Look, learn and create: The Art Browsery is a dedicated book display on the fourth floor of James Branch Cabell Library. This display offers new, beautiful books that can inform your creativity.

“When you are caught up in the creative process of making art, sometimes you need to take a break and find added inspiration,” says Carla-Mae Crookendale, VCU Libraries’ arts librarian. She and arts collection librarian Emily Davis Winthrop identify titles that are right for The Browsery and showcase new titles there before moving them into the general collection.

Browsery books are visually rich tomes on art, craft and design topics. They are marked with colorful bookstrap labels and they are available for checkout.

The Art Browsery is refreshed as new titles arrive, so come by now and find some inspiring new materials, and come again to find more in the future. Here is a brief list, compiled by Crookendale, of some new titles you’ll find in The Browsery for fall 2017. 

Fabric-Ation, 2013

The complexities of contemporary identity, dislocation, multiculturalism, global food production, corporate power and revolution take center stage in Fabric-ation, an exhibition that traces how Yinka Shonibare has framed contemporary concerns within a historical context, investigating the shaping role of the British Empire and the colonial past.

Taffin, 2016

This luxurious volume showcases more than three hundred pieces designed by the imaginative French jeweler James Taffin de Givenchy. Capturing the designs of a passionate colorist, Taffin brings to life the inventive and bold combinations of diamonds, peridots, sapphires, mandarin garnets, and coral creations in a volume that is truly a feast for the eyes.

Signs of Our Times: From Calligraphy to Calligraffiti, 2016

This volume considers the work of 50 key artists, ranging from important pioneers of the calligraphic movement to those who use the written word in their work today.The artworks, in a variety of media, are also interspersed with poems and relevant literature, putting into personal and historical contexts the innovative use of words in art.

Werner Buttner: My Looting Eye, 2016

My Looting Eye is dedicated to Buttner's long relationship to collage - a medium which informs much of his practice. The artist has exerted a sustained and provocative impact on the European art scene since the late 1970s when he sought to renounce the dominant modes of conceptual and minimal art through a return to painting.

Hilda and the Stone Forest, 2016

Luke Pearson’s Hilda comics present dense and colorful pages, filled with fantastical stories about escape. His new volume finds Hilda escaping from home, only to get entangled in a other-worldly conflict with her mother.

Make Your Mark: The New Urban Artists, 2016

This anthology of new artists features a wide range of practices, including not only street art and new interpretations of the form but also studio-based work that has an ‘urban’ edge.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings, 2016

This monumental book celebrates the greatest and most iconic paintings in The Met collection. Its broad sweep of material makes it at once a universal history of painting and the ideal introduction to the beloved masterworks of this world-renowned institution.

Public Art Now, 2016

Public Art Now showcases large- and small-scale public art installations that appear everywhere, from sidewalks and bus stops to parks and exhibition centers. The projects within are often made to be enjoyed through more than just looking, with audiences being encouraged to touch, photograph, climb, read, listen, sit, swing, and run through the artworks.