Summer is slowly creeping towards us Chicago, the sun is lasting a bit longer, the days a bit warmer. In the vain of looking ahead, this week we put together a list of books to start off the summer right. This list includes mostly recently published non-fiction and fictional narratives that range from Los Angeles to the UK, with stories that share the diversity of the art world in all of its forms.

Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess by Michael Bhaskar

Bhaskar’s non-fiction work describes how “curation” has expanded to industries beyond the art world. “Curation, he says, has left the museums and has become a necessary strategy for understanding 21st-century life.” In the era of information overload, one must filter by what is valuable to them. Bhaskar argues that the secret to economic value lies in curation, and the extra care that comes with it.

South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s by Kellie Jones

In this narrative non-fiction, Jones unpacks the landscape of Los Angeles black arts communities during the 1960s and 1970s. Despite structural racism involving LA housing and employment politics, a strong artist activist community grew and spurred black-owned art spaces. Jones interviews artists like Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi, who comment on restrictions on black mobility during this time. Jones restructures the narrative to look to this past to consider real or imagined futures.

1971: A Year in the Life of Color by Darby English

Darby English, renowned art historian and a consulting curator for the Museum of Modern Art, recollects the transformation of modernism in 1971, in which two exhibits help define the “black aesthetic.” The first show, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, titled “Contemporary Black Artists in America,” drew controversy when many of the artists pulled out, protesting the lack of black curators putting the show together.  The second, “The Deluxe Show,” held in a dilapidated building in Houston’s fifth ward, was a racially integrated abstract art exhibition. Through these examples, English navigates the cultural weight of black identity in 1971.

After Kathy Acker: A Biography by Chris Kraus

After Kathy Acker is the riveting biography of the postmodernism literary hero, following the construction and deconstruction of her own mythologies. Having held multiple titles and roles throughout her life: stripper, punk-poet, experimental novelist, and on and on, Kraus uses Acker’s self deceptive tendencies to paint a portrait of the so called “Cultural Hero.” Although it is a non-fiction piece, this book reads as a sexy, tragic, and terrific story of a New York City artist.

Autumn by Ali Smith

Autumn is a thoughtful narrative, the story of a life-long friendship between a young art-lecturer and her 101-year old friend Daniel. Smith’s story is the gentle tale of friendship and how the subtleties of art have the ability to affect us greatly, how politics and art are connected at the core. Plus, if you enjoy this novel, it is the first of a Seasonal quartet.