Art without Boundaries: A Tribute to Our Founders
A Legacy in Publishing and Collecting
Since 1977, Abbeville Press has introduced art into the homes of millions of readers. Abbeville's founders, Harry N. Abrams (1905–1979) and Robert E. "Bob" Abrams (1943–2023), shared a deep personal engagement with art that was reflected not only in their publishing but also in their collecting. This fall, as Sotheby's prepares to offer a selection of works from the Abrams Family Collection, we remember our founders' legacy.
Harry and Bob Abrams, 1977
The Abrams Family Collection
Visit Sotheby's web site for their upcoming sale Art without Boundaries: The Abrams Family Collection.
Read an essay by art critic David Ebony about the history of the Abrams Family Collection.
Read an essay by Abbeville's publisher, David Fabricant, about the connections between the Abrams family's collecting and their publishing.
The Art without Boundaries sale has been covered by numerous media outlets, including The Art Newspaper, Artnet, and Barron's.
Some Related Abbeville Books
Today, Abbeville's list continues to bear the personal imprint of the Abrams family. Here are just a few examples.
One of Harry Abrams' oldest publishing relationships was with Norman Rockwell—the two first collaborated on a line of Christmas cards in 1946. When Harry and Bob Abrams founded Abbeville Press, their first slate of projects included Norman Rockwell: 332 Magazine Covers—a book that is still in print today.
Bob Abrams published a famous facsimile of the original Double Elephant Folio edition of Audubon's Birds of America in 1985. Bob also published a smaller (but still quite large!) edition of The Birds of America that he dubbed the Baby Elephant Folio. We recently released a new and improved version of the Baby Elephant Folio.
Another of Bob's signature titles was A World History of Photography by Naomi Rosenblum, the first comprehensive history of photography as an art form. Today A World History of Photography is still in print in its fifth edition.
Harry and Bob Abrams published monographs on many of the contemporary artists whom they collected. The most recent—and one of the most spectacular—examples is the first career-spanning monograph on Larry Poons.
In 2007, Bob's wife Cynthia Vance-Abrams joined Abbeville as its children's acquisitions editor. Cynthia extended Abbeville's strong aesthetic sensibility to books for young readers, including the best-selling Flip-o-saurus.
