There’s a particular hush that lives in bookstores—not silence, but presence. These are spaces curated not just by subject, but by feeling. Where the weight of a book is matched by the weight of its ideas.
Art bookstores are different. Here images speak before words do. Discovery often happens by accident. They aren’t built for speed. They reward lingering. These are places for turning pages, for being surprised, for seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.
What makes them special isn’t just their subject matter—it’s their sensibility. Their shelves are stacked with voices that are visual, radical, precise, experimental. You might find a hand-stitched zine next to a catalogue raisonné. A monograph on Hilma af Klint next to a pocket-sized meditation on color. Art bookstores remind us that print can still feel like magic.
Art bookstores are places of connection. Between artist and audience. Between idea and object. Between a moment in history and the hand holding it now. Between loved ones.
In my family, we celebrate half birthdays! A few years ago for my son‘s birthday I took him and his boarding school roommate to lunch at Manuela, the restaurant at Hauser Wirth Gallery in Los Angeles. After lunch, we went into the art bookstore and my son asked me if the bookstore had any of my books. I said yes absolutely and walked around looking at the spines. I pulled them each out to show him and within the first few minutes found 10! He thought that was super cool and honestly, so did I!
To visit an art bookstore is to give yourself over to wonder and to see differently when you leave.
Please explore my books–The Bearable Lightness of Being and Conversations with Artists–by clicking here.
Photography by Shawn Chavez
