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This week there is a contemporary artists’ book conference being held in collaboration with Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair. The conference is being co-organized by representatives from the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA and the New York Public Library as well as several other institutions who are involved with artists’ books. The conference features a panel session, entitled Artists’ Books from the Brooklyn Perspective, which includes Brooklyn-based artists and publishers Emily Larned of Red Charming, Dan Nadel of PictureBox, and Matvei Yankelevich of Ugly Duckling Presse.

In conjunction with this event, we have just installed several artists’ books from our collection in two display cases in and outside the Library on the second floor, so come visit the Brooklyn Museum and see these interesting books! One strength of our collection is books by Brooklyn-based artists and publishers. I’ve done some blogging on the subject in the past and this time around Lilli Schestag, our great Pratt intern, has compiled lists of Brooklyn-based book artists, galleries and presses for your reference. If you are a Brooklyn based book artist, gallery or press, let us know if you want your name added to any of these lists for future publication. Just send us an e-mail.

We would love to hear your thoughts and comments!

Brooklyn has a rich community of artists and galleries and this is especially true for artists who work in the realm of the book. By that I mean artists who choose the book form to be their canvas to express ideas or visions. Book art – or books made by artists – has a long tradition and today we are seeing a vast array of examples ranging from multiples (open editions), limited editions to unique works.

On view until March 27th, there is an exhibition of artists’ books at the 5 + 5 Gallery in DUMBO offering an intriguing array of unique works in the book form. The exhibition is entitled 8 Artists: 8 Books and includes the work of Todd Bartel, Doug Beube, Donna Maria deCreeft, Raphael Fodde, Marty Greenbaum, Caroline Hill, Bo Joseph and Robin Ross, who is also the curator of the exhibition. Each artist shows two works of art – one in a book form and one wall piece – which are dynamically juxtaposed. The works in the exhibition offer magical images that entice the viewer to look into private worlds touched by literature and travel and other forces.

We would like to start a dialogue about these works and we invite these artists to comment about their works in this exhibition and perhaps to answer the following questions in comments to this blog:

How do the works – books and wall pieces - communicate a message together?

Why was the book form selected as a vehicle as a communication tool?

If Marshall McLuhan were a gypsy and his teacup the art world, the tea leaves would be artists’ books. —Ingrid Sishey (National Arts Guide, vol. 1, no.1, Jan-Feb. 1979, p.2-3)

This quote resonates so well with me as it points to the role artists’ books have both as messengers of information and works of art in themselves. From mass produced, or open editions to limited editions to unique bookworks – artists’ books underscore McLuhan’s ideas about the medium as the message. Artists’ books constitute a highly varied contemporary art form which can be described as artworks which exist within the structure of books. Usually these are books utilizing a sequence of pages to produce a stream of imagery - textual and/or visual. They employ a full range of forms utilizing unusual paper, typographic design and bindings.

Artists’ books are a vibrant part of the Brooklyn Museum Library Special Collections. The Museum Library started to actively collect artists’ books in the 1970’s and now there are approximately 2,000 titles with a collecting emphasis on multiples. In an effort not to duplicate what other art libraries are collecting in the New York area, we have developed a collection policy that focuses on:

• Innovative works created by Brooklyn-based artists
• Innovative works created by artists worldwide
• Works created by artists either exhibited by the Museum or who have works in the Museum’s art object collection
• Works that relate to the objects or cultures represented in the Museum’s object collection

We try to present the artists’ books collection to the public either through display in exhibitions or through on-site visits and artist’s talks. This past Saturday we featured Angela Lorenz who is an American artist living in Bologna, Italy. Ms. Lorenz talked about her very innovative work entitled Pandora’s Book (1992). She creates mixed-media limited-edition artists’ books and uses them as a tool to convey cultural observations and historical research. As whimsical and humorous as some of her books are, each one is based on fact often derived directly from experts in architecture, anthropology, art history, textiles, and economics. This thought-provoking bookwork was recently donated to the Brooklyn Museum Library by Dorothy and Jerome Preston in honor of Dorothy Cochlin McCann (1899-1997), art historian and avid sewer.

On December 1st we are going to feature the work of Booklyn – watch our website for details and visit the Library Online Catalog to see what artists’ books we have in the collection!

Portions of this text are excerpted from an essay of mine published in the Artists’ Book Yearbook 2001-2002 (Impact Press, 2001). For copies of the essay or more information about artists’ books send us an email to library@brooklynmuseum.org.