This year’s best art, design and architecture books named by Whitechapel Gallery and the Authors’ Club

Books on Kenya Hara, Thomas Demand and Arthur Jafa are among the shortlist for The Richard Schlagman Art Book Awards, a new prize launched by Whitechapel Gallery and the Authors’ Club. The awards celebrate the most exciting art, architecture and design titles published in the last year, aiming to showcase “the most exciting concepts, subjects and designs in English-language arts publishing today”.

Three hundred books were submitted by publishers, museums, galleries and university presses, and 30 made the shortlist, which is divided into six categories: contemporary art, art history, contemporary architecture, architectural history, contemporary design and design history.

Included in the contemporary art category is In Conversation interviewee Thomas Demand: The Complete Papers published by Mack; and Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions published by Serpentine Galleries, the Store X, Julia Stoschek Collection, and Koenig Books.

Color Library. Research into Color Reproduction and Printing by JRP Ringier is shortlisted in the contemporary design field, as is Kenya Hara: 100 Whites by Lars Mueller Publishers.

Noted for contribution to design history is Alice Rawsthorn: Design as an Attitude, also by JRP Ringier.

The full shortlist can be viewed here. The winners will be announced at the London Art Book Fair at Whitechapel Gallery in September 2019, alongside two other awards for Artist Book and Book Design.

Astrid Stavro at Pentagram was behind the award’s visual identity, which she says encompasses “easily-recalled elements from the art, design and printing worlds,” and therefore can “stretch across the diverse genres recognised by the awards.”