Chitra Ganesh

Chitra Ganesh, Queer Power! A Time Traveling Coloring Book (black and white softcover book with foil cover detail, 152 pages), 2021. Image cc Li-Ming Hu.

What: 152-page black and white book outlining a queer, femme-centered history of New York, from Lenape Settlements to 2020, that continues the narrative of A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask (2020-2022), the QueerPower mural façade by artist Chitra Ganesh at the Leslie-Lohman Museum.

We did:

Managed copyediting and file organization
Sourced and hired designer (Preston Thomson) and printer (KOPA)
Facilitated sales meetings with Museum stores, galleries, and NYC-based bookstore
Owned local distribution to all stockists

Result:

Acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Stocked at the Whitney Museum, Printed Matter, Brooklyn Museum, Greenlight, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, and more.
Included in the Whitney Museum’s Pride Celebration programing with a coloring workshop, 2023.
Completed book (from contract signed to books delivered on-site) in 13 months.
Net profit for artist after two months of sales.

Based on Ganesh’s QueerPower public art installation for The Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in New York City, this book celebrates the queer and transgender histories of downtown Manhattan and the neighborhoods adjacent to the Museum’s Soho location. Ganesh transports the viewer into the past and beyond, including imagery drawn from researching architectures of 19th-century Black settlements Seneca Village and little Africa, as well as 17th-century Lenape settlements and structures that have since been destroyed or erased, alongside flora and fauna indigenous to NYC.

Includes essays by Erica Cardwell, Jeannine Tang, and Riya Lerner; a complete glossary; and a land and peoples acknowledgment page.

First edition of 1500. 152 pages, 9 x 12 inches, printed by KOPA, Lithuania. Designed by Preston Thompson.

Chitra Ganesh, Queer Power! A Time Traveling Coloring Book (black and white softcover book with foil cover detail, 152 pages), 2021. Image cc Li-Ming Hu.

December 2020-January 2022

Code 20-14