Artists Space Bookstore

Artists Space is an alternative arts space founded in 1972, with the intent of providing a platform for young and emerging artists. Initially a pilot project for the New York State Council of the Arts, a string of landmark shows, including Douglas Crimp's Pictures (1977), and Michael Asher's Untitled (1988) quickly brought Artists Space to prominence as a venue for critical discussion and inquiry on contemporary artistic practices.

Even today Artists Space continues to run some of the more interesting and poignant programming in New York City. The space maintains a tight schedule of exhibitions while organizing lectures, screenings, discussion panels, the largest and earliest established artist registry in the world, as well as an arts education program for New York's public schools. The Artists Space bookstore is the most recent such endeavor. The store is still in the works, with talk spreading of a new space to open soon that will be devoted entirely to books.

What makes this bookstore unique is the way selections are made. Instead of having a buyer, Artists Space is asking a growing list of artists, writers, and people of interest to select 10 books for the store. The result is an divese selection of books, ranging from a coffee table monographs, to critical theory, philosophical texts, comic books and paperback novels. A few of my favorites are Michelle Bernstein's All the Kings Horses, selected by gallerist John Kelsey; David Robbins's The Velvet Grind, selected by Matthew Higgs, as well as a spot-on selection of fiction from Artists Space curator Richard Birkett.