Amarie Gipson On The Reading Room, Houston’s Black Art and Culture Library

One of Amarie Gipson’s many gifts is an unyielding desire to ask questions. Having worked at institutions like The Contemporary Austin, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, Gipson has cultivated a practice of examining structures and pushing beyond their limitations. Her inquiries are incisive and rooted in a profound respect for people of all backgrounds, with a central goal of expanding art’s potential beyond museum walls.

A true polymath, Gipson is a writer, curator, DJ, and founder of The Reading Room, an independent reference library with more than 700 books devoted to Black art, culture, politics, and history. Titles like the century-spanning African Artists sit alongside Toni Morrison’s novel Sula and Angela Davis’ provocative Freedom is a Constant Struggle, which connects oppression and state violence around the world. The simultaneous breadth of genres and the collection’s focus on Black life allow Gipson and other patrons to very literally exist alongside those who’ve inspired the library.

One afternoon in late April 2025, I spoke with Gipson via video about her love for the South, her commitment to meeting people where they’re at, and her hopes for The Reading Room.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Grace: I’d like to start at the beginning. Why start a project of this nature in Houston?

Amarie: I am a student of so many incredible Black women writers, artists, curators, thinkers, and theorists, and I really take seriously the advice that I’ve gotten through reading their work. If something doesn’t exist, you should start it. I’ve moved and migrated through these great United States for some time, and when I moved back to Houston seven and a half years ago, The Reading Room didn’t exist. I needed it to happen. I wanted to experience my books somewhere outside of my apartment, and I also wanted to create a destination for folks when they came to town, so that my friends know that they have a cool place to land. Those are the two main reasons: it didn’t exist, and I wanted somewhere to go.

Grace: There’s a thing that happens in Chicago all the time–I think it happens anywhere that is not New York or Los Angeles–and the ways artists think about their careers and what it takes to be successful. There’s often this perception that to reach a certain level, they need to go to one of those two cities. And I would imagine Houston has a similar feeling.

Amarie: Absolutely. I think it’s important that everyone leaves home at some point. But don’t leave because you don’t think that anything exists here. Leave because you want to see what else there is and bring it back. Come back home and create the things that you want to see here.

I don’t think I could have The Reading Room in New York. I don’t think I could have The Reading Room in Chicago. It’s not my home. I feel more empowered here. I feel safer to have created something like this, especially in a state that is so extremely suppressed, politically, socially. But culturally, we stand firm, especially in Houston. So, it felt natural.

Grace: What area of Houston are you currently in?

Amarie: The Reading Room is currently located in north downtown, right across the way from the University of Houston’s downtown campus. Downtown is not the most exciting place in the city, but it is a meeting point for all different types of cultures. The Reading Room lives inside a hybrid art studio called Sanman Studios. There are two units. They function as an event space and production studio. There’s an art gallery, an artist residency work space, and The Reading Room. This is Houston’s creative hotspot.

Grace: I’m wondering how your institutional training has influenced The Reading Room. How have those experiences pushed you to make something that is decidedly not institutional?

Amarie: I was just thinking about this a week ago. I came into the curatorial field around 2016, and that was at the height of philanthropic institutions looking for ways to diversify. One of the solutions was to introduce younger, undergraduate-aged students from underrepresented communities to the field. I did the Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I was a junior in college at the time, and this program really gave me a crash course on what museums are like; how the exhibitions are produced, where the art is stored, and how curators work with other departments. I spent two years at the MFAH in the Prints and Drawings department, and I was always looking for Black artists. I realized quickly that if no one’s here to advocate for this work to come out of storage, no one’s ever going to see it. I was trying to sift through the collection, find, locate, and make these works more visible.

I also recognized early in my career that people are really important to me. I started asking questions: What are the functions and responsibilities of art institutions? What are we really supposed to be doing? I know what we have done, but what is the purpose? I eventually took those questions to Chicago and New York, and I moved around to different museums to try to find the answer.

A turning point was when I got hired at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which, for any young Black person in the art world, is the pinnacle. It’s the place. It’s where a lot of careers start. Many folks’ first job in the art world is at the Studio Museum, and they’re being shaped and molded to continue in the field. However, shortly after arriving, I realized the Studio Museum was not the place.

In 2020, I looked around at all the different institutions across New York sharing statements of solidarity and pledging institutional and systemic changes. I wanted the Studio Museum to do more than say, “We’ve been doing this. We’ve been committed.” Because what are we doing and does that commitment to care only benefit Black artists, or does it show up in our consideration for all Black people? There are real Black people who are being targeted and locked up for protesting the fact that police are murdering us. What more can we do to connect to the people? How can we bridge the gap between the folks who care about Black art and those who care about Black people and the things that affect us? What about the people working in and for the museum? What are we doing to support the struggle outside of working our lofty little museum jobs? The response that I got is that the institution is going to keep doing what it’s been doing. And that just wasn’t enough for me. I worked in my whole career to get there, but I realized that it was not the place I thought it was or hoped it could be.

And so I left that job and found a way to connect my beliefs with my actions. I’ve taken all of the skills that I’ve learned—how to build relationships, how to listen, how to analyze and organize things, record keeping, data management, object management, storytelling—and do something totally different, something that prioritizes everyday Black people in a way that boosts our intellectual, cultural, and creative capacity. If it’s increased access to literature, if it’s increased access to culture, if it’s just a place that has air conditioning, a place where people can come and hang out, so be it. It’s making space for it all in a way that hopefully destroys the out-of-touch, elitist hierarchy that surrounds “the work.”

Grace: That’s one of the things that I think is so powerful about The Reading Room and the work that you’re doing. Art books are notoriously expensive, and other than sporadic free days, museums generally are not cheap either. You really do balance such a strong aesthetic perspective and a critical rigor typically associated with institutions with the accessibility of something like a public library meant for truly everyone. I wonder, on a tangible level, what goes into making a space like that?

Amarie: I didn’t have a physical space when the idea first came to life. I started working on the concept in the summer of 2021. I passed by an old American Apparel storefront in this neighborhood in Houston called Montrose. I remember going to that American Apparel as a teenager. I never could afford anything, but I was always going in there to try stuff on. I looked inside, and I was like, what would I do if I had the space? At the time, I didn’t really know how anybody could afford anything outside of paying their rent. People who had small shops, coffee shops, small businesses, kitschy little stores, I was like, what do you need to do in order to make this happen? I eventually found my way to Sanman. I met Seth Rogers, the owner. I was working for a magazine, so I started asking him questions.

I was also DJing at the time. I had been DJing for four or five years prior to moving to Houston, but my DJ career blew up when I moved back because the culture here is so rich. Nightlife is a huge part of the city. I started saving my money from my day job, gigs, and partnerships. I would be at the events that I would play, and I’d be yelling to people over the speakers, “I’m building a library. I’m building a library!”

I lost my job at the magazine in the fall of 2022, and I had come upon enough money to focus fully on The Reading Room. I built the website to anchor the concept. I scanned the front and back covers of 325 of the books that were in the collection at the time. I built a strong relationship with Sanman and hosted a two-day, in-person experience after I launched the site. There were about 130 people who came that weekend just to hang out. Someone approached me and said, “I didn’t even know this many books on Black art existed.” That was the moment everything made sense, when I realized I’m on the right path.

Because this is a reference library, where the collection doesn’t circulate, we’ve got to do programs. Every single program that we do is inspired by or connected to a book that’s in the collection. That’s bringing people in, and it’s leaving them with a reading list so that they can keep coming back. That’s been the formula so far. My ambition is to garner enough support and community response so that when I break out of a shared space, the traffic is steady and the impact deepens.

Grace: When we think about meeting people where they’re at, so much of it is about creating multiple entry points into the work that you’re doing. When someone comes in, what does that process look like? How do you engage with them?

Amarie: It depends. Most folks are just like, oh my god, I love this space. Some other folks will be like, I’m working on a project about Black hair. Do you have any books about hair? And I’ll go and pull books about hair. I’ll explain the relationships between the books on the main display and point out how I’ve selected and placed things, then give a crash course on where you can find what.

So even if they don’t know what they’re looking for, pointing them in a direction, they’ll be able to wayfind. It’s a destination for discovery. You come in, and you fall down a rabbit hole.

Grace: I think of curation primarily as a way of providing context. I’m wondering how the vastness of your collection—in that there’s history, politics, and culture, and you’re not focused on only having visual art or photography—manifests as part of your commitment to accessibility. What you’re doing in making these larger connections and providing context so that people don’t need to read an artwork or image through a traditional art historical, canonical perspective, but rather can approach it through music or politics or a cultural moment, feels like an accessibility move to me.

Amarie: You said it so beautifully. Seriously, that’s it. The books that people are familiar with are what’s going to draw them in, and then they’ll see that the bulk of the collection is about visual art. Hopefully, what they know is a gateway to what they don’t know and what I want to share. If you open up Arthur Jafa’s monograph, MAGNUMB, I want you to know Hortense Spillers and Saidiya Hartman. You gotta know all these people. Their books live here because they’re in conversation with one another. The artist’s monograph lives alongside the anthologies or the novels that inspired the creation of the work. The collection focuses heavily on visual art, just because that’s what I collected. I’m thinking about visual culture at large, but also history. How do we situate these objects within a larger continuum? We live within that continuum, so it’s important to see everything in concert with one another.

To your point about accessibility, it starts to tap into that more tangible effect, tangible impact, right? We can have conversations about politics in here, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be through the lens of an artist, but because the book lives in the collection, we can sit and talk about anything, right? We can talk about democracy or the lack thereof. We can talk about the American flag. We can talk about anything because there’s something here that’s going to help us situate it. We can listen to the music. There are so many intersections, and having collection categories that expand beyond art and design allows for that.

Grace: I was reading an older interview with Martine Syms recently about her publishing practice. She talked about publishing as a way to make ideas public—and then to use that to create a public around an idea because you have shared reference points. That feels very similar to what you’re doing. The Reading Room, by bringing people together and allowing these conversations, is actually creating this collective idea and an opportunity to have this shared way of thinking about something.

Amarie: For sure. I think about that a lot. Art books, not only because of the price, are largely inaccessible to the public, but are also inaccessible to artists who deserve them. You have to go a long way in your career before somebody feels like they care enough to make a book for you. You usually have to wait for a major retrospective or survey exhibition. Or if you’re really young and hot and you’ve got gallery representation, they might make you a book.

I’m also thinking about how The Reading Room can be a source, a bridge, or a doula that finds ways to amplify artists who are being overlooked or have been working for a really long time and still don’t have books, how their work can land in the hands of the public in a way that is accessible. I’m hoping to start a publishing branch of The Reading Room in the next couple of years. I’m going to start with zines this year and see what happens.

I’m also thinking about the legacy of independent Black publishers across history, coming out of different cities, and what it means right now in the age of misinformation, to create a platform for truth. Yeah, it will be making art books. But we’ll also be making political pamphlets, recirculating ideas from the past. How many people know what the Black Panther Party’s 10-point platform really was? What if we made posters? How can we apply those things today? I’m interested in all of that. I want to do every single thing that I couldn’t do in those museums, that’s too taboo or too controversial to do in a museum.

I feel way more present and clairvoyant than ever before. I realized that for the first year of running The Reading Room, I was like, I’m not reading enough. I was focused more on the structure of this thing, filling in gaps in the collection, all of that. Last summer, I made a summer reading list for myself, and I read ten books. It felt so good to just stop and read. I feel healthier, calmer, and stronger. I’ve been transformed. I want that feeling for everybody.

The Reading Room is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday at 1109 Providence St., Houston. Explore the collection in the online archive, and follow the latest on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Amarie Gipson On The Reading Room, Houston’s Black Art and Culture Library appeared first on Colossal.

Stephen Shames Highlights a Transformational Era in ‘Black Panthers & Revolution’

Completed in 1940, California Highway 17—now Interstate 880—bulldozed a vast swath of Oakland’s African American community to make room for the route. Cut off from downtown, these neighborhoods were stripped of their economic connections to the commercial center, disrupting social cohesion and among other policies and attitudes at the time, setting in motion an era of increased unrest.

One of these damaging policies took the form of the Federal Housing Administration’s systematic program of discriminating against people of color in a process known as redlining. During this time, Black people were prohibited from purchasing homes so that white, middle- or lower-class families could do so instead, and suburban communities were segregated by design. It’s something the people of Oakland simply wouldn’t stand for.

Starting in the mid-1940s, the Bay Area city was the locus of numerous demonstrations, from general strikes to peaceful protests to all-out riots. Excessive force by the Oakland Police Department exacerbated tensions and gave rise to numerous local organizations like the Oakland Community Organizations (PICO/OCO), Unity Council, Intertribal Friendship House, and perhaps most famously, the Black Panther Party.

Often simply called the Panthers or the BPP, the political organization was founded in 1966 by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. Its black berets and infamous so-called “copwatching” practices involved open-carry patrols with the mission to protect Black citizens from abuse by law enforcement. More importantly, the group also implemented a number of “survival programs” that provided essentials like food, medicine, clothing, and transportation to residents.

Acclaimed photojournalist Stephen Shames had a front row seat to the party’s rise. While they were still in college, Seale invited him to be the official photographer of the BPP, and until 1973, Shames created hundreds of powerful images that highlight the Panthers’ actions and ethos around California and the country.

“The Black Panther party burst upon our consciousness when Bobby Seale and other Panthers marched upon the California State Capitol in Sacramento—armed with guns,” Shames says in a statement. “This approach electrified a generation of Black youth.” More than 65 percent of the group’s membership comprised women.

The BPP image was carefully choreographed, from militaristic uniforms to its distinctive logo to a deliberate and carefully designed weekly newspaper, with art director Emory Douglas, the party’s visual identity “master craftsman” at the helm.

In 2016, Shames and Seale co-authored the book Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers, which showcases Black pride, resilience, and empowerment during this revolutionary era. He says:

The Panthers did not encourage hatred…The Black Panther Party sought to build a community through service to the people, providing free food and clothing. They gave purpose to the aimless, angry youth who loitered on street corners. The Panthers molded these young people into disciplined, hard workers who served their community and showed respect for mothers, fathers, and elders.

This month, a remarkable selection of Shames’ photos opens in Black Panthers & Revolution: The Art of Stephen Shames at Amar Gallery.

Striking black-and-white imagery portrays Seale, Newton, and other renowned activists like Angela Davis and James Baldwin among daily scenes of local youth and families, the Panthers’ food distribution program, and demonstrations. Shames’ photographs invoke a range of emotions, from the intensity of BPP rallies to the energy of local programs to the fundamental joy of togetherness and community.

Shames is known for his bold and emphathetic photo essays that shine light on social issues around the world. His work resides in the permanent collections of MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Art, the National Museum of American History, and dozens more.

Black Panthers & Revolution opens May 28 and continues through July 7 in London. If you’re in Los Angeles, keep an eye out for Shames’ solo exhibition, Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, which opens on August 7 at the Museum of Social Justice. Find more on the artist’s website.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Stephen Shames Highlights a Transformational Era in ‘Black Panthers & Revolution’ appeared first on Colossal.

A Unique Portfolio of Hilma af Klint’s Botanical Drawings Communes with Nature’s Spiritual Side

With the Industrial Revolution in full swing at the turn of the 20th century, jobs and opportunities attracted people to burgeoning cities. New technologies were being developed at breakneck speed and discoveries within the natural sciences introduced people to invisible yet potent concepts like radio waves and X-rays.

During this period of social transformation, philosophical or occult religious movements like Spiritualism and Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophy offered ways to not only connect within a like-minded community but to explore the afterlife—the so-called spirit world—and the very fabric of the universe.

For Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), like many who sought refuge and inspiration in these belief systems, a spiritual link to her surroundings united her with the natural world during “a period of massive change…as people from all levels of society were searching for something new to hold on to,” Johan af Klint and Hedvig Ersman wrote about the Swedish artist’s spiritual journey.

Now on view at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers highlights the institution’s recent acquisition of a phenomenal, 46-leaf portfolio called Nature Studies.

During the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920, af Klint recorded Sweden’s seasonal flora, from lilies of the valley and sunflowers to violets and cherry blossoms. Beyond traditional botanical studies, the artist incorporates her characteristic abstractions and diagrams, surrounding each rendering with esoteric annotations and geometries.

“One has to think of the realm of the nature spirits as the realm of thought; these entities hover around us, some like driving winds, others like soft summer breezes,” af Klint once said.

Grids with unique color relationships or energetic spirals accompany renderings of field woodrush or marsh marigold, and tree specimens are paired with dotted checkerboards. “Through these forms, af Klint seeks to reveal, in her words, ‘what stands behind the flowers,’” the museum says, “reflecting her belief that studying nature uncovers truths about the human condition.”

What Stands Behind the Flowers continues through September 27 and is accompanied by a catalogue that is slated for release on Tuesday. Find your copy on Bookshop, and plan your visit to MoMA on the museum’s website.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Unique Portfolio of Hilma af Klint’s Botanical Drawings Communes with Nature’s Spiritual Side appeared first on Colossal.

This Fall, 600+ Objects Spanning Wes Anderson’s Career Will Go on View at the Design Museum

From his earliest filmic experiments in the 1990s to international blockbusters, Wes Anderson has carved an instantly recognizable, unique, and much-memed cinematic niche. Muted hues, quirky characters, and a throwback sensibility bring off-the-wall, ensemble narratives to life.

London’s Design Museum, in collaboration with la Cinémathèque française, presents the first retrospective of the film director’s creative output, from early releases like Bottle Rocket (1996) to more mainstream hits like The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Including more than 600 objects, most of which will go on display in Britain for the first time, the exhibition will showcase iconic set pieces, preparatory notes, puppets, and models from numerous films. Just a few highlights include a miniature motorcycle that belonged to Mr. Fox in the titular The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Sam Shakuski’s Scout kit from Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and Anderson’s personal notebooks from The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).

Wes Anderson: The Archives opens on November 21 and continues through July 26, 2026. Tickets are available now, and you can plan your visit on the Design Museum’s website.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article This Fall, 600+ Objects Spanning Wes Anderson’s Career Will Go on View at the Design Museum appeared first on Colossal.

After More Than Half a Century, a One-of-a-Kind Chinese Typewriter Emerges from Obscurity

A quote widely attributed to Tom Robbins says, “At the typewriter you find out who you are.” Or in the case of one unique machine that’s been missing for decades, the same could be said for finding one, too.

In January, Jennifer Felix and her husband Nelson were sorting through items in Jennifer’s grandfather’s basement in New York. They stumbled upon a typewriter like they’d never seen, with Chinese keys. Nelson posted a few photos in a Facebook group called What’s My Typewriter Worth? “From my internet search it looks to be a Chinese-made MingKwai,” he wrote. “I just can’t find any ever sold here in the States. Is it even worth anything? It weighs a ton!”

Resounding enthusiasm rippled through the comments, as it turned out the machine was indeed a MingKwai — named for being “clear and fast” — the only one of its kind in the world.

Missing for more than half a century, the discovery prompted a multitude of messages from people around the world wanting to purchase the machine or place it into museums. It is now in the collection of Stanford Libraries.

Invented in 1947 by writer, translator, and linguist Lin Yutang, the typewriter was the first compact concept to feature a keyboard that could produce the Chinese language’s 80,000-plus characters. He accomplished this by creating a kind of sort-and-search method.

“Lin broke down Chinese ideographs into more fundamental components of strokes and shapes and arranged the characters in a linear order, like an English dictionary does with alphabetic words,” researcher Yangyang Chen describes in Made in China Journal.

The keyboard consists of 72 options, which can be combined to create one’s desired characters. Chen continues:

By pressing one of the 36 top character component keys and one of the 28 bottom component keys simultaneously, the machine would find up to eight corresponding characters. The user could see the candidates through a special viewing window on the device, which Lin called his “magic eye,” and select the correct one by pushing the respective numerical key.

The Carl E. Krum Company built the only known prototype of the MingKwai, says Stanford Report. Lin was unable to drum up enough commercial interest to produce the expensive machine, so he sold the prototype and rights to Mergenthaler Linotype Company, where Jennifer Felix’s grandfather was employed as a machinist. The typewriter never entered production, and it eventually disappeared—until now.

Stanford plans to use the unique machine for research, exhibits, and academic programs. Regan Murphy-Kao, director of the East Asia Library, says, “I couldn’t be happier to have the opportunity to steward, preserve, and make this extraordinary prototype accessible for scholarship.”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article After More Than Half a Century, a One-of-a-Kind Chinese Typewriter Emerges from Obscurity appeared first on Colossal.

Vibrant Woodblock Prints Traverse a Bygone Japan in ‘Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road’

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was born in Japan on the brink of a national transformation. The Edo Period, characterized by the military rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, had seen economic growth and sustained peace since its establishment in 1603. But 200 years on, the government’s staunch policies, hierarchical structure, and isolation from the outside world was beginning to erode. In 1867, just nine years after Hiroshige’s death, a new emperor restored imperial rule.

Hiroshige: artist of the open road, which just opened at The British Museum, traces the remarkable variety of locations the artist portrayed, from cherry trees and gardens to pleasure boats in the Ryōgoku district of Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to sweeping views of iconic Mt. Fuji. His woodcuts capture everyday life, landscapes, and culture in 19th-century Japan in vibrant color.

Along with his contemporary peers like Hokusai, the artist witnessed immense change throughout his lifetime, which he chronicled in thousands of woodblock prints. “As Japan confronted the encroaching outside world, Hiroshige’s calm artistic vision connected with—and reassured —people at every level of society,” the museum says.

Hiroshige often assembled his prints into collections or folios, and artist of the open road includes examples from 100 Famous Views of Edo (1857), The 69 Stations of the Kiso Highway (late 1830s), and more. The exhibition also marks the artist’s first solo show presented by The British Museum and the first in London in more than a quarter-century.

Hiroshige: artist of the open road continues through September 7 in London. You might also enjoy perusing this fantastic ukiyo-e print archive.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Vibrant Woodblock Prints Traverse a Bygone Japan in ‘Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road’ appeared first on Colossal.