New York Art Resources Consortium

I have the privilege and challenge of working with artists and other collaborators to produce artist's books for The Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art.  These limited-edition publications are intended to explore the art of the book as they benefit and shed light on MoMA’s research collections. Upon seeing the most recent publication in the MoMA Library, Lily Pregill of the New York Art Resources Consortium asked me to write about The Library Council’s most recent book, The Island of Rota by the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, the designer Ted Muehling, and the photographer Abelardo Morell, published in November, 2010.  While I was very happy that this book had moved through the best of audiences (art librarians), I had to think twice when she asked me to write something that had not already appeared in our prospectus. The online prospectus is something like an expanded announcement, with a summary of the contributions and intentions of the artist as well as a detailed description of the physical qualities of the book.

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Over the past three years, 30 talented interns from the Pratt Institute, School of Information & Library Science, have passed through our doors here at the Brooklyn Museum Libraries, Archives and Digital Lab, thanks to an IMLS-funded grant (Institute of Museum and Library Services). These M-LEAD (Museum Library Education and Digitization) interns have been instrumental in a variety of important contributions, from processing and describing archival materials, to digitizing images for online accessibility, to clearing copyright and cataloging library resources, just to name a few!    

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Ok, animation isn't the primary function of the Library's new face-up book scanner/copier. But it gives an idea of how it works and image quality. If you think about it, turning books upside-down to copy pages is counterintuitive. And really bad for preserving books. The "Bookeye" is designed to make good-quality images while minimizing stress on bound materials. It's got a bit of a learning curve but even tech-shy researchers are using it.

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New York is already getting a much-needed taste of spring through The Roses—an installation on Park Avenue between 57th and 67th streets—by contemporary artist Will Ryman. The larger-than-life sculptures of roses and rose petals in different shades of pink makes this writer daydream of warm days to come. The project is sponsored by the Department of Parks & Recreation and the Fund for the Park Avenue Sculpture Committee in conjunction with Paul Kasmin Gallery and is on display through the end of May.

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While I usually have artist books on-the-brain to some degree, they’ve been on my mind more than usual lately, as I prepare a presentation to Brooklyn Museum interns and staff in early April highlighting recent acquisitions to Brooklyn’s artists' books collection. I’d like to take the opportunity to share a few of these with our readers here at the NYARC.org blog.

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Having a job as Senior Library Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art Library has been a big influence on my artistic practice. I use the library for research and inspiration, and as a site of investigation. In early 2010, I began the performance "Smelling the Books", which consists of me smelling every book in the MoMA Library collection. This performance was recently highlighted in New York Magazine as one of the many reasons to love New York.

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"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” Mark Twain (c.1910)
 

Dogs have held a special place in the lives of humankind for centuries. How long has Fido been man’s best friend? Surely before Mark Twain’s time (quoted above)! The art historical record is no exception and rich with canine imagery, as evidenced in the 2008 publication The Dog: 5,000 Years of the Dog in Art by Tamsin Pickeral available to all dog lovers at the Frick Art Reference Library. According to the detailed timeline located in the back of the book, the earliest evidence of the domestic dog was found in Germany and dates from 14,000 years ago. Since then, they have been depicted in the fine and decorative arts in a variety of ways. The author provides readers with splendidly illustrated, thematic chapters such as “The Romantic Dog” and “The Mythical Dog” to begin or further their knowledge of this animal in art.

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Working in a library, it is amazing how consistently one is asked, “Which is your favorite book?” I generally stutter and give a muddled reply about how I like the idea of an accumulation of books, or something along those lines. If really pressed, I have recently started mentioning that I like books about books. In my case, given the nature of MoMA library’s collection, our books about books generally focus on the small and merry niche of modern and contemporary art publications and publications by artists.

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