LECTURE: The Art of the Book in the 21st Century

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LECTURE: The Art of the Book in the 21st Century

POSTED: Wednesday, March 9, 2011, 4:00 PM

(Delaware Center For the Contemporary Arts)

I love books. Not just reading, but books themselves: the experience of opening a new volume for the first time, the artful arrangement of text and pictures on the pages, the way they can, as one author noted, “furnish a room” — and the fact that when we read them, we’re engaged in an activity that has remained unchanged for centuries.

These days, though, books’ dominance is being threatened by digitization (I’ll save my diatribe against Amazon’s Kindle for another day). That makes the design of the physical book an endangered art form, or at least a changing one. That in mind, the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington is holding a symposium March 25-26 called “The Art of the Book in the 21st Century.” Books have inspired an entire artistic genre exploring the creative possibilities of the book as a physical object. Works use the book — its cover, its pages, its text — as a jumping-off point for three-dimensional pieces. The DCCA, a non-collecting museum, is currently holding an exhibition on artist books alongside the symposium. Works range from pop-up books to books spread open and attached, birdlike, to the wall; other pieces include blank books built from exotic materials, as well as unbound pages meticulously structured. (Visit the DCCA website for more examples.)

Some of America’s premier book artists, representing cities from New York to St. Louis, will speak at the symposium. Keynote speaker Buzz Spector is a book art pioneer; Brian Dettmer — recently featured on NPR — creates artwork by transforming vintage books and explores their shifting meaning in the digital age. Bettina Richards founded Chicago’s Thrill Jockey record label, which has recently published artists’ books that go with CDs. Also speaking is Mark Dimunation, head of the Library of Congress’ Rare Book and Special Collections Division, which includes the biggest collection of rare volumes on the continent.

Fri. and Sat., March 25-26, $15-$100, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, 200 S. Madison St., Wilmington, 302-656-6466, thedcca.org/ghsymposium. Includes services for those who are hearing impaired.

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