Books for Art's Sake

Gregory Miller, a partner and managing director of the global investment banking firm Greenhill & Co., spends much of his time negotiating multibillion-dollar deals for some of the biggest publishing and media companies in the world.

But for the last 12 years he's also been a serious collector of cutting-edge contemporary art. In late 2004 he moved to combine his publishing expertise with his passion for art, founding Gregory R. Miller & Co., a small publishing firm focusing on books about the work of top contemporary artists and criticism.

Miller & Co. debuted with Lyle Ashton Harris, a collection of expressionist photographs by the African-American photographer done in collaboration with acclaimed performance artist Anna Deavere Smith. The book sold out its first printing of 2,000 copies.

Miller said his books are "not just exhibition catalogues." He looks for artists whose works lend themselves to book form and uses artists' events and performances—Smith performed at the Studio Museum in Harlem to launch the Harris book—to promote his titles.

This year he'll publish Ellen Harvey's New York Beautification Project, a project documenting 40 outdoor paintings done on top of existing graffiti sites, and Art Life, writings on contemporary art by Larry Rinder, a former curator of the Whitney Biennial. The house plans to do at least thee books in 2006. D.A.P. will handle distribution.

GRM has an office in Manhattan and one full-time staffer, Lucy Gallun. Miller said he plans to build his firm into a much bigger operation. "We're trying to fill a gap in art book publishing," he said. "We're looking to do books that no one else is doing."