Big Ideas: Art Book Publishing with Radius Books

Join David Chickey, Publisher and Creative Director at Radius Books, in an engaging conversation with Laura Carpenter on the state and future of art book publishing. Chickey will speak to the legacy of Radius Books, and explore the very concept of what art books are and what they can be- portable exhibitions, evidence of artistic and cultural value, and art objects themselves. Discover how art books are going to engage, inform, and contribute to the increasing importance of new media art.

David Chickey is Publisher, Designer, and Editorial Director for Radius Books, a non-profit publishing company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 2007, Radius Books’ mission is to encourage, promote, and publish books of artistic and cultural value. Radius titles have received national recognition, including multiple awards from AIGA, American Association of Museums Publishing, and best book nominations from The New Yorker, TIME, PDN, Independent Publisher, and The Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation. Chickey also owns a private design firm, with clients including Aperture, Abrams, Harvard University, The Lannan Foundation, SITE Santa Fe, and David Zwirner, among others. He is the former board chair of the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, and a graduate of Sussex University, England, and UNC, Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar.

Laura Carpenter was instrumental in bringing contemporary art to Santa Fe in the early 1990s. She began her career as a gallerist in Dallas, Texas, showing artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Martin Puryear. Upon her arrival in Santa Fe, she held solo shows for the likes of Kiki Smith, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Juan Muñoz, and Richard Tuttle, transforming the Santa Fe art world. Ellsworth Kelly, John Chamberlain, Ed Ruscha, Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois and Marina Arbamovic all had shows or came to support fellow artists. Carpenter was also a founder of SITE, helping to permanently establish Santa Fe as a premier destination for contemporary art.

2024 Copyright Center for Contemporary Arts – Santa Fe. All rights reserved.

The Board of Directors for the Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe (CCA) has voted to close the organization after serving the Santa Fe and northern New Mexico community on its forty-fourth year of operation. The decision was reached after careful consideration of options presented during its current strategic planning initiative.

“Closing a cherished, community organization like CCA is one of the most difficult decisions a board can make,” said David Muck, CCA Board Chair. “However, we simply couldn’t secure the level of individual donations required to achieve the high quality of programming and exhibitions envisioned by CCA’s professional staff and board of directors,” he continued.

Many nonprofits in the U.S. were hit hard by Covid and CCA is a good example. The CCA Cinema closed during Covid, and attendance was slow to resume, reflecting national downward trends in moviegoing post-Covid as reported in multiple news outlets, such as IndieWire and others. In 2023, the organization forecast the cinema to perform at only 50% of pre-Covid levels, resulting in monthly losses. Though grants and individual donations to the organization were up significantly in 2022 and 2023, they simply weren’t enough to make up the difference in the annual budget and cover both current and planned exhibitions and operations.

“This tough decision did not come lightly,” said Danyelle Means, CCA Executive Director and Head Curator. “For a nonprofit institution that operates independently of state support, the annual donations needed to sustainably continue operating was not enough, especially in the wake of challenges from pandemic closures and reduced attendance,” Means continued.

CCA did have its share of recent successes: CCA Executive Director Danyelle Means had secured a three-year grant of $100,000 per year from the Ford Foundation, with an option to renew for another three-year period. The organization was also the recipient of a $50,000 inaugural grant from Ruth Arts Foundation, as well as other granting organizations. Self-Determined, a 2022 CCA exhibition, was listed as one of the world’s Top 50 Exhibitions of 2022 by Hyperallergic magazine and CCA’s new monthly Closer Looks cinema series was a hit with film enthusiasts.

The CCA board of directors considered closing the organization in December of 2021, but voted to remain open in 2022 in hopes of a recovery post-Covid. However, despite the hard work of CCA staff and the accomplishments like the ones mentioned above, the shuttered period during which the cinema was closed proved too challenging to overcome. CCA Cinema’s final day of public operations is Thursday, April 6, and all upcoming CCA gallery exhibitions and public programs are cancelled.