Special Collections – Page 39 – Smithsonian Libraries and Archives / Unbound

Featuring Artists’ Books in a Museum’s Collection

December 5, 2012

Mungo Thomson — Negative Space. Ringier, Zurich: 2007.

On Friday, September 28th, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Head Librarian Anna Brooke gave a presentation at the NY Art Book Fair’s Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference on how artists’ books can be used in conjunction with a museum’s collection to provide greater insight into an artist’s body of work. Work studies student Lauren Zook, currently enrolled in the George Mason – Smithsonian collaborative masters program for decorative arts, aided in developing the presentation and has written a summary of it for our blog.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library has acquired an unusual type of book—the artist’s book. Some of these books are mass publications and others are unique and vary in size and shape. A new initiative has been made by the Smithsonian Libraries to make these artists’ books more accessible to the public and protect them from damage. Most of the artists’ books at the Hirshhorn Library were produced by artists represented in the museum’s collection. These artists’ books can provide new insight to an artist’s work, show similar themes, and can even be shown in galleries as autonomous works of art.

Honolulu Calling: A Tapa Barkcloth Binding for a 1930 Phone Book from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel

Diane Shaw

November 30, 2012

3 Comments

Tapa Cloth front cover for the Hawaiian Telephone Directory — Front cover of the Tapa cloth binder for the Winter 1930 Telephone Directory for the Territory of Hawaii

The Smithsonian Institution Libraries recently acquired a telephone book. Big deal, you say? Ah, but this is a telephone directory for the territory of Hawaii, issued for the winter of 1930. For that reason alone, it’s fun to browse through, to see the old advertisements and daydream about living in the gorgeous Hawaiian Islands, back in the days when the entire list of businesses and households in the territory which owned telephones could be recorded in one slim volume.

But this isn’t just any old phone book. This particular copy belonged to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, which opened in February 1927 on the spectacular Waikiki beachfront. Known as “the Pink Palace of the Pacific,” the Royal Hawaiian Hotel was one of the earliest luxury resorts established in this tropical paradise. The stylish décor featured at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, inspired partly by the native crafts of the South Sea Islanders, exerted a lasting influence upon tourists from the mainland, who came to associate the good life in Hawaii with vivid patterns reminiscent of exotic plants, birds, marine life, sunshine, and ocean waves.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Smithsonian Libraries!

Tina Morrison

November 21, 2012

2 Comments

The Crested Turkey Cock – who is not a fan of Thanksgiving

During this time of Thanksgiving, the Smithsonian Libraries is especially grateful for the support from friends and patrons that have made our tremendous accomplishments possible.

Nobody ever dies of it: The artists’ books of Ida Applebroog

Anne Evenhaugen

November 5, 2012

2 Comments

Ida Applebroog’s artists’ books have a way of making you feel slightly uncomfortable without really knowing why. At least that is the effect her small books have on me. My first encounter with them had me feeling generally uncertain, thinking not only “What are these things?” but also “Why are these things?” Even after reading several of her books, I still did not understand exactly what her images represented. I had to read about Applebroog’s books to better understand.

Not for the faint of heart: De humani corporis fabrica

Erin Rushing

October 31, 2012

The Fix: Housing Differently Sized Items Together

Katie Wagner

October 12, 2012

Interview with book artist Robin Price

Amanda Meeks

October 2, 2012

1 Comment

Slurring at Bottom, four versions of Jim Lee’s page. Photo provided by Robin Price

Anything that comes into being by way of human creativity and artistic expression often includes imperfections. Sometimes the flaws are so subtle that they go unnoticed by everyone but the perfectionistic artist laboring over their creation. The process of making art, especially artists’ books, requires a great deal of emphasis on attention to detail (if you ask almost any book artist); there are many opportunities for mistakes along the way. Slurring at Bottom: A Printer’s Book of Errors (2001), was conceived by book artist and publisher Robin Price.

Category: Special Collections