PUBLICATIONS PROGRAM
In partnership with commercial publishers, the Foundation plans to print and distribute seminal publications generated from its symposium series as well as catalogues to accompany touring exhibitions. The Publications Program includes a Catalogue Raisonné, an essential resource about the artist for scholars, collectors and students.
Publications in Process:
Print Catalogue Raisonné
As a prelude to the major Catalogue Raisonné project documenting Bearden’s entire oeuvre, a comprehensive print Catalogue Raisonné will be published to include all of the edition prints that Bearden created in collaboration with master printers. It will also feature essays by art historians and excerpts from interviews of master printmakers and publishers that bring up-to-date the existing information regarding his graphic works. The catalogue will be illustrated with color and black & white images of every editioned print, images of many of the proofs and related works by Bearden and other artists.
Romare Bearden in the Modernist Tradition
This publication documents the proceedings of the 2007 Chicago Romare Bearden in the Modernist Tradition symposium. The 133-page publication includes scholarly essays based on the papers presented at the symposium, transcripts of interviews, over 40 color and black & white Bearden works as well as other reproductions to illustrate the book.
From Process to Print: Graphics Works by Romare Bearden
To be published 2009 by Pomegranate, the exhibition catalogue will accompany the exhibition From Process to Print: Graphics Works by Romare Bearden, which features an in-depth examination of Bearden’s graphic works. The catalogue will present essays by art historians and interviews with the master printmakers and publishers with whom Bearden worked and feature various color and black & white reproductions of selected works from the exhibition.
Preservation of Bearden’s Library, Archives and Art
Bearden left an extensive library of books, personal papers and records dating mainly from the 1960s to 1980s that illuminate his extraordinary creativity and intellectual/scholarly interests. This collection adds substantively to the scholarship on twentieth-century American art, containing varied printed materials, recordings of interviews, sketchbooks and Bearden’s own personal library of over 2,500 books and journals. Currently, the collection is available only for limited use by scholars and only by appointment. Once it is digitally catalogued, it will become an accessible resource for scholars, artists, art and cultural historians.
Oral History Project
The Oral History Project will provide extensive information about Bearden’s life, art and artistic process. A collection of recorded interviews with Bearden’s friends, fellow artists, collaborators, supporters and collectors will contextually assemble details about his life, art and artistic process. Because Bearden’s interests were multidisciplinary, interviewees with whom he intersected and collaborated are drawn from literary, dance, music and the performing arts worlds. This project enables the Foundation’s continued expansion of Romare Bearden Archives, with primary source material seminal to the field.