Nell Irvin Painter

Nell Irvin Painter is the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton and the author of I Just Keep Talking, Old in Art School, and The History of White People, among other books. (March 2025)

History in Open Air

“Local history bonds people today to the place where they are, giving them a stake in local people and local politics.”

March 29, 2025

‘This Land Is Yours’

Two recent books recover the missing Black history of upstate New York, challenging the delusion of New York as a land of freedom far removed from the American original sin of slavery.

The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier

by Amy Godine

A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family

by Debra Bruno, with an afterword by Eleanor C. Mire

March 27, 2025 issue

Black Power Art in Arkansas

Looking at reproductions of art isn’t seeing art. You have to see it as it appears in exhibitions—at particular times on particular walls in particular buildings in particular cities or towns.

April 1, 2018

'Soul of a Nation': The Book

Soul of a Nation answers the complaint that black visual artists have been making since the Harlem Renaissance, that their art suffers from a lack of serious engagement.

February 4, 2018

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