Acquired in August 2016 by Australia’s Images Publishing Group, Antique Collectors Club, a 50-year-old firm specializing in publishing and distributing illustrated art books, has been renamed the ACC Publishing Group. Along with the name change, the company has added staff and expanded its list to include more pop culture titles.
The company will now be based New York, London and Australia, with editorial, sales and marketing efforts for the U.S., Canadian and European markets handled out of the New York City and London offices. ACC Publishing will also continue maintaining an office in Mulgrave, Australia.
John Brancati, v-p and general manager, will direct U.S. Operations. He told PW that the company had about $5 million in revenue in 2016. ACC Publishing has nearly 50 employees spread between New York, London and Australia.
The company publishes about 40 titles a year through its own imprints, which includes The Antique Collectors Club, ACC Editions and Garden Arts Press. Through its ACC Distribution unit, the company distributes more than 700 books a year from more than 60 publisher clients.
Paul Lathan of Images Publishing Group has been named general manager of ACC Publishing. Diana Steel, longtime managing director of the Antique Collectors Club, has retired after running the company for 50 years.
ACC Publishing has also added staff, including Mary Albi, former director of sales at Phaidon, who has been named director of sales and marketing. Andrea Monfried, formerly with Rizzoli and Monacelli Press, has been named senior commissioning editor and will direct her own imprint, Andrea Monfried Editions.
Brancati said the company name change was driven by the acquisition, as well as a shift in the company's list and distribution clients. The firm has added a number of pop culture and contemporary art titles to its longtime specialty in decorative arts and art history. This, Brancati explained, clashed with the company’s longtime “antique” brand.
Highlighting notable books coming from ACC distribution clients in spring 2017, Brancati listed Margiela: The Hermes Years (Lannoo), a retrospective of the work of the eccentric, cultish designer, and Cy Trombly by Jonas Storves (Sieveking), the catalogue of a major retrospective exhibition of the late American painter mounted at the Pompidou Center in Paris. The house is also releasing Zaha Hadid Architects Redefining Architecture and Design (Image Publishing Group), the first book on the work of the acclaimed female Iraqi architect since she died last year.
