Book Club
The HoMA Book Club brings together museum community members interested in exploring the intersection of literature and art. Currently held virtually via an online platform, Book Club meetings are centered around docent-led conversations that weave together themes from books selected for their ties to the museum’s galleries, specific works of art, or related cultures.
Online meetings take place on the last Wednesday and Saturday of each month at 1pm. Pick up one of the book selections below, and join the group to enjoy an hour of lively discussion and personal connection to members of the museum community—everyone is welcome!
Please note: No meeting November.
Free to join. Register here to receive Zoom link.
2021 HoMA Book Club Reading List
A Short Life of Trouble: Forty years In The New York Art World by Marcia Tucker
December 1 & 4
Discussion led by HoMA Docent: Lizzy Lowrey
A Short Life of Trouble brings to vivid life the behind-the-scenes struggles of Marcia Tucker, the first woman to be hired as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the founder of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.
READ MORE
Tucker came of age in the 1960s, and this spirited account of her life draws the reader directly into the burgeoning feminist movement and the excitement of the New York art world during that time.
“I have always considered that there are two basic reasons for doing an exhibition: The first is to illustrate and share with the public something one has discovered, that is, something already known. The second is to discover or explore something which is unknown in order to find out for yourself what it is about.” Marcia Tucker
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In the Prologue, Marcia Tucker comments, “What I like most is always the art I don’t understand – the stuff that sticks in my mind, but eludes me in every other way.”
- How does “the art I don’t understand,” become an emerging focus for her life’s work?
2. Did you see any lasting effects from Tucker’s early experience of traveling abroad?
3. After an encounter with Marcel Duchamp, Tucker observes that “…a truly great person has a profound curiosity about the world and the people in it, an interest that encompasses everything and everyone. Real curiosity, I now know, doesn’t leave much room for judgement.”
- How does this understanding influence her life as a curator?
4. On page 100, Tucker describes herself as having a “shaky sense of self, camouflaged by a hard crust of cynicism, avoidance and despair.”
- How accurately does her story support this statement?
5. What did you think about Tucker’s response to defining an artist or employee by color/ethnicity or gender?
6. “Why would someone want to start a museum in New York City when the Whitney and the Modern were already there?”
- What is Tucker’s response to this question?
- How has Tucker’s education, life and work experience prepared her for the establishment of The New Museum of Contemporary Art?
7. What part of Marcia Tucker’s story sticks with you the most?
To think about…
- Does the observer determine whether a piece is art or not? – Is the art about the intellectual basis for the art or the physicality of the artwork?
- What are your thoughts about art created just to be different from the established art norms?
- How similar is the culture of today’s art world with that of the 1990’s, when Tucker mounted the Bad Girls exhibition?
2022 HoMA Book Club Reading List
Kona Winds by Scott Kikkawa
January 26 & 29
Discussion led by HoMA Docent: Lynn Hiyakumoto
Kona Winds, the début novel by Japanese-American author Scott Kikkawa, is a hard-boiled noir murder mystery set in Honolulu in 1953, when Hawai‘i was evolving from a racially stratified, near-feudal plantation colony to the multi-ethnic 50th State.
READ MORE
Honolulu Police Department Detective Sergeant Frankie “The Sheik” Yoshikawa, a Nisei veteran of World War II, is assigned the case of a young local Japanese woman whose body is found in Honolulu Harbor under a pier. His investigation uncovers dark motives tied to a recent dock and sugar strike and a forbidden relationship between the scion of a prominent kamaʻāina haole family and a young woman from a growing immigrant community. Hindered by the limitations of race and class and haunted by the specter of his combat experiences in Europe and his resulting dependence on alcohol, Yoshikawa nonetheless resolves to bring the case to a successful conclusion.
Hawai‘i has been the setting for countless mysteries but most have been cozy crime stories or books that have featured Caucasian protagonists as outsiders in an exotic setting. Kona Winds was written with the firm belief that Hawai‘i is more than just a pretty tropical backdrop for the mischief of tourists: it can be, and was, a terrifying, sometimes sodden place whose social realities were ugly not so long ago and continue in some respects to go unresolved. In addition, the novel provides a well-researched glimpse into the police work of post-war Honolulu, which has rarely been written about in this way before.” – Bamboo Ridge Press
Registration coming soon.
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
February 23 & 26
Discussion led by HoMA Docents Hannah Slovin and Andrea Snyder
Description forthcoming.
Registration coming soon.
