Like many art librarians and curators, I am aware of how books, especially illustrated works, have been key in the transmission of knowledge. Discovery of published and unpublished works—many on language, decipherment, and translation—has traditionally been dependent on a variety of tools, including handwritten catalogs and cards, typewritten cards, and computer-generated records on the Internet. While the digitization of this information provides much greater access to many, we have sacrificed the tactile interaction and serendipity of card catalogs.
On view are works by artists who have used traditional library cards in their practice to draw attention to the visual and textual information recorded on the cards.
Handwritten library card describing The Sense of the word by F. W. Read (1917).
Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives, Wilbour Library of Egyptology
Trish Mayo. Pictographs see Hieroglyphics. New York, NY: Self-Published, 2011.
Digital print of a catalog card and Lantern slide from the Brooklyn Museum Library collection, cloned handwriting, adjusted color. Image courtesy of Trish Mayo.
“In 2011 The Brooklyn Museum Library invited artists to pick up their library catalog cards and give them ‘a second life.’ My project scanned the catalog cards and combined them with lantern slide images from the Museum Archives. … a variety of cards: handwritten, foreign language, typewritten and computer generated. All of the technologies used by the library from 1904 to 1994 ...”
Email from Trish Mayo, August 14, 2023.
Sasha Chavchavadze. Contra/Dictions, Margaret Fuller Series. Brooklyn, NY: Self-published, 2023.
Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth, library catalog cards with applied text.
Chavchavadze’s work examines forgotten history through mixed media including drawings, paintings, assemblages, and digital work. This work “reactivates the life of the American writer Margaret Fuller (1810 - 1850) … I create mixed media paintings, assemblages, digital prints, and publications … that express the pathos and power of Fuller’s life and work. … Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) was the first American book on women’s rights, and a catalyst of the American Suffrage movement.”
