The Gift :Emma Amos with Friends
The Gift :Emma Amos with Friends
hardcover
Pre-Order Published On:
22 September, 2026
Popular Books by Emily Liebert
View All Books by Emily Liebert
Description
An exploration Emma Amos’s ambitious portraiture project The Gift, celebrating its enduring legacy and contemporary importance
American artist Emma Amos (1937–2020) originally created The Gift (1990–94) as a birthday present for her daughter. However, this dazzling collection of portraits that honors creative kinship among women speaks to a much larger audience. A groundbreaking artist, Amos worked across the mediums of paint, print, and textile to celebrate the lives of women, especially Black women. Inspired by a book proposal that Amos herself drafted, Emma Amos: Among Friends contextualizes The Gift and explores its legacy.
Rooted in Amos’s own creative community in New York City, The Gift is composed of forty-eight watercolor portraits of artists, writers, and curators including Elizabeth Catlett, Anna Deavere Smith, and Faith Ringgold, as well as other lesser-known women. To great effect, the vast grid of faces, each slightly larger than life, projects the force of its subjects. With essays by a new generation of scholars, a historic interview of Amos by bell hooks, and a roundtable conversation among notable contemporary artists, including Jordan Casteel, Aliza Nizenbaum, and Amy Sherald, this publication reflects on the intersections of portraiture and community and honors the power of Amos’s work.
Distributed for the Cleveland Museum of Art
Exhibition schedule:
The Cleveland Museum of Art
(September 13, 2026–January 17, 2027)
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780300292718 |
| ISBN10 | 0300292716 |
| Number Of Pages | 160 |
| Item Weight | 1000 g |
| Publisher / Reseller | Yale University Press |
| Format | hardcover |
Author's Bio
Emily Liebert is Lauren Rich Fine Curator of Contemporary Art, Chair of Art of the Americas and Modern and Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art.