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Robert E. Abrams with children's books published by Abbeville Press. At right is a portrait of his father, Harry N. Abrams, by Norman Rockwell. |
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Robert E. "Bob" Abrams, the longtime art book publisher, died on August 28. He was 80.
Abram was co-founder and president of Abbeville Press, which he established in 1977 with his late father, Harry N. Abrams. As Abbeville Press recounted in its announcement of Abrams's death, "the elder Abrams had pioneered modern art book publishing at his eponymous firm, which he founded in 1949. With their new venture, Abbeville, Bob secured his family's publishing legacy. He had a profound sense of the significance, and the responsibility, of the publisher's vocation." Abrams once wrote: "Publishing is about deciding what content, 'speech,' is sufficiently meaningful to try to bring it to the attention of others. It is about trying to diminish ignorance and share the grace of human consciousness."
After his father's death in 1979, Abrams published a series of books that revealed "a taste for the monumental," Abbeville said. The Vatican Frescoes of Michelangelo, a two-volume limited edition issued in partnership with Kodansha in 1980, remains the best document of the Sistine Chapel prior to its restoration. Of particular pride to Bob was his private audience with Pope John Paul II, to whom he presented the book. Another striking title was a full-size facsimile of the original Double Elephant Folio edition of John James Audubon's Birds of America, published with the National Audubon Society in 1985. He also published A World History of Photography by Naomi Rosenblum (1985), then the most ambitious history of photography as an art form, and The Art of Florence by Glenn Andres, John Hunisak, and Richard Turner (1989), a two-volume synthesis of the extraordinary flourishing of painting, sculpture, and architecture from Giotto to Bronzino in Florence.
By the 1990s, Abbeville became one of the country's largest illustrated-book publishers, and Abrams continued to be personally involved with many Abbeville titles. Among his great interests was the Italian Renaissance, which had been a focus of his undergraduate studies at Harvard, and in its monographs on contemporary artists. (Like his father, Abrams was a passionate and eclectic art collector.)
Abbeville's children's list, developed with Abrams's wife, Cynthia Vance-Abrams, began with the How Artists See series by Colleen Carroll, which introduced children to art by inviting them to compare how different artists had depicted similar themes. The children's list has continued to grow with titles, including Sara Ball's Flip-o-saurus (2010) and its sequels, interactive excursions into paleontology and zoology, and World Soccer Legends (2014 onward), inspired by the enthusiasm that Abrams's son Nathaniel had for the sport.
The list sometimes expanded beyond illustrated books to reflect Abrams's many interests: a study of the national debt; a compendium of the lessons to be learned from the greatest coaches in various sports; and a series of novels about prewar Jewish life in Europe and the U.S. One title, The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott and Jennifer Ash Rudick (1995), perhaps the first pregnancy guide for men, has sold more than 1.5 million copies.
There will be a celebration of Abrams's life on Friday, October 6, at 10 a.m. at Central Synagogue, 652 Lexington Avenue in New York City.