Kerry James Marshall: The Histories

Texts by Benjamin Buchloh, Aria Dean, Darby English, Mark Godfrey, Madeleine Grynsztejn, Cathérine Hug, Nikita Sena Quarshie, and Rebecca Zorach

Forthcoming November 2025

Accompanying the largest UK survey to date of work by the legendary Chicago-based figurative painter 
 
This volume is the most extensive publication on Kerry James Marshall to date, celebrating half a century of his work. It reveals the complex ways in which Marshall has transformed histories of Western painting, centering Black bodies in ambitious compositions set in barber shops, public housing projects, parks and beauty salons. It charts his use of portraiture to memorialize individuals such as Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and Olaudah Equiano. A new series, illustrated here for the first time, looks at under-acknowledged aspects of the history of Africa. With lavish illustrations of all the works in the accompanying exhibition, the book also includes chapters on Marshall's Rythm Mastr project and his various public commissions, including his stained-glass windows for the cathedral in Washington, DC. A survey by Mark Godfrey is accompanied by shorter essays by Aria Dean, Darby English and others, plus an interview between Kerry James Marshall and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh.