July Book Bag: from a selection of US folk art to a closer look at the work of YBA Gary Hume

Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper, July, 7, 2026

This publication, which accompanies a show at the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine (11 July-6 June 2027), looks at how “a chain of contemporary artists mount a cross-cultural, multigenerational resistance to Western colonialism”, says a publisher’s statement. The artists featured, including Edra Soto and Isa Gagarin, present works through “the interpretive framework of an archipelago—an expanse of water containing a chain of islands—[that] emphasises these 40 artists’ different yet related strategies toward the critique, defiance and navigation of conditions brought on by continental empires.” Themes explored include cultural and political self-determination, migration, the climate crisis and resilience.