SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY.- The Tang Museum at Skidmore College announces that three of its recent publications have been honored in AIGA’s 50 Books | 50 Covers of 2025 competition. The recognition of
Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door,
Forms of Awakening: Tibetan Art from the Jack Shear Collection, and
3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art 1964–1980 brings the Tang’s total number of AIGA-winning publications to eight. The three were selected by jurors from more than 500 entries in the 2025 competition.
Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door, the first major monograph on the multidisciplinary artist, was designed by Morcos Key in close collaboration with Wilson and exhibition curator Rebecca McNamara. Its screen-printed cover, based on one of Wilson’s artworks, extends the artist’s tactile approach to painting, sculpture, printmaking, and textiles into the physical experience of the book. Ana Valeria Castillos served as book and cover designer, with Jon Key as creative director.
Forms of Awakening: Tibetan Art from the Jack Shear Collection takes a markedly different approach. Designed by Kimberly Varella and Gabrielle Pulgar of Content Object, the volume is bound in rich green cloth with red foil and gold lettering. Three ribbons correspond to the book’s three sections—Texts, Gift, and Archive—while changes in paper, color, and typography carry the design throughout a publication devoted to Tibetan Buddhist art given by Jack Shear to the Tang, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, and the Williams College Museum of Art.
For 3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art 1964–1980, designer Barbara Glauber of Heavy Meta embraced the wit and irreverence of the Chicago Imagists. The mostly white cover features a large die-cut opening that lets Karl Wirsum’s Armpits pop through from inside the book—complete with patches of fake hair affixed to the image. The publication explores the sculptural and three-dimensional work of the Chicago Imagists.
“These three books show an extraordinary range of publication design and curatorial innovation,” said Ian Berry, Dayton Director. “Each one grew from close attention to a very different artist, body of work, and set of ideas—from Paula Wilson’s layered material world, to the histories and traditions brought together in Forms of Awakening, to the humor and audacity of the Chicago Imagists. Each designer found a distinctive visual and physical language that carries the ideas of each exhibition beyond its time in the galleries and out into the world.”
The Publications
Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door is a 184-page hardcover edited by Rebecca McNamara and published in 2025 by the Tang Museum, DelMonico Books, and D.A.P. The publication features nearly two decades of Wilson’s work, with essays by Taylor Renee Aldridge, Ebony Y. Rhodes, and Stephanie Sparling Williams; an interview with Wilson; and reproductions of paintings, sculpture, prints, collages, and videos. The publication follows the exhibition of the same name, organized by McNamara in collaboration with Wilson and presented at the Tang from July 15 through December 30, 2023, before traveling to the California African American Museum in Los Angeles.
Forms of Awakening: Tibetan Art from the Jack Shear Collection is a 320-page hardcover edited by Benjamin Bogin, Ariana Maki, and Rachel Seligman and published in 2025 by the Tang, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, the Williams College Museum of Art, and DelMonico Books | D.A.P. The volume combines a catalogue of more than sixty works of Tibetan art given by Jack Shear to the three museums, scholarly essays on Tibetan visual culture, and documentation of exhibitions organized around the gift at all three institutions. At the Tang, Forms of Awakening: Selections from the Jack Shear Collection of Himalayan Art was on view August 19 through December 10, 2023.
3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art is a 312-page hardcover edited by Ian Berry, John Corbett, and Jim Dempsey and published in 2025 by the Tang Teaching Museum, DelMonico Books, and D.A.P. The volume features conversations with artists, biographies, and archival material exploring the Chicago Imagists’ sculptural work and dimensional paintings. The exhibition 3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art, 1964–1980, organized by Berry, Corbett, and Dempsey, was presented at the Tang from September 8, 2018, through January 6, 2019.
The three honors continue a long record of recognition for the Tang’s publication program. Previous AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers winners are Environment and Object, Sixfold Symmetry: Pattern in Art and Science, Like Sugar, Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour, and Christine Sun Kim: Oh Me Oh My. The Tang has produced 90 exhibition catalogues since opening in 2000, extending the life of exhibitions through original scholarship and collaborations among artists, curators, writers, scholars, designers, and publishing partners.
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