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APHA & Chesapeake chapter events

April 2008

APHA Lieberman Memorial Lecture / Sue Allen
"A Doubly Fascinating Book: Hawthorne's Wonder Book Illustrated by Walter Crane"
The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY

Thursday April 17, 2008, 6 pm

Distinguished historian of 19th-century American book covers, Sue Allen, will deliver the 2007 Lieberman Lecture at the Grolier Club of New York. Sue Allen is the foremost historian of 19th-century American book covers. Since the 1970s she has extensively studied these bindings and taught classes at Rare Book School. Her research, lectures, and writings have raised awareness and appreciation of American book designers' art among librarians, conservators and collectors, to ensure that these fragile items are saved for posterity. in the 1890s, the English illustrator Walter Crane visited America and was invited by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin to illustrate any book of his choice on their remarkable backlist. He chose Hawthorne's Wonder Book for Boys and Girls, a sunny retelling of ancient Greek myths. There is much to wonder about the book;s publication history. Open to the public.

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October 2008

APHA Thirty-Third National Conference
"Saving the History of Printing"
The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY

Thursday, October 10 - 12, 2008

THE AMERICAN PRINTING HISTORY ASSOCIATION is delighted to announce that its Thirty-third conference will be held in New York City, at the Grolier Club and Columbia University, is scheduled for October 10-12, 2008. (Columbus Day weekend.)

This year’s conference, APHA's 33rd, will be held in New York City, where it will be hosted by Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and The Grolier Club on October 10-12, 2008. We have scheduled the conference for the weekend after Oak Knoll Fest, Columbus Day weekend. Our working title is “Saving the History of Printing.” We will begin with a keynote address on Friday evening October 10th at the Grolier Club, and move on Saturday October 11th to Columbia University for a full day conference and then to Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library for a closing reception. Sunday will be an optional day of tours.

The conference theme will be about the preservation of the “stuff” of printing history, broadly conceived—such as artifacts like printed materials or the equipment (and resources) used to make those products, not to mention the archives produced in daily work. We do not want to omit the skills used in printing and its allied crafts. As we know all-too-well, many artifacts are in danger of being lost while the skills of many craftspeople will be forgotten. I remind you that APHA “encourages the preservation of printing artifacts and source materials for printing history” and we define printing history broadly: “…printing history and its related arts and skills, including calligraphy, typefounding, typography, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and publishing. APHA is especially, but by no means exclusively, interested in American printing history.”

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Ongoing or upcoming events

Highlights (ongoing exhibition)
The Morgan Library & Museum / New York City | website
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, New York 10016, (212) 685-0008

Highlights from the Morgan's Collections presents masterworks from four of the Morgan's six collecting areas—medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books and bindings, literary and historical manuscripts, and music manuscripts and books. This ongoing exhibition demonstrates the nature and scope of one of the world's greatest repositories of artistic, literary, musical, and historical works. Objects will change approximately every three months, to accommodate the exhibition of as wide an array as possible of the Morgan's vast and eclectic holdings. The exhibition includes objects that the Morgan's curators regard as especially outstanding, as well as representative of the collections' strengths. There will always be a sampling on display of the Morgan's oldest, rarest, and most valuable items.

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University of Maryland Libraries | website
The Well-Dressed Book: Cloth Book Binding in the United States, 1830—1920
Marylnd Room Gallery, R. Lee Hornbake Library, University of Maryland, College Park

through June 30, 2008

The exhibit explores the origins of cloth publishers’ bindings, aspects of the design and manufacture of book bindings, bookbinding in 19th century Baltimore, and the challenges of preservation.

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Grolier Club | website
Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists
             from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection
through April 26, 2008
The Grolier Club • 47 East 60th Street • New York, NY 10022

The Grolier Club will soon present an exhibition that examines noted Victorians through portraits. Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, curated by Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Delaware, will provide the opportunity for visitors to come face to face with famous British poets, painters, novelists, playwrights and illustrators.

This exhibition will take audiences back more than one hundred years to explore a phenomenon that will seem astonishingly modern and familiar. Like the world we know now, Britain at the end of the nineteenth century was a nation filled with images. Whether circulating by means of posters, books, newspapers, magazines, cards, and advertisements, or hanging on the walls of art galleries and of private homes, images were everywhere. As is true today, what people most wanted to see then were images of faces and bodies, especially those of celebrities. A visual industry arose in the late Victorian period to satisfy the demand for portraits in every medium, from photographs to drawings and paintings, and to reproduce these on a mass scale. Pictures of monarchs and stage performers, of course, were in great demand; more surprisingly, so were portraits of what we might call cultural celebrities that is, writers and artists. Figures such as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Aubrey Beardsley, J. M. Whistler, W. B. Yeats, “George Eliot,” and the feminist “New Women” writers were as famous for the way they looked and dressed as for anything they created.

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Folger Shakespeare Library | website
201 East Capitol Street, SE • Washington, DC 20003
Monday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm

History in the Making: How Early Modern Britain Imagined Its Past

through May 17th

Early modern Britain sought in numerous ways to reconcile its present with a past visibly at odds with it. Facing the dynastic and religious upheavals caused by the Wars of the Roses and the Protestant Reformation, the British tried to account for their present by rewriting the past.

This exhibit considers the ways in which the early modern British made, and remade, their own history. "Making History" focuses on how key events, such as the controversial execution of Mary Queen of Scots or the murderous Gunpowder Plot, were interpreted in the period, as well as on crucial ideas that helped shaped those interpretations.

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beginning in April 2008

Center for Book Arts / New York City | website
Consciousness Unfolded: Mail Art for the 21st Century

April 11 - June 28, 2008

28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, New York 10001
(212) 481-0295

This dynamic exhibition invites artist to submit work via the postal service creating a network of communication that provides an insightful dialogue that investigates the direction the book/codex/scroll/card is taking form and purpose in the 21st millennium.

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Center for Book Arts / New York City | website
Featured Artist: 2007 Artists in Residence Workshop

April 11 - June 28, 2008

28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, New York 10001
(212) 481-0295

An exhibition featuring new work produced here at the Center during their 2007 residency by emerging artists Manuel Acevedo, Yoko Inoue, Rajkamal Kahlon, Catarina Leitao, and Tattfoo Tan. These New York-based emerging artists are offered space, time and support to explore the production and exhibition of artist’s books and related work in two-to-four month residencies. The purpose of this program is to promote experimentation in making book art. The Center especially encourages artists from all disciplinary backgrounds and from culturally diverse backgrounds.

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beginning in May 2008

Grolier Club | website
English in Print: From Caxton to Shakespeare to Milton
May 14 - July 26, 2008
The Grolier Club • 47 East 60th Street • New York, NY 10022

Curated by Fred Robinson and Valerie Hotchkiss.

Gound floor gallery. Details to come.

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Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the V&A
May 20, 2008–August 17, 2008
Metropolitan Museum of Art / New York City

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has one of the world’s finest collections of European decorative arts. As the V&A undergoes extensive renovations, it provides a rare opportunity for the museum to loan some of its precious works. On display at the Metropolitan will be 35 treasures from the collection that are rarely lent, and most have not been previously seen in New York. Included in the exhibition will be the Carolingian ivory cover of the Lorsch Gospels, an ivory statuette of the crucified Christ by Giovanni Pisano, Donatello’s bronze Putto with Fish, and a pair of gilt-bronze statuettes of prophets by Hubert Gerhard.