Isobel Harbison
Books
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas: The neon legacy of Betty Willis & the world’s most famous sign
'Isobel Harbison's portrait of the queen of neon is a rollicking read. She restores Betty Willis to her rightful place in history as a brilliant designer and masterful artist in a man's world. Impeccably researched and elegantly written, Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas celebrates the female form and the "angel" who was a key figure in the building of the town.'
Sally Denton, author of The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land
'Bravo! Though Betty Willis was ignored in her time, today she belongs alongside Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Helen Liu Fong and Natalie de Blois in the pantheon of midcentury Modern designers. Harbison's astonishing research brings to life Willis's career and an entire chapter of American culture that has been shunted to the margins for too long.'
Alan Hess, architect and author
'This is a book with passion and poise. Crisp, vibrant and meticulously researched, Isobel Harbison's story of the world's most famous neon sign and the woman who created it illuminates an incredible aspect of American culture. Welcome to the fabulous creative force that was Betty Willis!'
Wendy Erskine, author of The Benefactors
'Las Vegas serves up second chances like free shrimp cocktails, and its pioneering days were filled with strong women who built fascinating lives from those opportunities. Isobel Harbison has written a treasure of a book: insightful, engaging and rigorous all at once. I want to give her a hug.'
Laura McBride, author of We Are Called to Rise and In the Midnight Room
'Isobel Harbison's ground-breaking study of Las Vegas reveals the origins of the internationally recognised Welcome sign and its previously unheralded creator, Betty Willis. A fascinating, multi-themed journey.'
Joanne Goodwin, author of Changing the Game: Women at Work in Las Vegas
'With lively prose and meticulous research, Isobel Harbison brings us the compelling and important life story of Betty Willis, a great and unsung contributor to the history of the real Las Vegas. Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas is a delight that stands out like neon on the city's ever-expanding bookshelf.'
John L. Smith, author of Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn
'Generous, intelligent and expertly researched, Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas reminds us that design history is also a history of who gets remembered, and who does not.'
Libby Sellers, author of Women Design
'Captivating from the start. Isobel Harbison lights up Las Vegas with the remarkable story of one woman and her iconic design.'
Jane Hall, author of Woman Made: Great Women Designers
'Smart, well-written, meticulously researched. Isobel Harbison fills a lot of gaps with Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, which is both a biography of famed sign designer Betty Willis and a history of the city itself.'
Matthew O'Brien, author of My Week at the Blue Angel
'Best known for what Isobel Harbison calls "the world's most famous sign", Betty Willis made a success in the man's world of commercial art - albeit at one third of a man's salary. Here, Harbison tells her story in a richly researched biography that uses the creation of a single iconic design to shed its own neon-bright light on mid-twentieth-century American culture.'
Mary Lisa Gavenas, author of Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay
'In her biography of Betty Willis, Isobel Harbison provides not just an important account of this pioneer of the sign industry and designer of the iconic "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign, but also a persuasive story of the promotion of the desert city in the 1950s.'
Larry Gragg, author of Bright Light City: Las Vegas in Popular Culture
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This book tells the true story of a woman neon sign designer active in Las Vegas from the 1950s. It traces a unique time and place and offers a rumination on night, light, women and power. Published by Manchester Press in February 2027.
*Shortlisted for the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award 2024
Link here
Performing Image
‘Art historian Isobel Harbison's timely book Performing Image is an impressive feat and required reading for anyone interested in the intersection of performance art and moving images. Beginning in the 1960s and ending in recent years…. [it is] necessary to contemporary art discourse.’
-Performa Journal, US
‘Harbison's Performing Image is a timely contribution to the field of performance studies...the notion of performing image is a provocative concept that strikes a chord of resonance with myriad issues in contemporary digital culture. It may be mobilized, for example, toward inquiries into digital spatio-temporalities, notions of new media as archive, questions of contemporary performer agency, surveillance, or neoliberal infiltrations of the performing body. In this way, Performing Image will prove to be a valuable addition to the performance studies bookshelf."
-The Drama Review, US
‘Performing Image, Isobel Harbison’s valuable first book, reads as an update of Benjamin’s influential lecture for the age of smartphones, social media, and ubiquitous connectivity. Like Benjamin, Harbison takes measure of contemporary performance practices by the media ecologies in which they are embedded. In so doing, she delivers a nuanced account of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century art’s “contemporary forms.” … the range, ambition, and urgency of Harbison’s overall project are impressive and laudable.’ ASAP Journal, US
‘In examining the mutually dependent relationship between art and image, Harbison's timely intervention, Performing Image, promises an examination of how artists have combined performance and moving-image technology for decades, 'anticipating our changing relations to images in the internet era'.
--Art Monthly, UK
‘[Performing Image] is an impressive contribution to understanding the art of our time.’
-Irish Arts Review, Ireland
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Published in 2019 by the MIT Press, the book explored the evolution of performance and moving image in modern and contemporary art in relation to the development of social media, and the deployment of prosumers.
Link here.
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