“Exhibiting Artists’ Books: Three Perspectives from a Curatorial Seminar,” co-authored with Kristi
Wermager and Gabriel Perri Silberblatt, in The Past as Portal: Teaching Undergraduates Using Special
Collections and Archives, Summer 2011 Editors: Eleanor Mitchell, Peggy Seiden, Suzy Taraba
Publisher: Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
forthcoming
In this article, three authors describe their roles and experiences in a curatorial seminar offered
winter term 2010 at Carleton College. Laurel Bradley, Senior Lecturer in Art and Art History,
Director of Exhibitions, and Curator of the Carleton College Art Collection, provides an overview of
the seminar and describes her strategies for engaging students with artists’ books and the curatorial
process. Kristi Wermager, Curator of Special Collections in the Gould Library, describes the
challenges attendant upon providing student access to the artists' books. Gabriel Perri Silberblatt, a
seminar student, writes about his experience in the course and highlights special challenges and
learning opportunities. The course description sets the stage for three points of view put forth in this
article.
Curatorial Seminar: Artists’ Books course description. Artists’ books, representing a dynamic, nontraditional format for contemporary artists, comprise a collection within Carleton College’s Gould
Library Special Collections. This curatorial seminar challenges a small group of students to immerse
themselves in the collection, develop a set of organizing ideas and themes, and orchestrate an exhibition
to be staged in the Art Gallery spring term 2010. In addition to working with primary materials,
students will recommend a new acquisition to the collection and collaborate with the Special Collections
Librarian on refining goals and developing curricular uses for artists’ books.
Laurel Bradley, Director of Exhibitions and Curator of the College Art Collection
As Director of Exhibitions and Curator of the College Art Collection, I teach a curatorial seminar every
other year at Carleton College as a way to give students a taste of the curatorial process, and to
directly “use” the art collection for teaching and learning. In 2010, I reached beyond the art collection
under my care to another important campus resource – Artists’ Books in the Gould Library. Kristi
Wermager, Curator of Special Collections, embraced the course and resulting exhibition as an
excellent means to realize her goal of incorporating the collection into the curriculum; we sought to
groom students as advisors and ultimately to “exploit” them as advocates for the collection and its
use.
Curatorial seminars present tremendous challenges to students, most of whom are art history
majors. In order to curate an exhibition within our short ten-week terms, students must quickly
acquire at least a superficial mastery of a specific field before conceptual and practical work can
begin; familiarize themselves with college holdings within that field; engage with curating, an
entirely new method of knowledge production and analysis; perfect the art of writing museum labels
for public consumption; and navigate the complexities of a group project even while making highquality individual contributions.
The course outcome was not a paper exercise, but a real exhibition mounted in the art gallery spring
term. I therefore restricted enrollment to six so that participants had time to cohere as a working
group, and could meet with me individually as many times as necessary toward the end of the term.
Course work progressed through a series of practical exercises to develop curatorial skills.
Simultaneously the students refined their definition of “artists’ books,” and used the exercises to
collectively brainstorm toward possible exhibition themes. After I cautioned that catch-all “Cool
Stuff” themes such as “Treasures,” or “Highlights” was insufficiently intellectual or historically based,
the students proposed umbrella concepts including: Artists Books and the Upper Midwest; Book Arts
and the Liberal Arts, Artists’ Books as Social Critique; Revolutionary Tomes; The Codex and Beyond;
Reading for Pleasure. Woven through many proposals was an interest in the radically experimental
nature of form, and artists’ books as vehicles for revolution and reform. The final title, then, became
Artists Books: Radical Messages, Revolutionary Means. Within the two major sections, subthemes
included Radical Messages: Stories of Struggle, Engaging the Environment, and Identity; and
Revolutionary Means: Predecessors, Livres d’Artistes, The Democratic Multiple, Institutional Critique,
Out of bounds, and Free Verse.
Mid-term brought a sense of urgency to class proceedings. Even though the group had logged rich
experiences by visiting other artists’ book collections, continuously explored Carleton’s holding
through bi-weekly sessions in the Special Collections classroom, engaged with a visiting librarian
about using artists’ books across the curriculum, and experimented with exhibition label formats, a
long list of tasks remained. Texts, when written, were barely out of first draft phase. And final object
choices proved elusive. Finally, Kristi and I cut off access to books not on the exhibition checklist in
order to force the fledgling curators to focus and begin to refine thinking through writing. The final
checklist comprised 54 books, and a few framed photographs, unbound sheets, and other artifacts to
complement the book objects.
And then, during week six, one of the most exciting “real life” assignments came due. “Pitching an
Acquisition to the Gould Library Special Collections” charged students with browsing the on-line
marketplace for artists’ books, then selecting a single object (or group of related objects) and pitching
this work as a potential acquisition to a panel of distinguished individuals. Each student had five
minutes and was limited to a budget of $1000. In addition to introducing the object and artist, class
participants had to contextualize the acquisition within the existing collection, and define how it
would work in the upcoming exhibition. Students rose to the challenge, giving impressive
performances grounded in sound selections. The mock trustee committee (comprised of a Dean, a
Librarian, a faculty bibliophile, and a studio art faculty member) was able to support two
acquisitions, instead of only one, as the two winning proposals came in under $500 each.
The course text, in addition to a survey history of artists’ books, was Beverly Serrell’s Exhibition
Labels: An Interpretive Approach. Serrell’s “Big Idea” is a powerful tool to force a succinct project
statement, which must then resonate within every other supporting text, including the introductory
statement, the thematic labels, and the individual object labels. “A Big Idea is a sentence – a
statement – of what the exhibition is about. It is a statement in one sentence, with a subject, an
action, and a consequence.” Research and writing responsibilities were divided between students.
Speaking for the group, those charged with orchestrating the general didactic labels, including the
introductory statement and the two major section labels, had to submit their prose repeatedly to
their classmates. Each student took responsibility for several groups of books, and had to produce
labels of approximately 100 words for each object. These were edited up to 3 or 4 times, in
individual meetings with the instructor, until text quality rose to a level I judged “proper for public
consumption.”
Exhibitions are more than a selection of riveting objects complemented by interpretive labels. In the
last weeks of winter term, students addressed public programs, publicity, the website and ways to
bring books alive in a “do not touch” exhibition setting. However, the actual design of the space and
rhythmic placement of objects proved beyond the scope of the course. The gallery staff took on the
complicated tasks surrounding installation during spring break after grades had been submitted and
students had left campus.
Reflecting back on the seminar, the rewards included a deepened knowledge of the collection for all
parties, the pleasure of collaborating intensely with another campus curator, and delight in watching
young curators blossom. Artists Books: Radical Messages, Revolutionary Means was more difficult to
realize than previous collection-based exhibitions because of access issues. When planning a print or
photography exhibition, one can rely on facsimile images to stand in for the real objects. But this
project required that the books, in all their quirky 3-dimensions, be consulted directly under terms of
restricted access. Even if the library database had included images for each object record, the
complexity of these books would not collapse into a single image. Finally, the goal of using students
to re-write a set of collection goals awaits realization. The Special Collections curator is currently
engaged in drafting a statement inflected with the students’ passions and targeted interests
discovered over ten weeks in winter 2009.
Kristi Wermager, Curator of Special Collections
At the Gould Library, Special Collections participates actively in the learning and teaching mission of
Carleton College. Each academic year between 35 and 50 classes visit, integrating primary resources
and visual materials into coursework. Most classes come for one or two structured sessions, but
occasionally have longer term projects, including small exhibits mounted in the Library.
The Curatorial Seminar: Artists’ Books offered an opportunity to expand existing models for
curricular involvement. Using the collection as a “laboratory” would further develop this curricular
resource and the exhibition would focus attention on Special Collections. I welcomed the
opportunity to collaborate with another campus curator. And I saw great value in working with
highly motivated students to develop strategies for serving their interests within the Special
Collections program.
As preparations for the seminar progressed, several challenges demanded attention. The discovery
tool for finding artists’ books within the library collections was clearly inadequate. Up to that point,
patrons had relied on OCLC generated catalog records from our on-line catalog and on pre-existing
knowledge of the Artists’ Book Collection. Patrons seeking artists’ books on certain topics or using
particular print processes were doomed to frustration, until they turned to the curator. I emerged as
the essential guide to the collection. Recognizing this fact, I decided to improve my own knowledge
by examining and reading all of the books in the Collection. It was a valuable process, reacquainting
me with forgotten books and introducing me to others
It was time, however, to move beyond the human search engine and enable seminar students to
discover books on their own! Grounded in knowledge of each object, I enriched an Access database
with my own supplementary search terms. However, although we introduced this tool to the
students early in the seminar, they rarely used it, preferring to discover books through browsing or
personal recommendation. We had not yet created an effective discovery tool.
Providing student access to the collection also challenged usual Special Collections practices.
Browsing was necessary to fulfill the course requirements. Yet the stack area housing Special
Collections could not accommodate this activity. Fortunately, there is ample space in the classroom
adjacent to Special Collections. To provide full access, we devised the solution of re-shelving the
collection on four carts that were easily moved back and forth between the classroom and the
secured stack area. A temporary new classification system simplified re-shelving items onto the
carts after each class visit. Our artists’ books are classified and shelved using Library of Congress call
numbers. The numbers are complicated and difficult to differentiate, causing errors in shelving. Our
solution was to inventory the collection ahead of time and assign each book a simple numerical
shelving designation from 1-495. The inventory process doubled as a security measure, ensuring
that all of the books in the database were in the collection at the start of the term.
Finally, security and control issues stretched our usual practices and boundaries. Classes using
Special Collections materials are always supervised by library staff. During the seminar, Special
Collections staff attended only some of the class sessions, ceding some control. Control was also an
issue in the exhibit, mounted in the Art Gallery across campus from the Gould Library. While book
exhibits in the library are always housed in locked cases, this exhibition displayed objects both in
cases and on open surfaces. “Do not touch” signs accompanied exposed books and gallery attendants
monitored the exhibit during open hours.
Looking back on the experience it is clear that Special Collections realized all four major goals:
increased use; students engaging actively with the collection; collaboration with another campus
curator, and a raised profile on campus for the Artists’ Book Collection and Special Collections in
general. Further benefits followed from the growing realization that the artists’ books, because they
are art objects, require a level of attention different from more traditional Special Collections
materials. Whereas standard library discovery tools rely on text to describe books and facilitate
access, artists’ books, as visual objects, are best accessed through a combination of relevant search
terms and images. Having witnessed the limited success of our non-visual Access database, Special
Collections is now in the process of creating an improved discovery tool, using Content-DM software.
In addition to exporting existing bibliographic information and search terms from on-line catalog
records and the Access database, we are adding two images from each artists’ book. From now on, all
new artists’ books will be carefully analyzed, read, photographed and entered into a visually
enhanced discovery tool. We are also exploring ways to link this tool with our on-line catalog.
I believe that collaboration, at the heart of the students’ seminar work, was also the most valuable
feature of my experience. As a curator, I was excited to work with the professional Art Gallery staff
and to see many of our artists’ books exhibited beautifully in a gallery setting. My thinking about
artists’ books in general and artists’ books at Carleton was expanded by interactions with Laurel and
the seminar students. Their reactions to physical objects and thematic content confirmed some
assumptions and challenged others. Students were, as expected, drawn to books with strong social
and political messages. What the seminar showed me, however, was that students also valued books
of a whimsical, poetic, or esoteric nature. Throughout the seminar, Laurel and the students made
suggestions and posed questions that broadened my thinking about the purpose and future direction
of the collection. Students pointed out a lack of sculptural books, for example. Although we had
avoided such complicated objects because of storage issues, we are now filling that gap with new
acquisitions.
Gabriel Perri Silberblatt, Carleton College student, class of 2011
As a junior enrolled in the curatorial seminar, I gauged the success of the class by how unlike it was
from the rest of my undergraduate experience. The seminar stood out in two fundamental ways: it
provided opportunities to work directly with art objects in the classroom as well as new productive
challenges to my academic writing.
A unique physicality grounded in actual objects was perhaps the most edifying aspect of the course
for me and for my peers. We students of art history had come to expect departmental seminars to be
heavily laden with abstract ideas, theory and historical context. The curatorial seminar quickly
developed into a refreshing counterweight to these classes.
From two summers working in museums, I am familiar with the advantages of what museum
educators call “object-oriented learning.” The complex visual character of all kinds of art is engaged
through long, careful, and first-hand contemplation. Every artwork, be it concrete or conceptual, has
form; object-oriented learning addresses formal analysis to a degree that is simply not possible in a
slide-based lecture. For example, the first time I sat down with a Caren Heft’s The Core of James
Farmer, a book from our collection, I spent nearly an hour reading and re-reading its carefully
printed pages. I touched its delicate blood-red deckled edge, and somberly admired the surgical-like
stitching of its binding. With careful looking, the book slowly reveals the painful history of civil rights
activist James L. Farmer and his Freedom Riders of the 1960s. Heft’s work beautifully captures the
tragic tensions implicit in the march toward racial equality in America. The book’s powerful and
subtle messages cannot be grasped from slide images, or from my cursory description here; they
come only from careful observation and firsthand experience. These ways of looking were not just
encouraged, but absolutely required by our curatorial seminar.
Directly engaging with objects for close formal analysis teaches us as much about what we see, as
how we see. The course, therefore, laid bare how I make very subjective decisions about quality and
effectiveness in a work of art. Charged with the daunting task of curating 50 artists’ books from a
collection of over 450, class members were forced to deal with the material—visually, experientially,
and intellectually. Having to justify or deny an object’s relevance to a thematic exhibition to a group
of peers will remain one of the most difficult and meaningful experiences of my undergraduate
career.
The curatorial seminar also placed unique demands on my writing. As undergraduates, we learn a
very specific academic prose style. Writing is defined as a very solitary endeavor: we write alone,
and pitch our writing to a single highly informed reader, the professor. Ill-conceived ideas or
obscure textual constructions frequently go unchallenged when we ‘write for the professor’; the
assumption is that her knowledge of the topic and shared experience in the classroom will fill any
gaps in our arguments. The curatorial class, by contrast, required a departure from this “usual” kind
of academic writing. Writing for an exhibition, we learned, means writing for a public—for a reader
who may or may not be informed, and whose interest and willingness to engage varies enormously.
Writing for the artists’ book exhibition, each student had to cater to this heterogeneous group of
viewer/readers, while at the same time constructing a coherent narrative for the show.
Writing for the “public” posed several productive challenges as we began drafting texts. For example,
we could not simply assume visitor fluency with specific art historical ideas such as ‘the democratic
multiple,’ or ‘institutional critique’. We were also very wary of becoming overly didactic or providing
too much information. The writing process was one of concision through reduction. After drafting a
wall label, each of us had to ask, “Can I do this in 500 words? 250? Two sentences?” The prose might
sound more elegant in 700 words, but when that text is placed on the wall with art nearby, a reader
can be lost with even 50 unnecessary words.
The group came together frequently to read aloud and collectively scrutinize texts. This workshopping activity, although at times frustrating, was ultimately a truly rewarding experience. Six sets
of eyes pulling apart every sentence exerted hundreds of pounds of pressure on every word. Writing
and editing together, in fact, amounted to a “close formal analysis” of one’s own writing. At the end of
the day, this sometimes stressful and aggravating activity became an unexpected source of growth
for me as a writer and editor. This seminar, a collaborative course predicated on a group of peers
looking, learning and writing together, provided a unique opportunity for experimental and
experiential learning in a familiar setting.