Art Center College of Design: Exhibition Space

This library exhibition space showcases a regularly rotating display curated mostly by library staff.
It is can be requested for events by faculty and students.








Current exhibit highlights a early Photography Department Chair Charlie Potts

Described as a war hero, this highly regarded educator was a combat photographer during WW2, and shot the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri.
He then went on to (perhaps even more impressively) teach at the Art Center College of Design for 47 years.
This exhibition was collected and curated by a former student of his James Caccavo, who also went on to include combat photography in an impressive photographic career. Included in this collection of papers, awards and photos are most of the cameras Mr Potts used in his practice.

The submission process for the space is fairly loose with no committee or formal guidelines.
They have never rejected a submission. Exhibitions often link with soft events: talks and presentations in the library of an afternoon during library hours.










There really were broad physical and cultural differences between library exhibiting spaces in the colleges of the US and the Library Stairwell Gallery of the National Art School Library in Sydney.

The Library Stairwell Gallery [LSG] at NAS is the only dedicated student exhibiting space on campus and the opportunity to show there is contested heartily through the year.
The Library Stairwell Gallery Committee is made up of heads and representatives from all departments (Drawing, Art History and Theory, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Printmaking and Ceramics) as well as the Library, and the exhibitions feed in to professional development aspects of the curriculum.
Shows are mostly curated by students, and the space is managed by Library staff.

Another driving force behind the energy of the NAS LSG exhibition space, I have to admit, is the scope for opening events.
The LSG floor plan is such that the library proper can be locked at closing and the external doors of the exhibiting space swung wide for the opening party, with it's accompanying hors doevres and mediocre wine. This separation, producing a stand-alone gallery within the backbone of the library is invaluable indeed.

Apart from layout, another fortuitous element in the LSG's success are refreshments. With the American drinking age at 21 most college students can't drink- at least not legally, and certainly not on campus.
Many agree there are few better ways to legitimise an exhibition opening as a bona fide event than via a glass of red.
The opportunity to celebrate, and toast, the culmination of producing and curating work, catalogues, invitations, wrangling the hang and planning the bump out is taken seriously by exhibiting LSG artists.
A teeming throng of friends and family, fellow students, alumni and various art-world reprobates and renegades attend.
Lecturing staff spend time socially with their pupils and talk about practice outside the formal teaching/studio setting. With custom and architecture on our side, a fine time is had by all at the Library Stairwell Gallery openings.
Especially by the art-show-butterfly library staff.

Oscars: Special Collections stacks: On the wall

Photographs exhibited on this wall space must satisfy a strict criteria, and represent at least two collections held by the Oscars library. No one can sneak one up unless it alludes to two. Or more.

First one represents Carey Grant and Alfred Hitchcock's papers, the second John Huston and Katharine Hepburn's.

Also given face were the collections of George Stevens and John Sturges; George Cukor and Margaret Booth, Sam Peckinpah and Steve McQueen.

Oscars: forge and display

Exhibition cases in the Katharine Hepburn room highlight the Library's extraordinary holdings and the exceptional reproductions they produce.

Much of the material viewed onsite- for research and display, are in fact clever forgeries. Originals are archived and many only step out for major exhibitions.

Their in-house forger worked as an assistant to Saul Bass, so has both a wealth of experience and the library's reproduction rig at his disposal.

As seen in these exhibits, the apparent weight and tone of the paper seems authentic, and the edges are carefully imbued with purposeful imperfections.

Library staff take turns putting together the exhibits, highlighting industry identities, different film crafts, concepts like food, music and songs.

Exhibition rotation sits at about 6 months.

UCLA Arts: Judith A Hoffberg Artists' Books collection

Visual Arts Librarian Robert Gore and I spent some time with their current in-house exhibition, a selection of the Judith A Hoffberg Collection of Artists' Books.
Robert is growing the Art Library's Artists' Book collection regularly through acquisitions donated and purchased. Although he has a relatively small budget for these acquisitions, he has a keen eye and his ear to the ground.

Much of UCLA's Artists' Book collection is held and managed by Special Collections. Many of their works are short run, high end objects with a finely crafted, almost sculptural element (by, for example, Julie Chen and Mary Heebner).
The Art Library's Artists' Book collection is significant, but with a different flavour (and a more modest budget). Hoffberg's collection in particular represents the flourishing of the Xerox revolution of the sixties and seventies, the 'democratic multiple' and early experiments with underground and alternative publishing and distribution.
Judith Hoffberg (1934-2009) was an industry icon I was whose background pleased to discover and explore. Librarian, curator, editor, facilitator, early promotor of Artists' Books and Mail Art. Read about her here and here. My hero.
As editor of Umbrella, a journal dedicated to the practice of Artists' Books, she was uniquely positioned to promote and collect the book as art.

She also championed Correspondence/Mail Art. Like the Artists' Book, Mail Art is another DIY movement rising in prominence in the sixties and seventies when practitioners of Art sought to separate themselves somewhat from the commodification of Culture, and to democratise the distribution of art. This practice is also represented in the donation, and the current exhibition.

The Hoffberg collection is an important acquisition for the library. A giant in her field, her tastes were broad, eclectic and non-judgemental. This scope resulted in a truly democratic survey of book art practice. The donations were made in several batches. Robert joined the team in 2005, and worked with Judith to negotiate the final group of materials from her.

The collection itself is vast, and while valuable, represents what all large donations do- a huge workload to catalogue and realise as a resource. There are literally thousands of Artists' Books awaiting cataloguing currently. Robert is working with a member of the cataloguing department who has submitted a proposal for internal funding to work on the backlog in the library as a whole. The Arts Library, as recipient of many valuable donations from individuals and organisations has a large backlog of gift materials awaiting cataloguing. While internal funding is the first step, Robert is also considering a possible external and more specific grant, from an organisation such as the Getty.

In the meantime, projects like the current exhibition are making a dent in the Hoffberg treasure trove. UCLA Information Studies Department Professor Johanna Drucker (herself an expert in the field, and book artist to boot) tasked her class with creating an inventory on the in-process Hoffberg collection. The students submitted papers on various aspects of the process, and this exhibition is a culmination of their work. The inventory provides a valuable first look at some of the uncatalogued collection, and will additionally allow Robert to better pitch it for further attention.
While much of Special Collections Artists Books are higher end, shorter run art objects, and protected accordingly, the Art Library's collection of rare and varied 'democratic multiples' is in fact a highly used resource. Not only valuable from the library science prospective of Johanna Drucker's class, fine art programs with a focus on projects in book form also contribute to it's importance as a teaching collection.

In fact, Robert himself has instructed courses on Artist Books, with undergraduates examining these works and producing new works that add to the Library's collection.

UCLA Visual Arts Librarian Robert Gore looking sharp.

Supported by the UCLA preservation/conservation unit, the works are protected with bespoke archival boxes and sheaths, accommodating of their unique structures.

The catalogued Hoffberg Collection downstairs, in the Cage.

Janine Henri and I take a peek in this box: a work titled Zero Post. "Nothing left for art to say; everything left for art to do" from Stamp Art Gallery.