Founded on Artists’ Books: Franklin Furnace 50th Anniversary Tribute
Franklin Furnace has been a pioneer among organizations that support and promote avant-garde artists working in new and nontraditional mediums. While Franklin Furnace’s current programming focuses on conceptual and performance art, the organization was originally conceived, in 1976, to serve artists who were creating artists’ books. These books were, at the time, a new and somewhat controversial line of creative inquiry.
Because there were no other arts organizations that championed this genre of work, Franklin Furnace began collecting artists’ books to draw attention to the medium, and eventually built one of the largest collections in the world. The artists’ books on display were created during the 1970s, as this new art form took shape a half century ago.
— Mark Waskow, curator
President and Founder, Northern New England Museum of Contemporary Art
ARTISTS’ BOOKS: WHAT ARE THEY?
Artists’ books developed during the 1960s as a medium similar to painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage. Historically, artists have written, illustrated, distributed, self-published, and marketed books as an extension of their practices. But during a variety of postmodern movements, artists began to use the print medium as a way to distribute their ideas, bypass the gallery system, and gain more control over their output. Eventually, the artist’s book became its own free-standing genre—not an “art book,” which is about art, but a book that is art.
Questions inevitably arise: Are artists’ books a craft or truly an art form? Do they need to take the codex form, with bound pages? Where do artists’ music and video recordings fall in this category? Are these works implicitly political? Do they inspire a new type of reading? Should one-of-a-kind books, or those created in expensive limited editions, be considered in the same category as inexpensive pamphlets? This exhibition does not attempt to answer all questions, but the variety of works on display deepens our consideration.
In the 1970s and 1980s, artists’ books grew more widespread. Exhibitions of this type of material became more prevalent; collections expanded at major libraries, museums, and universities; art-focused publications, some academic, paid attention. Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc., having been an early adopter of this form of creative expression, amassed one of the largest collections in the world. Note some of the original price tags of $1.50 or $3. Today, many of these works are valued at thousands of dollars.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Mark Waskow has been a collector almost from birth. His father was an irrepressible collector of a wide variety of objects, and Waskow himself started with rocks and minerals at age 3, moved on to seashells at 4, and insects at 5. He now pursues and maintains over 45 different collections.
In 1998, Waskow attended the South End Art Hop in Burlington, Vermont, and his relationship to art changed from a passive admirer to an enthusiastic supporter. He had previously shared materials from his collections with artists to use in their work, and even curated his own exhibitions from his collections, but soon he began collecting contemporary art in earnest. Today there are more than 33,000 objects in Waskow’s collection. In 2018, he founded the Northern New England Museum of Contemporary Art (NNEMoCA) to aid in the collection’s long-term sustainability.
Along the way, Waskow voraciously pursued his own art education, reading and acquiring books on art history, art criticism, art influences, crafts, design, architecture, fashion, and individual artists. NNEMoCA’s reference library currently holds more than 15,000 items. Waskow also sought out knowledgeable sources in galleries and museums up and down the East coast, and he has built a reputation as an independent curator with an unwavering commitment to artists. Waskow has served as president of the South End Arts and Business Association in Burlington and The Main Street Museum in White River Junction, Vermont. He has also served on the boards of the Center for Book Arts in New York City; the International Collage Center in Milton, Pennsylvania; and the T.W. Wood Art Gallery in Montpelier, Vermont.
RELATED EVENTS
July 12, Saturday, 5:30 p.m. — Opening of Five New Exhibits
August 7, Thursday, 5:30 p.m. — Art Talk: Martha Wilson and Mark Waskow
RELATED RESOURCES
