Last weekend, ARTBOOK unveiled its latest bookstore at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel’s new Downtown Los Angeles space. The store offers around 3,000 titles on contemporary art and culture – including 500 monographs on women artists, and 200 critical texts related to Hauser Wirth & Schimmel’s current exhibition, 'Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947–2016'.
The emphasis on female-focused titles is something the ARTBOOK team feel particularly proud of: ‘It's been nearly ten years since MoCA’s seminal 2007 exhibition, 'WACK!', which traveled to MoMA PS1, where we opened our first bookstore. I have to tell you, when the show was at MoMA PS1, it was difficult to find books on most of the artists in the exhibition. This is truly the first moment in history when a bookstore can stock a wall of shelves solely with women artists. I want to celebrate these books and encourage our visitors to discover them,’ says Skuta Helgason, the mastermind of ARTBOOK, as he set up shop in preparation for the grand opening.
At four times the size than their PS1 store, ARTBOOK @ Hauser Wirth & Schimmel will continue to switch out a portion of its retail space to focus on a theme, updating their displays with new releases and essential backlist titles, overlooked and out-of-print catalogues and rare volumes from a range of publishers, in addition to the gallery's own exhibition editions.
ARTBOOK’s new location brings in some standout features from their existing Walker Art Centre and MoMA PS1 stores to Los Angeles. A wide range of magazines from around the world remains a core component of their thinking, as well as section of contemporary literature and highly relevant books on visual studies and critical theory, alongside stationery items and children’s books. Among the forthcoming spring releases is Alexander Girard: A Designer's Universe (published to coincide with the current exhibit at the Vitra Design Museum) and a limited collector’s edition of Joel Meyerowitz: Morandi’s Objects, which includes an archival digital photograph, signed and numbered by the artist.
Helgason says, ‘We’ve become accustomed to creating book selections that are both tapped into what’s happening nationally and internationally at all the major museums and galleries, as well as locally.’
The store’s flexible design – complete with mobile interior fixtures and bookcases, and moveable sales desks and display tables – has been led by Helgason, who has been developing book retail space for more than 40 years. ‘I ran my first concept bookstore, devoted to artists' books, in Washington DC in the 1980s at Washington Project for the Arts. After that, I spent seven years working as an artist and publisher in Berlin,’ he says. ‘I moved to New York in the 1990s, kept making books myself and working in book design, and then, in 2004, at the invitation of Klaus Biesenbach, who wanted a really deep, European-style art bookstore, I opened ARTBOOK @ MoMA PS1, which has evolved over the last decade from a small kiosk to a deeply stocked contemporary art bookstore with a separate international magazine store.’
When Hauser Wirth & Schimmel invited ARTBOOK to create the in-house store, Helgason drew on those four decades of experience to determine the essential elements needed to meet the changing requirements of their rich inventory. He continues, ‘The size and malleability of the space will allow us a great, really challenging flexibility for presenting books that we’ve never been able to work with before.’
At four times the size of their MoMA PS1 store in New York, ARTBOOK at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel will continue to switch out a portion of its retail space to focus on different themes
'We’ve become accustomed to creating book selections that are both tapped into what’s happening nationally and internationally at all the major museums and galleries, as well as locally,' says Skuta Helgason, the mastermind behind ARTBOOK
In Los Angeles, a wide range of magazines from around the world stays a core component of their thinking, as well as section of contemporary literature and highly relevant books on visual studies and critical theory, alongside stationery items and children’s books
The store’s flexible design – complete with mobile interior fixtures and bookcases, and moveable sales desks and display tables – has been led by Helgason, who has been developing book retail space for more than 40 years
INFORMATION
Saturday–Wednesday, 11am–6pm; Thursdays and Fridays, 11am–8pm. For more information, visit ARTBOOK's website
ADDRESS
Hauser, Wirth & Schimmel
901 E. 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
-
Emma Corrin on their fresh venture into fragrance with Miu MiuItalian fashion house Miu Miu partners with the actor on new fragrance Miutine which captures the scent of changing seasons. Beauty writer Hannah Tindle speaks with Corrin on their blossoming collaboration
-
Paris Ballet etoiles Hugo Marchand and Hannah O’Neill to perform at Paradise Art Night during Frieze Seoul 2025A dazzling fusion of dance and contemporary culture awaits as Paris Opera Ballet étoiles join forces with Paradise Art Night during Seoul’s biggest art week.
-
Capsule Retreat is a concrete home embedded with ‘texture, memory, and locality’East Architecture Studio offers a powerfully minimalist, highly textured home set among the coniferous forests of Mount Lebanon
-
Cult classic ‘Teenagers in Their Bedrooms’ captures the angst of being a teenAre 1990s teens so different? Three decades after its original release, this photography book by Adrienne Salinger has been published again, by DAP
-
Booker Prize 2025: Kiran Desai returns with long-awaited follow-up as longlist is revealedThis year’s Booker Prize longlist captures the emotional complexity of our times, with stories of fractured families, shifting identities and the search for meaning in unfamiliar places
-
How to be butch: Clark Henley’s sharp, satirical and playful manual is back in printThe 1982 classic, ‘The Butch Manual: The Current Drag and How to Do It’, full of tongue-in-cheek advice, is available once again
-
Cindy Sherman in Menorca: ‘She's decades ahead of social media and the construction of identity for the camera’‘Cindy Sherman: The Women’, its title a nod to an image-conscious 1930s Broadway hit, takes the American artist's carefully constructed, highly performative works to Hauser & Wirth Menorca
-
We are all fetishists, says Anastasiia Fedorova in her new book, which takes a deep dive into kinkIn ‘Second Skin’, writer and curator Fedorova takes a tour through the materials, objects and power dynamics we have fetishised
-
What is recycling good for, asks Mika Rottenberg at Hauser & Wirth MenorcaUS-based artist Mika Rottenberg rethinks the possibilities of rubbish in a colourful exhibition, spanning films, drawings and eerily anthropomorphic lamps
-
The gayest love story ever told: Jeremy Atherton Lin's memoir is a tribute to homeIn 'Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told', Jeremy Atherton Lin mixes memoir with a historical deep-dive into marriage equlaity
-
See the fruits of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely's creative and romantic union at Hauser & Wirth SomersetAn intimate exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Somerset explores three decades of a creative partnership
