Betty Bright, an independent scholar and curator who helped found the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, will speak about artists’ books on Wednesday, May 25 at 4 p.m. in the Carleton College Gould Library Athenaeum. Her presentation will look at how art and social movements launched book art in the United States in the 1960s, and will then trace recent changes as this interdisciplinary art form has gained recognition and attracted new generations of practitioners. The Gould Library’s Special Collections now holds over 450 artists’ books, so there will be ample examples to explore with Ms. Bright. This event is free and open to the public.
Book art is a quintessential twenty-first century art form in which artists transform the "book" into an artwork that may be held in one's lap or expand into room size. They differ from traditional books in that they themselves are considered works of art—not just vehicles for displaying art. Book artists employ conceptual strategies and a range of media, materials, structures and scale to make books that involve the reader in an immersive “reading” experience that orchestrates image and text, touch and time.
The Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) was founded to support and advance book arts as a vital contemporary art form. This ranges from more traditional practices like papermaking and letterpress printing to the wholly new and experimental. It is the largest and most comprehensive center of its kind in the nation, serving artists, students, teachers, designers, writers, families, youth, and book lovers through a variety of participatory programs.
Betty Bright, Ph.D., helped found the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in 1985. She is the author of No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America 1960-1980 (Granary Books, 2005), the first book to trace the emergence of the artist's book in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. In 2010, she authored an extensive essay for Robin Price’s retrospective catalogue: Counting on Chance: 25 Years of Artists¹ Books by Robin Price, Publisher (Wesleyan University, 2010). Her research on letterpress printing as it reflects the evolving identity of craft has recently appeared in Extra/ordinary: Craft Culture and Contemporary Art, ed. Maria Elena Buszek, Ph.D. (Duke University Press, 2011).
The Athenaeum is located in the Laurence McKinley Gould Library on the Carleton College campus and is accessible via Highway 19 in Northfield. For more information about this event, please contact pgermann@carleton.edu.
