he is curator at large at Artsy, where he also serves as director emeritus and advisor, The Art Genome Project. He received his PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and has written for various magazines and websites, including Artforum<\/em>, Art in America<\/em>, Departures<\/em>, Education Week<\/em>, and Frieze<\/em>, and has contributed to catalogues published by major galleries and museums. Matthew has delivered talks about the future of art history, contemporary art, art and politics, art and innovation, and his work at Artsy, internationally, and has taught modern and contemporary art history at New York University and Parsons The New School for Design. He is the author of Kill for Peace: American Artists Against the Vietnam War<\/em>, published in 2013 by the University of Texas Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week’s Bookshelf, Matthew Israel shares what he’s reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kia_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[164],"class_list":["post-6466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-notes","tag-bookshelf",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6466"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13113,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6466\/revisions\/13113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}