Art Museums and Book Clubs Converge
Museums around the country are forming and encouraging book clubs
You’re in a museum and you’re there to look at art, right? Maybe not. Maybe you’re there to discuss the book you’ve just finished reading. Art museums around the country—from Honolulu to Brooklyn—are encouraging an art and literature connection by forming book clubs. Typically, these book clubs fall into one of two formats—either art museums form their own book groups, or they invite existing book groups in the community to read a recommended book, discuss it with the help of a museum-prepared guide, and then view an exhibit or collection tied to the book.
The Honolulu Museum of Art’s book club formed in 2007. Participation is fluid and ranges from seven to more than twenty members, said Dietra Cordea, a museum docent. Each month the museum chooses a book to share—club members just finished The Painter’s Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art by Hugh Howard and Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert by Georgina Howell, and they are about to embark on Elizabeth Kostova’s novel, The Swan Thieves, and B.A. Shapiro’s The Art Forger.
“Our book list is broad, from biographies of artists to modern fiction and classics. All are complemented with tours in our galleries allowing our attendees a full cultural experience. An example is reading James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth, then going in and looking at Arrangement in Black, No. 5 (Portrait of Lady Meux) by Whistler,” said Cordea.
The Art Institute of Chicago takes a two-pronged approach. For the past six years, it has hosted its own book club, said Hilary Branch, the museum’s associate director of membership, but because the book group is capped at thirty members, a mini-committee comprised of various staff also produces a book discussion guide for existing book groups in the city.
“Generally, we’ll select books three to four times a year, always to coincide with one of our special exhibits,” said Branch.
Books read here have included Debra Dean’s The Madonnas of Leningrad, to complement an exhibit of Russian art, and more recently, The Food of a Younger Land, Mark Kurlansky’s exploration into the regional foods of the first part of the twentieth century.
“It was a Works Progress Administration book that includes recipes and stories,” said Branch. “It works well with our ‘Art and Appetite’ exhibit.”
Since 2009, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, has selected books according to either its collection or temporary exhibits and prepared a discussion guide for existing book clubs in the community.
“We select books three times a year,” said Jay Heuman, the museum’s public program coordinator. The book group then downloads the discussion guide and schedules a tour of the appropriate exhibit or collection. “We’ve had book groups that are two hours away come to tour an exhibit,” said Heuman.
Book tours typically last an hour and discuss four to six works of art. Books paired with last summer’s exhibit of Japanese art included The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal and An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Like its Houston counterpart, the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio sees a demand for its book club. The institution has hosted its own club since May of 2011, and selected books typically relate to an exhibition or are chosen to highlight one of the museum’s collections, said Alison Huftalen, director of the museum’s research library.
“Recently, we read The Printmaker’s Daughter by Katherine Govier to coincide with our exhibit of prints by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai,” she said.
The book group is capped at twenty-five members, which gives everyone a chance to speak up at club meetings. The discussion leader rotates among staff, board members, and occasionally a member who may have a special relation or tie to a book. The discussion leader prepares the questions, and curator-led tours are available for those who want to tour the exhibit or collection that relates to the book.
Brooklyn’s version of a museum book club is a little different. The Brooklyn Museum of Art (BMA) originally formed a book group to discuss art-related books as part of its “Target First Saturday” event, where programs and entertainment are provided free to the public on the first Saturday of the month. But the book group has evolved into a hybrid over the past five years. “The group was only a traditional book club for the first few months of its inception,” said Elisabeth Callihan, BMA’s manager of adult public programs. Because authors were typically there to discuss the month’s selection, “people didn’t read the book before they came,” Callihan said. Instead, attendees were happy to learn about the book from the authors and to put it on a future “must-read” list.
“Basically, the group has become what bookstores might call an author reading,” Callihan continued. A core group of thirty to forty members still meet and call themselves “the book group,” but only in that members are interested in the books presented and how they relate to art in the museum. One of the group’s recent selections, for example, was a biography of pop icon Madonna to coincide with an exhibit of fashion by avant-garde designer Jean Paul Gaultier.
However it’s done, it’s clear that museum outreach to readers has succeeded in boosting art appreciation, and vice versa.
