Four new art books offer a compact map of contemporary art’s public gestures, institutional histories, and darker undercurrents. Together, they move from JR’s street interventions to the Venice Biennale’s shifting curatorial logic, then into the world of antiquities trafficking and the career of a major Turkish curator.
Taschen’s JR (Basic Art Series), written by Janis Mink, examines the French street artist’s best-known projects through behind-the-scenes photography and extended essays. The volume includes Déplacé·e·s, the series in which JR unfurled large-scale images of refugee children across cities such as Turin and Lviv, as well as Migrants: Mayra, Picnic across the Border (2022). The publisher is also issuing a separate project book on JR’s latest monumental intervention: the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in Paris from June 6 to 28, a work created in tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1985 project, The Pont Neuf Wrapped.
If JR’s work turns public space into a stage for collective attention, Massimiliano Gioni’s High Waters: An Oral History of the Venice Biennale turns the institution itself into an object of study. Published by jrp editions, the book gathers conversations with 16 curators and spans 1993 to 2026. Gioni, who directed the New Museum in New York and served as artistic director of the Venice Biennale in 2013, frames the exhibition as a living system shaped by changing political and cultural conditions. Ralph Rugoff, Adriano Pedrosa, Francesco Bonami, Bice Curiger, and Daniel Birnbaum are among the voices included.
Two other titles widen the lens further. Matthew Campbell’s The Man Who Stole the Gods, published by Penguin Business, investigates Douglas Latchford’s long-running trafficking of Southeast Asian antiquities. Sezin Romi’s How Did We Get Here: Reading Vasif Kortun, from Archive Books and Salt, traces the Turkish curator’s path from his 1977 trip to Western Europe through Boğaziçi University, New York University Institute of Fine Arts, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, and major biennials in Istanbul and Taipei.
Taken together, the books suggest how art publishing now moves between image, institution, and investigation — preserving memory while also exposing the systems that shape it.
