Beverly Buchanan: I Broke the House

Over 25 contributors on Beverly Buchanan’s wide-ranging practice to reframe race, sexuality, disability, and the poetics of place.

Beverly Buchanan: I Broke the House surveys Buchanan’s wide-ranging oeuvre of sculpture, painting, photography, drawing, writing, and printed matter. Pairing newly commissioned essays with archival materials, the book situates the artwork of Beverly Buchanan (1940–2015) within historical, discursive, and deeply personal contexts. Tracing eroded surfaces of urban ruins on canvas and paper, studying vernacular dwellings and their “builder-occupants” in the rural South, and addressing questions of race, commemoration, and politics of place through site-specific sculpture, Buchanan built a language of place and repair. Alongside extensive primary sources from public and private archives, contributions by over 25 scholars and artists extend and complicate our understanding of this exceptional artist.

Contributors
Elena Bally, Simone Browne, Jeffrey Bruce, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jennifer Burris, Andy Campbell, Tony Cokes, Phoebe Collings-James, Mo Costello, Patricia Ekpo, Fredi Fischli, Jack Halberstam, Edgar Heap of Birds, Tonja Khabir, Charlotte Matter, Devin T. Mays, Park McArthur, Niels Olsen, Walter Price, Sarah Richter, Lowery Stokes Sims, Journey Streams, and M. Ty