May Book Bag: from a compilation of Eva Hesse exhibitions to a guide for tackling Nazi loot in museums

The late sculptor Eva Hesse is back in the spotlight again with an exhibition of works at Hauser & Wirth in New York that brings together five of her most important large-scale works made in the most intense period at the end of her life from 1967 to 1969. The artist, who died of a brain tumour aged just 34, hit her stride in the late 1960s, creating sculptures that pushed the rigid language of Minimalism with eccentricity and playfulness. This compilation of exhibitions over a 50-year period includes installation views, archival material, exhibition-related ephemera, and snapshots of key installations. Contributors include the former Tate director Nicholas Serota and the late art historian Ellen Johnson.

The established UK journalist Lynn Barber reminisces and regales in this compilation of her encounters over the years with artists such as Tracey Emin, Phyllida Barlow, David Hockney and Salvador Dalí. Her observations are candid and engaging. “Rachel Whiteread’s Ghost was probably the first work that made me see the point of contemporary art. My initial reaction was predictably philistine—what a load of nonsense, just a lump of bare plaster!” Barber writes. Regarding Maggi Hambling, she adds: “I think her drawings of Henrietta Moraes dying are among the greatest artworks of the 20th century, but I also think that her sculpture of Oscar Wilde in his coffin in Charing Cross is one of the most hideous.”

Nazi loot is rarely out of the headlines and this timely practical guide by Jacques Schuhmacher, the senior provenance research curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, “equips readers with the knowledge and strategies essential for confronting the shadow of the Nazi past in museum collections”, according to a publisher’s statement. Schuhmacher introduces research methods and resources that can be used to trace the stories behind disputed objects while chapters cover topics such as “persecution and dispossession 1933-45”. Tristram Hunt, the director of the V&A, says in a statement: “This study uses compelling examples of restitution cases to show how provenance research should be done and, crucially, why it must be done.”

This monograph shines a light on the British artist Vicken Parsons, featuring works from throughout her career encompassing drawings, paintings and sculpture. “The book brings together the texts and essays of several writers [such as the art critic Michael Archer, the artist David Batchelor and the ceramicist Edmund de Waal], each exploring the poetic potential of Parsons’s paintings and how these small paintings seem to embody space itself,” says a spokesperson for Cristea Roberts Gallery, which is hosting a solo exhibition dedicated to Parsons (until 2 June). The show explores “the possibility [in Parsons’s practice] of the two-dimensional plane as a place of depth, breadth and potential”, the gallery says in a statement.