Libraries exhibition explores the movement of books
24 objects from Penn’s collection include a range of texts in different forms.
The Penn Libraries’ Dot Porter (center) curated the “Movement of Books” exhibition at the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center.
A new exhibit explores the myriad ways books move--as physical objects in different formats, and across space and time—featuring 24 items from the Penn Libraries collections, a video wall displaying 26 additional items, and interactive models.
A related exhibition on the first floor, on view through Dec. 9, is “Material World” which questions the traditional understanding of what constitutes a book. Artists and bookbinders from the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers created their works using nontraditional mediums like metal, yarn, seeds, plastic, and fabric.
Dot Porter, curator of digital humanities for the Libraries’ Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, created and curated “The Movement of Books” exhibition. She was inspired, she says, by her daily work interacting with digitized books, images of pages organized to create an online version that “resembles a book but isn’t a book.” Porter also presents ancient texts over Zoom in a weekly Libraries video series, “Coffee With A Codex.”
“I wanted to make a gallery show where we could look at real books and think about the different ways they move and also show them moving in different ways, which isn't something you normally get to see in a gallery show,” Porter says.
The exhibition presents the texts in several sections:
How do books move: examples of several different sizes and formats, including rolls and scrolls; codices (ancient books made of parchment, vellum, or papyrus and are bound together) and modern books (made of paper and bound with a cover, spine, and pages.)
What parts of a book move: books that move in special ways, such as those with pop-ups, use of string, and volvelles or wheel charts that demonstrate creativity and innovation in book design.
Where do books move: a look at how books have traveled to different places, focusing on the collection of Thomas Philips, a 19th century English bibliophile whose vast collection of manuscripts is dispersed across the globe. Featured is a 1490 manuscript that came to Penn’s collection in 2008 from Cologne, Germany.
Moving in fragments: books that have endured significant transformations, including getting taken apart and reused. The fragments tell stories of the texts and the evolving practices in bookmaking and preservation.
Modern art books: taking inspiration from older books, these are books made by people today in new and creative formats.
Model books: created by Penn’s Common Press, these are modern examples that visitors can touch and manipulate.
Video: a variety of books in Penn’s collection that are not in the exhibition featured in films as Porter opens, closes, and turns pages.
Selecting what to include in the exhibition was an exercise in editing, Porter says. She brought dozens of examples out onto long tables for consideration, making choices along with her Libraries colleagues.
“Because movement is the theme and it’s all about format, you could probably replace every book here with some other book and it would be a different exhibit,” Porter says, “but it would also be very much the same.”
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