The Eakins Press Foundation is an American publishing house based in New York established by Leslie George Katz in 1966 and named after the painter

Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists. For the length ...

. Since its founding in 1966, the Eakins Press Foundation has published some of the classic volumes on American art and photography, including

Lee Friedlander Lee Friedlander (born July 14, 1934) is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of his photographs including fragm ...

’s ''The American Monument'',

Walker Evans Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' work from ...

’s ''Message from the Interior'', and

Lincoln Kirstein Lincoln Edward Kirstein (May 4, 1907 – January 5, 1996) was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and sus ...

’s definitive monograph on

Elie Nadelman Elie Nadelman (born Eliasz Nadelman; February 20, 1882 – December 28, 1946) was a Polish-American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of folk art. Early years Nadelman was born and studied briefly in Warsaw and then visited Munich in 1902 ...

. The Eakins Press Foundation was recognized as a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...

charitable foundation in 1974.

Details

Katz (1918–97), a former

Black Mountain College Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...

student, established the press from the proceeds of a sale of his father's collection of Thomas Eakins paintings to

Joseph Hirshhorn Joseph Herman Hirshhorn (August 11, 1899 – August 31, 1981) was an entrepreneur, financier, and art collector. Biography Born in Mitau, Latvia, the twelfth of thirteen children, Hirshhorn emigrated to the United States with his widowed moth ...

; to this day they comprise the nucleus of the Eakins Collection at the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

in Washington, D.C. The initial releases were a replica of the original 1855 edition of ''

Leaves of Grass ''Leaves of Grass'' is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. Though it was first published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting ''Leaves of Grass'', revising it multiple times until his death. Th ...

'', the collection of twelve poems written by

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...

that he had published himself; and ''Message From the Interior'' a collection of photographs by

, who was best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration that captured the effects of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. Both published in 1966, they represented the beginning of the Eakins Press imprint. For the next three decades, until his death in 1997, Katz published 56 books that were described by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' as being "notable for their meticulous, elegant design", including works of photography, poetry, sculpture and the

New York City Ballet New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company' ...

. It published

’s ''The American Monument'', and

’s definitive monograph on

. A January 1993 show at the

Zabriskie Gallery The Zabriskie Gallery was founded in New York City by Virginia Zabriskie in 1954. Early years Virginia Zabriskie started the art gallery with a one-dollar down payment. It had formerly been the Korman Gallery, a cooperative that included the pai ...

in New York City featured selections of 14 works published by the Eakins Press Foundation, along with samples of the art produced by the artists highlighted in the books. Since Katz's death in 1997, the Eakins Press Foundation continues to produce its "invaluable explorations of the American imagination" with publications including ''Circus: The Photographs of Frederick W. Glasier'' in 2009; Jed Perl's collection of essays on art and culture, ''Magicians & Charlatans'' in 2013; and '''O, Write My Name': American Portraits, Harlem Heroes'' (2015), a collection of fifty portraits taken by Carl Van Vechten of extraordinary individuals from the

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...

. The current Director of the Eakins Press Foundation is Peter Kayafas.

References

External links

Eakins Press Foundation
{{Authority control Book publishing companies of the United States Publishing companies established in 1966 1966 establishments in New York (state)