In the Eye of the Beholder

Nonfiction books and essays about visual art and how it functions as a mirror to ourselves. They discuss art's meaning, its interpretations, how art changes through our eyes, the effects of systematic discrimination upon how art is made and consumed, and help to develop better, more critical, and more introspective ways of looking at art and our museums.

Recommendations welcome!

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created by amanda_the_tangerine

last updated August, 2026

51 books

Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time

Mark Sealy

The Rings of Saturn

W.G. Sebald

The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums... and why we need to talk about it

Alice Procter

The Image of the Black in Western Art: The Twentieth Century: The Rise of Black Artists (Volume V, Part 2)

David Bindman

The Image of the Black in Western Art: The Twentieth Century: The Impact of Africa (Volume V, Part 1)

David Bindman

The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the American Revolution to World War I: Black Models and White Myths (Volume IV, Part 2)

David Bindman

The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the American Revolution to World War I: Slaves and Liberators (Volume IV, Part 1)

David Bindman

The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the "Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition: The Eighteenth Century (Volume III, Part 3)

David Bindman

The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the "Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition: Europe and the World Beyond (Volume III, Part 2)

David Bindman

The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the "Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition: Artists of the Renaissance and Baroque (Volume III, Part 1)

David Bindman

The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the Early Christian Era to the "Age of Discovery": Africans in the Christian Ordinance of the World (Volume II, Part 2)

David Bindman

The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the Early Christian Era to the "Age of Discovery": From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood (Volume II, Part 1)

Paul H. D. Kaplan