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In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Past Exhibition

July 10 – September 29, 2023
East Building, Ground Level - Library

Since we first put pen to paper—or stylus to clay tablet—text and image have coexisted. But at the end of the 19th century, their relationship became the focus of books published for collectors and booklovers. Come explore poetry, works of art, and fine printing in a range of artists’ and fine press books. These works from the National Gallery of Art Library demonstrate how artists, writers, typographers, printers, papermakers, and bookbinders meld the visual and the verbal to create books that engage all of the reader’s senses. In this type of bookwork, poetry is ideal: its forms spur typographers and binders to push the limits of design, and its language inspires the same kind of reflection in a reader as visual art prompts in a viewer. Poems may be illustrated by an artist or written in response to a work of art. With modern poetry’s brief and evocative language, visual elements find space to thrive, yielding a symbiotic relationship between text and image that is more difficult with blocks of prose.

Explore Selected Works

In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Tia Blassingame (artist and poet), Black: A Handbook (New Haven, CT: Primrose Press, 2022). Copy 26 of 40. National Gallery of Art Library, David K. E. Bruce Fund
In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Margaret Kaufman (poet), Claire Van Vliet (book artist), and Audrey Holden (book artist), Deep in the Territory (Newark, VT: Janus Press, 1999). Unnumbered copy from an edition of 120. National Gallery of Art Library, Gift of Patricia G. England
In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Charles Henri Ford (poet) and Isamu Noguchi (artist), Secret Haiku (New York: Red Ozier Press, 1982). Copy 148 of 155. National Gallery of Art Library, Gift of Patricia G. England
In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Kenneth Rexroth (poet) and Daniel Goldstein (artist), Between Two Wars: Selected Poems Written Prior to the Second World War (Athens, OH: Labyrinth Editions; San Francisco: Iris Press, 1982). Copy 15 of 130. National Gallery of Art Library, Gift of Patricia G. England
In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Sally Mann (poet and photographer) and Stan Klimek (platinum printer), Sally Mann: Photographs and Poetry (South Dennis, MA: Published by Steven Albahari, 2005). Copy 5 of 110. National Gallery of Art Library, Gift of The Thompson Family Foundation
In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Ilya Kaminsky (poet) and Yelena Yemchuk (photographer), Odesa (London: GOST Books, 2022). National Gallery of Art Library, David K. E. Bruce Fund
In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Clifford Burke (poet) and Ruth Fine (artist), Skull Drawings & Bone Songs: Poems in Response to the Drawings (Galisteo, NM: Desert Rose Press, 1995). National Gallery of Art Library, Gift of Ruth Fine
In the Library: Poetry and the Book Arts

Arthur MacAlpine (poet) and Barry Moser (artist), Man in a Metal Cage: Thirty-Three Poems (Easthampton, MA: Pennyroyal Press, 1977). Copy 82 of 200. National Gallery of Art Library, Gift of Patricia G. England

Organization
Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Passes
Admission is always free and passes are not required

Banner detail: Tia Blassingame (artist and poet), Black: A Handbook (New Haven, CT: Primrose Press, 2022). Copy 26 of 40. National Gallery of Art Library, David K. E. Bruce Fund