Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects

Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects is a major new publication of the work of one of today's most important and influential artists. The book is a comprehensive catalogue of Hamilton's object-based work from 1984 to 2006. The more than 130 color plates document photographs, sculpture, video, audio and language pieces (both unique and editioned), as well as multiples and prints. Many of the objects relate to the large-scale installations for which Hamilton is internationally known. Each object in the inventory is accompanied by a text by Joan Simon, who also contributes a significant new essay setting Hamilton's objects in critical context. The complete inventory of Hamilton's objects made over the past 20-plus years is reproduced in this essential publication, which also contains an extensive biography, bibliography and index. The book, designed by the Swedish designer Hans Cogne in conversation with Ann Hamilton, is a beautiful object in its own right and evokes many of the conceptual qualities of Hamilton's art.

Ann Hamilton was born in 1956 in Lima, Ohio. She trained in textile design at the University of Kansas, and later received an MFA from Yale University. While her degree is in sculpture, textiles and fabric have continued to be an important part of her work, which includes installations, photographs, videos, performances, and objects. In recent work, she has experimented with exchanging one sense organ for another. In 1993, she won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. As the 1999 American representative at the Venice Biennale, she addressed topics of slavery and oppression in American society with an installation that used walls embossed with Braille. After teaching at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1985 to 1991, she returned to Ohio, where she lives and works.

Joan Simon is curator-at-large for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She is a writer, curator, editor and arts administrator based in Paris, and has worked independently for museums, foundations and publishers in the United States and in Europe. Among her books and catalogues are works on Ann Hamilton and Susan Rothenberg, as well William Wegman: Funney/Strange.