It was only when he started working in the art world that Matthew Israel came to understand that "art history is not just the story of artists and movements": it's also about museum directors and curators, fabricators and fair organizers, advisers and administrators, conservators and shippers. With the pleasingly wonky A Year in the Art World, Israel hopes that readers will "discover that the art world has much more to offer than eccentric celebrities, pretentious ideas and stories of record-breaking auction prices." Happily, his book includes some of that stuff, too.
Each of A Year in the Art World's 15 chapters introduces an aspect of the industry; it begins with an artist, Taryn Simon, in her New York studio, and concludes with art handlers at a Queens warehouse. Israel logs many miles, some overseas, in order to meet with art world movers and shakers who operate largely out of the limelight. Stephen Koch, who manages the estate of the photographer Peter Hujar (1934-1987), believes that "without Theo and his wife, [van Gogh's] paintings would have vanished from history."
A Year in the Art World is a look at the modern art scene, from Campbell's soup cans to nuts. Israel (Kill for Peace: American Artists Against the Vietnam War; The Big Picture: Contemporary Art in 10 Works by 10 Artists) reinforces his book's democratic premise with 16 pages of photos showing not just artists and their work but the folks who toil so that the work can be sought, seen and sold. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer