New Books in Art

On June 10, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned two pieces of artwork to Cambodia: an Angkor statue and a sandstone lintel. It’s the latest repatriation effort by the U.S.’s premier art museum, and the third time the Met has had to give up Cambodian artifacts specifically.

Matthew Campbell’s The Man Who Stole The Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy (Penguin, 2026) dives into the story of the Cambodian antiquities trade, from looted temples in the Cambodian forests, through dealers in Bangkok like Douglas Latchford, and then into museums and billionaire homes in the West. And he also digs into how this trade fell apart: How the U.S. Department of Justice and activists in Cambodia pressured dealers and museums like the Met to give this art back.

Matthew is an award-winning reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. His previous book, Dead in the Water—co-authored with Kit Chellel—was selected as a Book of the Year by The Economist, the Financial Times, and The Times. Matt has reported from more than twenty-five countries on crime, corruption, terrorism, economics, and the environment. His work has earned some of journalism’s highest honors, including awards from the Gerald Loeb Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, the National Press Club, SOPA, and SABEW for both feature and investigative reporting

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Man Who Stole the Gods. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.
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A creative, body-based guide to healing for queer, trans, and
gender-expansive readers—somatic tools and expressive arts to feel safer
in your body, rewrite your story, and sustain connection. Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma (North Atlantic Books, 2026) is
a practical, consent-centered guide to healing body trauma through
embodiment and creativity. Drawing on somatic therapy—grounding, breath,
orientation, gentle movement—and expressive arts—collage, drawing,
clay, movement, music, voice—within a harm-reduction frame of pacing,
choice, and safety plans, Wednesdae Reim Ifrach (REAT, ATR-BC, LPC)
shares grounded practices, case vignettes, and simple rituals to help
you move from shut down or on high alert into steadier, more connected
living. The book follows a simple arc: first, feel and steady your
nervous system; next, turn those sensations into art and story; and
finally, build rituals and relationships that help the changes
last—whether you’re navigating dysphoria, ED recovery, chronic stress,
or nervous system dysregulation. Inside you’ll find: Body check-ins
(quick prompts to name sensations and needs), short breath &
movement practices (1–10 minutes), and sensory prompts
(sight/sound/touch/smell/taste) Art invitations (collage, drawing,
movement, sound/voice) with step-by-step guidance and safety notes
Consent & harm-reduction tools (opt-in/out menus, pacing, crisis
planning) to keep the work manageable Community practices & rituals
(altar-making, release-writing, witness circles) to anchor change in
daily lif A queer-centered lens on healing, embodiment, and creativity
Warm, inclusive, and usable on your own or with a therapist, Queer
Expressions helps you build a more livable relationship with your
body—and a story big enough to hold who you are becoming.

Wednesdae Reim Ifrach
is a trans/non-binary art therapist and counselor dedicated to
providing gender-affirming, trauma-informed care that emphasizes
healing-centered engagement, body justice, intersectional social
justice, and equitable access to eating disorder treatment. They co-own
and operate Rainbow Recovery,
offering clinical supervision, consultations, trainings, workshops,
counseling, and art therapy services to clients in Connecticut and
Pennsylvania. As a full-time professor at Moravian University, Wednesdae
teaches mental health counseling, social work, and expressive art
courses, inspiring future professionals. Over the past decade, they have
led trainings and workshops for organizations such as the American Art
Therapy Association, National Alliance for Eating Disorders, and Yale
University, among others. Previously, Wednesdae founded the country’s
first 2sLGBTQIA+ Eating Disorder Program, served on Project HEAL’s
Board, and presided over the Connecticut Art Therapy Association. They
currently co-chair the Health Professionals in Training Program on the
GLMA Board. Their expertise addresses LGBTQ+ concerns and trauma,
honoring each client’s identity.

Helena Vissing,
PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California
and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She
can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).
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What does Blackness look like? In Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World (Duke University Press, 2026),
Cécile Bishop argues that this seemingly simple question has no
straightforward answer. Instead of treating race as something
immediately visible, she explores how Blackness emerges through the
interplay of perception, language, and history.

A central theme of the book is that visibility is never neutral.
Through examples ranging from photographs of the Liberation of Paris to
works of art such as Portrait of a Black Woman, Bishop shows that
Blackness cannot be reduced to what is seen. Instead, she introduces the
idea of Blackness as form, emphasizing the importance of representation, opacity, and aesthetic experience.

Engaging with thinkers such as Édouard Glissant and Frantz Fanon,
Bishop invites readers to rethink the assumption that seeing is the same
as knowing. Forms of Blackness offers a thoughtful and original account of how race is shaped not simply by appearance, but by the ways we learn to see.

Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an
Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of
religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African
diasporic communities in the Netherlands.
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With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism (University of Chicago Press, 2026),
Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life,
an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical
avant-gardes. She reveals how many early twentieth-century artists saw
their own everyday lives—their bodies, identities, and relationships—as a
type of creative material and a central component
to their avant-garde practice. These artists abandoned traditional
forms of artmaking and venues of art viewing, instead aspiring to
integrate art with everyday life, creating an “art of living.” 

Considering
Tristan Tzara’s performances of Dadaist identity, Sonia Delaunay’s
simultaneous fashions and self-branding, and the collective endeavor to
open and operate the Surrealist Research Bureau, Silveri offers a new
narrative about how the artists of interwar Paris developed experiential
life practices that resisted dominant forms of “lifestyle” and
normative discourses surrounding gender, ethnicity, and office work.
This book argues that ethical questions of “How should I live?” and “How
should I relate to others?” were as important to the avant-garde as
politics, and that aspirations to change the world played out in daily
practices of self-making.

Hannah Freed-Thall is Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture at NYU. She is the author, most recently, of Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal Commons.
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John Kapusta's Self-Realization Nation: How Artists of the Creative Counterculture Made a New America (U California Press, 2026) is the story of an unexpected group of performing artists who led one of the most influential artistic movements in contemporary American history. After World War II, personal fulfillment emerged as a defining American cultural ideal. Self-realization--the quest to become our authentic selves--remains a powerful part of American culture and arts today. In Self-Realization Nation, John Kapusta provides a lively cultural history of how an overlooked movement of musicians, dancers, and actors championed the ideal of self-realization. These performers, who spanned many backgrounds, identities, genres, and artistic styles, became what he calls the creative counterculture. Artists as varied as Sonny Rollins, John Cage, Anna Halprin, Alice and John Coltrane, and Pauline Oliveros shared an approach to creativity focused on letting go of limiting beliefs and subverting oppressive social norms. Through colorful vignettes, Kapusta reveals how these artists made their art and how their approach spread beyond the performing arts to influence such fields as psychology, education, and wellness. Ultimately, these creative counterculturists came to define a new vision of an America where everyone was free to be themselves, together.
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