2026 Reading List
Each SHED project begins long before the installation goes up. It starts in the margins of a book, in a half-remembered story, a family recipe, a dream, or a diagram. It begins in conversation.
We’ve invited artists to share their reading lists—not as a definitive bibliography, but as a kind of intellectual and emotional map. These aren’t just books—they’re windows into what shapes the work: research, archives, memories, field guides, and fragments that become embedded in the creative process.
A curated compilation of the books, essays, and research materials shaping each artist’s project, process, and thinking.
Some lists come from the artists. Others are built in dialogue, evolving over the course of a residency or exhibition. Together, they trace the conceptual threads behind each project—what’s being studied, remembered, questioned, or reimagined.
These lists are here to be revisited, passed around, and absorbed slowly.
They are part of our commitment to making process public. To consider reading as a form of listening to the artists we work with and invite our viewers to dig deeper into the shows we curate.
Monique Donesia
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984.
Specifically: “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”
hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. The New Press, 1995.
Bayles, David, and Ted Orland. Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. Image Continuum Press, 1993.
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Penguin Press, 2023.
Kerrie Bercher
Berry, Thomas. “The Dream of the Earth.” Sierra Club Books, 1990.
Buhner, Stephen Harrod. “Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm.” Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Fuller, R. Buckminster. “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.” Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller, 2008.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.” Penguin Books, 2013.
Spencer, Anne. “Earth, I Thank You.” In “Time’s Unfading Garden: Anne Spencer’s Life and Poetry,” edited by J. Lee Greene. University of Louisiana Press, 1977.
“Travels of an Ant.” Directed by Eduard Nazarov, 1983.
Renata Cruz Lara
Mann, Sally. “Hold Still.” Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
Singh, Julietta. “Disposable Objects: Ethecology, Waste, and Maternal Afterlives.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality, vol. 19, no. 1, 2018, pp. 48–54.
Singh, Julietta. “No Archive Will Restore You.” Punctum Books, 2018.
Venturi, Robert, Scott Brown, Denise, and Izenour, Steven. “Learning from Las Vegas.” MIT Press, 1972.
Hunter Elliot
Kane, Natalie, and Liebeskind, Reuben, editors. “Design and Disability.” V&A Publishing, 2025.
Jon Gott
Affron, Matthew, Kuo, Michelle, and Temkin, Ann, editors. “Marcel Duchamp.” The Museum of Modern Art, 2026.
Ashley, Clifford W. “The Ashley Book of Knots.” Doubleday, 1944.
Dion, Mark, and Rockman, Alexis, editors. “Concrete Jungle: A Pop Media Investigation of Death and Survival in Urban Ecosystems.” Juno Books, 1996.
Kaprow, Allan. “Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life.” Edited by Jeff Kelley. University of California Press, 2003.
Lewis-Williams, David. “The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art.” Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Prudencio, Cergio. “Antología 1: Obras para la Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos.” Buh Records, 2024.
Gott–Grigoli
Edwards, Julie. “Mandy.” HarperCollins, 2006.
Enright, Elizabeth. “Gone-Away Lake.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987.
Estes, Eleanor. “The Alley.” Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964.
Praise Godswill
Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulation.” University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Oshii, Mamoru. “Ghost in the Shell.” Production I.G, Bandai Visual, Manga Entertainment, 1995.
Jorge Lucero
Goulish, Matthew. “39 Microlectures: In Proximity of Performance.” Routledge, 2001.
Amit Shuck
Works by Sep Holzer, Joel Salatin, and Paul Wheaton.
Rabbi Yoder
“Repo Man.” Directed by Alex Cox, 1984.
Vonnegut, Kurt. “The Sirens of Titan.” Dial Press Trade Paperbacks, 2009.
Deng, Ming-Dao. “365 Tao.” HarperCollins, 2013.
Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Longman Group Limited, 1977.
Because reading it takes stamina and fortitude.
Thomas, Dylan. “Fern Hill.” In “Deaths and Entrances.” J. M. Dent, 1946.
Burke, James. “Connections.” BBC, 1978.
Any David Attenborough documentary series about life or our planet.
Kim Bissett
Bascom, Mansfield. “Wharton Esherick: The Journey of a Creative Mind”, Published by Harry N. Abrams, 2010.
Burlingham, Cynthia. “Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield”, Published by Prestel, 2009.
Johnson, Fenton. “At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life”, Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2021.
Johnson, Robert and Ruhl, Jerry. “Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations”, Published by HarperOne, 2009.
Miller, Dana. “Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective”, Published by Whitney Museum of American Art, 2012.
Sudek, Josef and Farova, Anna. “Josef Sudek: The Window of My Studio”, Published by Torst, 2016.
Sutnik, Maia-Mari. “Josef Sudek: The Legacy of a Deeper Vision”, Hirmer Publishers, 2021.
Williams, William Carlos. “Kora in Hell: Improvisations”, City Lights Books, 1969.
Curator’s Pick for this show:
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.” Milkweed Editions, 2013
akeylah wellington
Richard, Frances. “Fifteen Theses on the Cute: A Crucial Absence.” Essay.
Sharpe, Christina. “Beauty Is a Method.” Essay.
Sharpe, Christina. “Ordinary Notes.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.
Parker, Morgan. “Magical Negro.” Tin House Books, 2019.
Glover, Hana, Bellingham, Robin, and Hewitt, Jema. “Quick and Easy Beading.” Search Press, 2015.
Curator’s Pick for this show:
Bachelard, Gaston. “The Poetics of Space.” Translated by Maria Jolas, Beacon Press, 1994.
Saxon, Lyle, Dreyer, Edward, and Tallant, Robert, editors. “Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales.” Houghton Mifflin, 1945.
Knowles, Tina. “Matriarch.” One World, 2025.
Krawec, Patty. “Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future.” Broadleaf Books, 2022.*
Trowell, Margaret. “African Arts and Crafts: Their Development in the School.” Evans Brothers, 1954.
Curriculum Fair
Jillian Blackwell + Yasmeen Nematt Alla
Woolf, Virginia. “Letter to a Young Poet.”
Klasto, Cathryn, Mangalanayagam, Nina, Nielsen, Peter, Overgaard, Majken, Pedersen, Peter Ole, Wolthers, Louise, Wulia, Tintin, and Zylinska, Joanna. “Field Guide to Bugs and Metamorphosis.”
Apekina, Katya. “The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish.” Two Lines Press, 2018.
“The Midnight Gospel.” Created by Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell, Netflix, 2020.
Oldenburg, Claes. “Proposals for Monuments and Buildings.”
Oldenburg, Claes. “I Am for an Art.” 1961.
Carrington, Leonora. “The Hearing Trumpet.” Penguin Classics, 2021.
Krawec, Patty. “Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future.” Broadleaf Books, 2022.
Britten, Benjamin. Music for Harp.
Kirby, Michael, editor. “Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology.” E. P. Dutton, 1965.
Beckett, Samuel. “The Sucking Stones Sequence,” from “Molloy.” Grove Press, 1955.