Books and Exhibition Catalogs
Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2015
For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2010
Dana Hoey: Experiments in Primitive Living, Baltimore: Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2010.
Andrea Robbins and Max Becher: Portraits, Baltimore: Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2008
(With Joan Rosenbaum), Masterworks of the Jewish Museum, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004
White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art, Baltimore: Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2004
Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations, 1979-2000, Baltimore: Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2002
Adrian Piper: A Retrospective, Baltimore, Fine Arts Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and New York, Distributed Art Publishers, 1999
Hands and Minds: The Art and Writing of Young People in 20th-Century America, New York: Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, 1999
White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness, New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999
The Crisis of Criticism, New York, The New Press, 1998
(With Brian Wallis and Simon Watson), Constructing Masculinity, New York and London, Routledge, 1995
Modern Art and Society: An Anthology of Social and Multicultural Readings, New York, HarperCollins, 1994
How Art Becomes History: Essays on Art, Society, and Culture in Post-New Deal America, New York, HarperCollins, 1992
Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s, New York, Harper & Row, 1989
Selected Essays Contributed to Anthologies, Books, and Exhibition Catalogs
“In the Name of the Artist,” in Sara Reisman, ed., Elia Alba: The Supper Club, University of Chicago Press, 2019
“The Crucible of Race: Gordon Parks and an Emerging Civil Rights Movement,” Gordon Parks: The New Tide, 1940-1950, Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2018
“A Remembrance of Lives Lost: Dawoud Bey’s Birmingham Project,” in Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018
“The Sober Heroism of Arthur Ashe,” John Zimmerman and Arne de Winde, Crossing the Line: Arthur Ashe at the 1968 US Open, Hannibal Publishing, 2018
"The Weapons of Gordon Parks,” Gordon Parks: Collected Works, Study Edition, Göttingen: Steidl, 2017
“The Ghosts of the Hudson Valley,” in Stephen Hannock and Jason Rosenfeld, River Crossings: Contemporary Art Comes Home, Thomas Cole National Historic Site and Olana State Historic Site; New York: The Artist Book Foundation, 2015
“With a Small Camera Tucked in My Pocket,” in Gordon Parks: Segregation Story, High Museum of Art, Atlanta/Steidl, 2014
“The Weapons of Gordon Parks,” Gordon Parks: Collected Works, Göttingen: Steidl, 2012
“Viewing the Invisible: Fred Wilson’s Allegories of Absence and Loss” (essay) and “Collaboration, Museums and the Politics of Display: A Conversation with Fred Wilson” (interview) in Doro Globus, Editor, Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader, London: Ridinghouse, 2011
“Man in the Mirror: The Harlem Document, Race and the Photo League,” in Mason Klein, The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, The Jewish Museum, New York; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011
“One Small Step,” in Claudia Nahson, The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats, The Jewish Museum; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011
“A Story without an End: Huckleberry Finn, Race, and the Contemporary Imagination,” in Jens Hoffmann, Huckleberry Finn, CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, 2011
“Abstract Expressionism: A Cultural Timeline,” in Norman Kleeblatt, ed., Action/ Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008
“Writing in the Sky,” in Shinichi Maruyama: Kusho, New York: Bruce Silverstein Gallery, 2009
“On Being Nothing,” in Charles Stainback, Striking Resemblance, Palm Beach: Norton Museum of Art, 2008
“Photography in the Struggle for Civil Rights,” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Photography Initiative website, October 2007.
“Falling Into Place,” in Andrea Robbins and Max Becher: The Transportation of Place, New York: Aperture, 2006
“Epilogue: The Modigliani Myth,” in Mason Klein, ed., Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, New Haven & London: Yale University Press and New York: The Jewish Museum, 2004
“Secrets and Lies,” in Jenny Holzer: Truth before Power, Bregenz: Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2004
“Last Exit to Brooklyn,” in Alexis Rockman: “Manifest Destiny,” New York: The Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2004
“Mea Culpa: The Art of Mary Kelly,” in Elsa Longhauser, ed., Mary Kelly: The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi, Santa Monica: The Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2001; translated as “Mea Culpa: el arte de Mary Kelly,” in Trisha Ziff, ed., Mary Kelly: La balada de Kastriot Rexhepi, Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 2004
“The Value of Things Not Said: Some Thoughts on Interracial Friendship,” in Emily Bernard, ed., Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendships, New York: HarperCollins, 2004
“The Cat Upstairs,” (on Sammy Davis, Jr.) in J. Hoberman and Jeff Shandler, eds. Entertaining America: Jews in the Media, Princeton: Princeton University Press and New York: The Jewish Museum, 2003
“Patrons of Progress: The New School University Art Collection” (occasional paper in honor of Vera List), New York: The Vera List Center for Art & Politics, New School University, 2003
“Introduction: Gravity’s Rainbow,” in Adam Weinberg and Hendel Teicher, eds., Trisha Brown: Dance and Art in Dialogue, 1965-2000, Andover, Mass: Addison Gallery of American Art and Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002
“The Image Under Erasure,” in Thelma Golden, ed., Gary Simmons, New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem and Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002
“Charles Demuth’s My Egypt,” in Adam Weinberg and Beth Venn, eds., Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art, New York: Whitney Museum, 2000
“Andy Warhol’s ‘Pleasure Principle,” in Jonathan Binstock, Andy Warhol: Social Observer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2000
“Libidinal Labor: A Note on the ‘60s “Artworker,” in Melissa Feldman, ed., Artworker, Cornwall (UK): Newlyn Art Gallery, 1999
“Art and Politics: Difference and Culture,” Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Michael Kelly, Editor in Chief, New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1998
"Critical Fictions: Race, ‘Outsiders,’ and the Construction of Art History,” in Elsa Longhauser and Harold Szeemann, Self Taught Artists of the Twentieth Century: An American Anthology, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art and New York, Museum of American Folk Art, 1998
"The Mouse that Never Roars: Jewish Masculinity on American Television," in Norman Kleeblatt, Too Jewish, New York, The Jewish Museum and New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1996
"Social Studies," in Andy Grundberg, Model Culture: James Casebere Photographs, San Francisco, Friends of Photography, 1996
"The Delicate Quest: Paradox in Contemporary African-American Art," in Renée Cox, No Doubt: African-American Artists in the '90s, Ridgefield, Connecticut, Aldrich Museum of Art, 1996
"Homage to a Woman Who . . .," in Sniper's Nest: Art That Has Lived with Lucy Lippard, Annandale-on-Hudson, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 1996
"Libraries Full of Tears: The Beats and the Law," in Lisa Phillips, Beat Culture and the New America, 1950-1965, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art and Paris: Flamarrion, 1995
"Making Faces," in Donna DeSalvo, Face Value: Portraits in America, Southampton, The Parrish Art Museum and Paris: Flamarrion, 1995
"The Crisis of Civil Rights," in Bruce Lineker, Civil Rights Now, Winston-Salem, South East Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), 1995
"A Note on Feminist Art and Critical Practice," October, Winter 1995
"Wayward Landscapes," in Rosalind E. Krauss, Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Cambridge, Mass., and London, M.I.T. Press, 1994
"Forms of Violence: Neo-Dada Performance," in Susan Hapgood, Neo-Dada, New York, American Federation of Arts and Universe Publishing, 1994
"To Meet the White Man's Eyes," in Catherine Lord, The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Art Criticism, Irvine, Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine, 1993
"The Future of the National Endowment for the Arts: A Transition Report for President-elect Bill Clinton" (written in cooperation with Ronald Feldman), Artforum,1993
"Zero Gravity," in Donna DeSalvo, Past Imperfect: A Museum Looks at Itself, Southampton, New York, The Parrish Art Museum and New York, The New Press, 1993
"Hoe overleeft men de cultuur-oorlogen" ("Surviving the Culture Wars") in Harry Boom, U.S.A. Today, Tilburg, Netherlands Textile Museum, 1993
"Objects of Liberation: The Sculpture of Eva Hesse," in Helen Cooper, Eva Hesse: A Retrospective, New Haven, The Yale University Art Gallery, 1992
"Ur-Madonna," (on Adrian Piper), in Interventiones, Seville, Spain, Plus Ultra/ Andalusian Pavilion, Expo '92: The Seville World's Fair, 1992
"Reclaiming the Present/Reinventing the Past," in David Yager, Environmental Terror, Baltimore, Fine Arts Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1992
"The Weeds Smell Like Iron: The Environments of Maren Hassinger," in Maren Hassinger, Brookdale, New York, Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, 1992
"The Myth of Tolerance: Young K.'s Friendly America," in Young K.: The Friendly America, New York, INTAR Gallery, 1990
"Remaking Anti-Form," in Robert Morris: The Felt Works, New York, The Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 1989