| The Historians of British Art Book Prize Committee is pleased to announce the Book Award winners for publications produced in the 2024 calendar year. The winners were chosen from a nominating list of sixty-one books from twenty-eight different presses. Awards were granted in seven categories. The award for a book with a subject before 1600 goes to Asa Simon Mittman, Cartographies of Exclusion: Anti-Semitic Mapping in Medieval England, published by Penn State University Press. The award for a book with a subject between 1600–1800 goes jointly to Esther Chadwick, The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain, published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press, and Iris Moon, Melancholy Wedgwood, published by MIT Press. The award for a book with a subject between 1800–1960 goes to Harriet Atkinson, Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, published by Manchester University Press. The award for a book with a contemporary subject goes to Ian Dudley and Maridowa Williams, Aubrey Williams: Art, Histories, Futures, published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press. The multi-authored book award goes to Rachel Moss and Heather Pulliam, eds., Irish and Scottish Art, c. 900-1900, published by Edinburgh University Press. The award for exhibition catalogue goes jointly to Hew Locke, Indra Khanna, and Isabel Seligman, eds., Hew Lock: What Have We Here?, published by the British Museum, and Yasufumi Nakamori, Helen Little, and Jasmine Kaur Chohan, eds., The 80s: Photographing Britain, published by Tate. The award for accessible art writing goes to The White Pube, Poor Artists, published by Penguin. The HBA would like to offer congratulations to the winning authors and the publishing teams at the British Museum, Edinburgh University Press, Penguin, Penn State University Press, Manchester University Press, MIT Press, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press, and the Tate.The book prize committee would also like to recognize the excellent scholarship of the finalists in these categories: Exemplary Scholarship on the period before 1600 Bryony Coombs, Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c. 1420-1550, published by Edinburgh University Press. Exemplary Scholarship on the period between 1800-1960 Sequoia Miller, ed., Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects, published by Princeton University Press |
| This year’s committee of readers consisted of Sam Rose (Chair), Sonja Drimmer, Matthew Hunter, and Lizzie Robles |
HBA Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period before 1600
| Asa Simon Mittman, Cartographies of Exclusion: Anti-Semitic Mapping in Medieval England, published by Penn State University Press |
In a work that is at once focused and wide-ranging, Mittman offers a compelling case for the centrality of the fictitious Jew to the project of inventing Christiandom through cartography in medieval England. Concentrating its analysis on the renowned Hereford mappa mundi, this book opens on to an often invisible (or, more aptly, repressed) world in which the presence and placement of Jews on maps–on the geographical margins and in the distant past–both constituted the Jew in the minds of Christians, but also and more forcefully, was essential to constituting Christian identity itself. In addition to his own penetrating insights and unflinching look at the body of mappae mundi produced in England around the Expulsion of 1290, Mittman corrals within his study an impressive body of scholarship. And bookending the volume with his own personal encounters with antisemitism, Mittman makes a convincing case for the importance of this history to scholars today.
Asa Simon Mittman is Professor of Art & Art History, California State University, Chico, where he teaches courses on ancient and medieval art, monsters, and film. He is author of Cartographies of Exclusion: Anti-Semitic Mapping in Medieval England (2024) and Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (2006, 20th-anniversary edition 2026), co-author with Susan Kim of Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript (2013), and author and co-author of many articles on monstrosity and marginality in the Middle Ages, including pieces on race and anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages. His collaborative From Mapmaking in the Global Middle Ages: Chinese, Islamicate, Latin Christian, and Jewish Traditions is under review with Cambridge University Press.
HBA Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period between 1600-1800
| Esther Chadwick, The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press |
Regulations established at the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768 forbade printmakers from full membership and, thus, governing roles in the new institution. Yet, etching, engraving, mezzotint, and other print techniques were then vital to the commercial livelihoods of the anointed Academicians, as well as to the international repute of British art. In The Radical Print, Esther Chadwick makes a compelling case for re-evaluating now print’s catalytic role in fomenting eighteenth-century artists’ most ambitious aesthetic innovations and political ideas. Extensively researched and persuasively written, Chadwick’s masterful study will be as much a guide as a spur to research for years to come.
Esther Chadwick is Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. Her research focuses on eighteenth-century British art and addresses the political agency of art in the age of revolutions, the materiality of printed images, the visual culture of transatlantic enslavement, and cross-cultural artistic encounters. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions including ‘Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain’ (Yale, 2014); ‘A Revolutionary Legacy: Haiti and Toussaint Louverture’ (British Museum, 2018), ‘William Blake’s Universe’ (Fitzwilliam Museum, 2024) and ‘Entangled Pasts: Art, Colonialism and Change’ (Royal Academy, 2024). Her book, The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain, was published in 2024 by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Before joining the Courtauld, Esther was Monument Trust Print Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum.
| Iris Moon, Melancholy Wedgwood, MIT Press |
Blue as the paper on which it is printed, Iris Moon’s Melancholy Wedgwood weaves its way self-consciously into and against generations of tales told about Staffordshire’s most famous potter. Like the limping smith Hephaistos of Greek myth, Josiah Wedgwood emerges in Moon’s brilliant telling less as enterprising industrialist or abolitionist advocate than as a hobbled maker of trinkets and ruins. Stripped of nationalist romance and rubbed up against the lives of global subjects marked by British imperial power, Wedgwood’s story opens a searching meditation—a post-industrial, post-colonial, post-Brexit reflection—on modernity and its shattering losses.
Iris Moon is responsible for European ceramics and glass at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she recently curated the exhibition, Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie (2025). In addition to her curatorial work, she is the author of Melancholy Wedgwood (2024) and Luxury after the Terror (2022), and co-editor with Richard Taws of Time, Media and Visuality in Post-Revolutionary France (2021). She earned her PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, and The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
HBA Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period between 1800-1960
| Harriet Atkinson, Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, published by Manchester University Press |
Harriet Atkinson’s fascinating Showing Resistance invites us to think differently about the history of exhibition making in 20th century Britain. Putting more familiar museum displays and exhibitions to one side, the book looks as much to design history as art history in order to explore how non-museum public exhibitions of liberal propaganda were used to reach mass audiences in Britain. The book is researched with exceptional care, making a wealth of new primary material available to readers and researchers. The perspective on British art at the time that results is not only full of new detail but is rich in internationalism and political breadth. And the book is a pleasure to read – animated by an unusual and welcome spirit of generosity that brings the reader into the author’s thinking to let us know what is still uncertain and where future research might look next.
Dr Harriet Atkinson is an art and design historian at University of Brighton’s Centre for Design History, where she leads a research strand on Design Activism, and Course Leader for the MA Curating Collections and Heritage. Her recent research has focused on art and design for propaganda, protest, resistance and solidarities in Britain, resulting in the book Showing Resistance: propaganda and modernist exhibitions in Britain, 1933-53 (Manchester University Press, 2024), film Art on the Streets (2023, screening at Tate Britain from June 2024 to March 2026), film Designing from Home (2025) and podcast series Graphic Interventions. Harriet is currently part of the research team for the major, international project: ‘Graphic Design Histories for Creative Dissent: Archiving and Ethical Challenges’, focusing on graphic objects of street protest for global movements across Brazil, South Africa and the UK, from 1950 to the present. (Author photo by Belinda Lawley)
HBA Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Contemporary Period
| Ian Dudley and Maridowa Williams, Aubrey Williams: Art, Histories, Futures, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press |
Aubrey Williams: Art, Histories, Futures is a richly illustrated, groundbreaking monograph that redefines the legacy of Guyanese-born modernist painter Aubrey Williams (1926–1990). Introduced deftly, as ever, by Kobena Mercer, this publication is a highlight in recent reassessments of post-war British art histories. In the first of its two constituent parts, it offers an important set of critical perspectives on Williams’ work from curators and leading scholars engaged with the artist’s interest in ecology, Indigenous creative cultures and transnational exchanges. Among these essays is a particularly striking reflection from co-editor Maridowa Williams, who carefully weaves together her father’s biography with his practice. In the second part, the publication draws into focus Williams’ own critical voice, bringing together a diverse selection of texts authored by the artist, including a hitherto unpublished satirical poem about his first experience in an English pub and, several decades later, his ‘Notes on Bird Paintings’. Together, these materials illuminate the intellectual depth, wit and political urgency of Williams’ work—securing his place as a central figure in British art histories and the histories of Modernisms more broadly.
Ian Dudley is an art historian and artist. His research looks at relationships between art and colonialism, particularly in relation to Guyana and the Amazon region. He has lectured at the University of Essex and Birkbeck.
Maridowa Williams is the daughter of Aubrey Williams and plays a key role in keeping the artist’s work current and accessible, including through exhibition, publication and collection projects.
HBA Book Award for an Exemplary Multi-authored Book
| Rachel Moss and Heather Pulliam, eds., Irish and Scottish Art, c. 900-1900, Edinburgh University Press |
It’s a familiar idea that Scotland and Ireland share a distinct artistic tradition. We are used to discussions of such art before 900, as in the high crosses of Scotland and Ireland, just as we are to the idea of the Celtic Revival of the early 19th to early 20th century. But what of the history, this collection asks, of survivals and revivals in between? The essays in this collection give a refreshingly fine-grained sense of what notions of survival and revival might mean here, dealing not only with changing attitudes towards a given set of objects and places, but to the ongoing reinvention of the ‘authentic’ objects themselves through material interventions that included forms of repair, reassemblage, and outright ‘recreation’ of facsimiles and fakes. Cutting across two nations and ‘Celtic’ and ‘Gaelic’ cultures, the essays are equally fascinating in the novel perspective they offer on nationalism, transnationalism, and sub and supranational identities in art history.
Rachel Moss is a Professor in the of History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College Dublin and a former President of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. She is a specialist in the medieval art and architecture of Ireland, on which she has published widely. Books include Art and Architecture of Ireland. Vol. 1. Medieval c.400-1600AD (Yale University Press, 2014) and The Book of Durrow. Official Guide (Thames and Hudson, 2018) and (with Colmán Ó Clabaigh) Modest and Civil People. Religion and Society in Medieval Galway (Four Courts Press, 2022). Her current research focuses on the social biographies of medieval buildings during the early modern period.
Heather Pulliam is a professor of medieval art at the University of Edinburgh and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Gesta. Part of the curatorial team for Celts: Art and Identity exhibitions (British Museum 2015; National Museum of Scotland 2016) she has published in Art Bulletin, Medieval Archaeology, Gesta, and Studies in Iconography. Her latest monograph, Art, Nature, and the Body in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland (Cambridge University Press, March 2026), explores how time, motion, and the natural world framed and animated Celtic and Insular monuments, manuscripts, and metalwork.
HBA Book Award for an Exemplary Exhibition Catalogue
| Hew Locke, Indra Khanna, and Isabel Seligman, eds., Hew Locke: what have we here?, British Museum |
This richly illustrated catalogue for Hew Locke’s eponymous major British Museum exhibition provides a compelling response to the question implied by its title. What we have here is, simply, a fascinating set of images and texts that trace the entwined threads of power and creativity; empire and nationhood; institutions and publics through the complex stories of artworks created by Locke across the last decades and works by artists – recorded and otherwise – held in the vast collections of the British Museum. Rather than diluting the power of Locke’s celebrated exhibition, on the page its collagic appeal is amplified and connections between pasts and presents and across the former Empire are drawn out in stunning detail. It asks not just what we have here, but what we choose to do with it now.
Dr Hew Locke RA OBE was born in Edinburgh in 1959, lived in Guyana for his formative years, returning to the UK in 1980, eventually attending the Royal College of Art. He explores how nations fashion their identities through visual symbols of authority. He explores the imagery of ships as potent spiritual symbol, and an instrument of control in warfare, trade and culture. His fusing of historic sources with his own political or cultural concerns, via visual juxtapositions or through the re-working of a pre-existing object or photograph, leads to witty and innovative amalgamations of history and modernity. The merging of influences from The Caribbean and the UK leads to richly textured, vibrant pieces that stand on a crossroad of histories, cultures and media. His public artworks include the memorial marking 800 years of Magna Carta, situated at Runnymede. His retrospective exhibition “Passages” is currently at Yale Centre for British Art, before touring the USA.
Indra Khanna started curating contemporary visual arts projects in 2003, working either independently or in partnership with established institutions. She was a practising artist, community artist and art teacher for 15 years before moving into curating, and was an active member of grass roots artist’s groups such as the Association of Artists and Designers in Wales, Women’s Work and Brixton Artists Collective. From 2003 – 2010 she worked at Autograph ABP, eventually becoming Curator, where she worked on commissions, publications and exhibitions by artists such as Pieter Hugo, Shemelis Desta, Gayle Chong Kwan, Franklyn Rodgers, Santu Mofokeng and Dinu Li. Between 2006 – 09 was a member of the London regional board of Arts Council of England. Khanna has been Studio Curator for Hew Locke since 2010. In 2018 she founded the Caribbean Artists’ Salon, and from 2020 to 2022 was Artistic Advisor to the Litehouse Gallery. Her independent curatorial projects include Black Smoke Rising, a solo show by Tim Shaw RA at mac, birmingham and Aberystwyth Art Centre 2014 (and editor and contributor to the accompanying monograph published by Sansom & Co in 2015); Pork Knocker Dreams, by Donald Locke at the New Art Exchange, Nottingham and Wolverhampton Art Gallery 2009 -10 (his first solo show in the UK since the 1970s); and FlyPitch, in Brixton outdoor market, London 2003.
Isabel Seligman is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawing at the British Museum and was lead curator of the exhibition Hew Locke: what have we here? (British Museum, 2024). Other recent exhibitions and publications include Drawing Attention: emerging British artists (British Museum, 2022), Pushing Paper: Contemporary Drawing from 1970 to Now (Thames and Hudson, 2019), Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now (Thames and Hudson, 2016) and contributions to David Hockney: Drawing from Life (National Portrait Gallery, 2020) and The American Dream: Pop to the Present (Thames and Hudson, 2017).
| Yasufumi Nakamori, Helen Little, and Jasmine Kaur Chohan, eds., The 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate |
The 1980s: Photographing Britain brings together the work of over 70 artists and a series of rigorous and rich essays to offer fresh insights to the growing field of study around the ‘long 1980s’. In an innovative departure from addresses to the ‘critical decade’ that orientate the visual culture of that period around its strident politics, here a complex and vasty under-researched scaffolding of independent publications, collectives and independent galleries provide the backdrop for thinking through photography as both a conceptual tool and aesthetic medium. Texts by Geoffery Batch, Taous Dhamani, Noni Stacey, and Belal Akkouche supplement chapters by the editors and an illuminating conversation between Mark Sealy and Derek Bishton to provide the reader with a firm grounding in the historical and critical contexts and issues that framed the important name-sake exhibition.
Yasufumi Nakamori is a noted curator and writer of global modern art. He served as the Vice President of Arts and Culture of Asia Society and the Director of the Asia Society Museum in New York City from August 2023 to April 2025. He was previously Senior Curator, International Art (Photography), at Tate, where he led the development of the photography collection and organised, among other exhibitions and displays, Zanele Muholi (Tate Modern, 2010 – ) and The 80s: Photographing Britain (Tate Britain, 2024 – 25). Most recently, he curated Martin Wong: Chinatown USA (Wrightwood 659) and co-edited Traces: Miyako Ishiuchi (Thames & Hudson). He received a PhD from Cornell University. (Author photo by Dan Dennehy / Minneapolis Institute of Art)
Helen Little is a curator with a special interest in twentieth century and contemporary British art. She is currently Curator, Contemporary Art at Tate Britain and contributes to Tate’s International programme. Over the course of her career at Tate, Helen has developed critically acclaimed exhibitions and is currently preparing a major group show exploring British art and fashion from the 1990s. In addition to her curatorial work, Helen has edited and contributed to numerous books and exhibition catalogues on modern and contemporary British art including YBA + Beyond (Sony Music Entertainment, Japan, forthcoming, 2026) Derek Boshier: Reinventor (Lund Humphries, 2023) and David Hockney: Moving Focus (Tate Publishing, 2021).
Jasmine Chohan is an art researcher, curator, and educator specialising in contemporary art and visual culture. She is Assistant Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, London, and completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where her research focused on the Havana Biennial with an emphasis on Latin American contemporary art. Her wider specialisations include global biennials, contemporary Asian art, and contemporary British art. Jasmine studied at the Universidad de la Habana and worked on the 12th Havana Biennial. At Tate Britain, she co-curated The 80s: Photographing Britain (2024–25) and is currently developing an exhibition on Hurvin Anderson. Her practice is deeply informed by arts education, with a strong focus on diversity, inclusion, and widening access.
HBA Book Award for Accessible Art Writing
| The White Pube (Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad), Poor Artists, Penguin |
A “long-playing” companion to The White Pube’s noted website, Poor Artists offers a bracing critique of the contemporary artworld, the impoverishment it breeds, and the structural exclusions on which it turns. The book is also a welcome foray into experimental art writing. The White Pube (a.k.a. Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente) combine fantasy and slapstick humor with shrewd observation. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Poor Artists is essential reading for anyone who engages with British art or contemporary art in general.
The White Pube is the collaborative identity of UK-based critics Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad. They have been turning heads since 2015 when the pair began publishing provocative art reviews and essays online from their art school studios and have earned themselves an international cult following due to their innovative writing style, their honesty and irreverence, and their willingness to challenge the pale, male, stale art establishment. Poor Artists is their first book. (Author photo © Maria Gorodeckaya)
The book prize committee would also like to recognize the excellent scholarship of the finalists in these categories:
Exemplary Scholarship on the period before 1600
Bryony Coombs, Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c. 1420-1550, published by Edinburgh University Press
Exemplary Scholarship on the period between 1800-1960
Sequoia Miller, ed., Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects, published by Princeton University Press