Best Book
Legacy in Bloom: Celebrating a Century of Gardens at the Cummer.
Text by Judith B. Tankard. Photographs by Mick Hales. Forward by Maarten van de Guchte.
Jacksonville, Florida: The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, 2008.
for over a hundred years. Renowned landscape architects such as Ossian Cole Simonds, Thomas Meehan,
Ellen Biddle Shipman, William Lyman Phillips, and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. contributed to their design.
Mrs. Ninah May Holden Cummer recognized the possibilities for turning her riverside property
into an enclosed, private garden, whose plantings and design reflected her travels in the United States,
the British Isles, and Italy. The book is beautifully produced and includes historic photographs in addition
to the well-chosen contemporary color photographs by Mick Hales. Garden historian Judith Tankard's informative
text details the history of the Cummer Gardens. There are Notes for the text, as well as Selected Readings, and Image Credits.
Best Exhibition Catalogue
Landscape of Slavery: the Plantation in American Art
Ed. Angela D. Mack and Stephen G. Hoffius. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, published in Cooperation
with the Gibbes Museum of Art/Carolina Art Association, 2008.
The committee was impressed by the design of the catalog with its numerous images, bridging the years from
the circa 1800 works of Thomas Coram to the work of contemporary artists such as Joyce Scott, Kara Walker,
and Radcliffe Bailey, which appropriately complement the seven thematic essays. The plantation and depictions
of its landscapes as evocations of southern wealth as well as of the delineations of slavery is increasingly seen
as a fruitful area for interdisciplinary study and a blending of social history and art history. Each section
includes Notes, and there is a General Bibliography, notes on Contributors, and an Index.
Exhibition Catalogue, Honorable Mention
Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool. Ed. Trevor Schoonmaker.
Durham, NC: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, 2008.
The committee felt that this catalog fills an important gap in the scholarship about contemporary
African American artists by presenting and analyzing the work of Barkley L. Hendricks. This catalog
and the exhibition that it documents are the first survey of Hendricks's landscapes and portraits
from 1964 to 2007. In addition to the many color images throughout, the catalog includes notes to chapters,
Selected Artist Chronology, About the Contributors, Exhibition Checklist, Selected Bibliography,
and Reproduction Credits.