CAA News Today

Furthermore and Joan K. Davidson, the grants in publishing program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund is pleased to present the inaugural Alice award to the Brooklyn Museum for Youth and Beauty Art of the American Twenties, edited by Teresa A. Carbone and published by Skira Rizzoli Publishing. Awarded in honor of Alice M. Kaplan, the prize recognizes this book’s fresh approach to and keen analysis of its subject and for its general excellence. The Alice was presented to the Brooklyn Museum on October 29, 2013, at the Morgan Library and Museum.

The jury comprised: Paula Cooper of Paula Cooper Gallery; William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan Library and Museum; Gianfranco Monacelli, publisher of Monacelli Press; Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery; and Massimo Vignelli of Vignelli Associates.

The Alice was established in 2013 by Joan K. Davidson, president of Furthermore, to honor her mother, Alice Manheim Kaplan. Alice loved and collected the illustrated book as a work of art in itself and an essential document of a civilized society. This new award is intended to buttress the kind of slow reading movement that recognizes and cherishes the lasting values of the well-made illustrated book, and the special sense of intimacy it affords. In the fast-changing publishing universe, with its ever rising costs, the continuing life of high-quality printed books will depend upon the determined commitment of writers, editors, designers, and publishers, and their friends. The Alice is dedicated to that heroic commitment and the accomplished books that result from it.

The launching of the award also marks Furthermore’s record so far of financial assistance to some one thousand publications, for a total of $5 million. The Alice carries an award of $25,000. Each year a jury of leaders in publishing and the arts will select the Alice book from the hundreds of eligible titles that have been honored with a grant from Furthermore.

Furthermore grants in publishing is a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund that supports the publication of significant visual books—and will help to keep them coming in the years ahead. For information on the Alice, please contact Elizabeth Howard at 917-692-8588.