Cataloguing Unconventional and Odd Artists’ Books

Photograph by Mark Gulezian, National Portrait Gallery; courtesy Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

The Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library holds an array of artists’ books in all shapes, sizes, and unusual materials.

How do libraries approach books that defy simple classification? Artists’ books often intersect text, photography, and graphic design; some have embedded objects or even kinetic components. While at one level, a catalogue imposes order on a collection, its corresponding purpose is to make items in a collection accessible.

The Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London has created short online videos for artists’ books whose distinctive nature would be difficult to truly capture through words or even images. For Elizabeth James, senior librarian at the V&A’s National Art Library, broader cataloguing philosophy has changed “from prescriptive to permissive.” “Everything depends on context and purpose: what the librarian considers as functions and meanings in a particular collection,” she said.

Photograph by Mark Gulezian, National Portrait Gallery; courtesy Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Glimpse by Barbara Tetenbaum and Julie Chen (Triangular Press, Flying Fish Press, 2011).

In the US, meanwhile, Anne Evenhaugen, head of the Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library in Washington, DC, is collaborating with Jennifer Cohlman Bracchi, head of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Library in New York, to curate an exhibition of artists’ books planned to open in October 2025 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

While Evenhaugen believes artists’ books, even when catalogued in a library, should be treated as works of art, this has not always been the case. “Many 1970s [artists’ books by] Sol LeWitt and Ed Ruscha were stickered, stamped, and shelved in the general stacks for circulation to patrons and on interlibrary loan,” she said.

With artists’ books, Evenhaugen said that cataloguers must include extensive descriptive information. Alongside materials and techniques used, this might include unusual components, from fold-outs to inserted objects. Collaborators in the production process, such as papermakers and typesetters, should be acknowledged, as well as the book’s number in a limited edition. “Artists’ books are not great candidates for ‘copy cataloguing,’ when a cataloguer imports an existing record from another library source,” Evenhaugen said. “They are best served by experienced professional cataloguers.”

Photograph by Mark Gulezian, National Portrait Gallery; courtesy Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Storm Sequence by Alisa C. Banks (A Bee Press, 2011).

James, in her work, has needed to respond to the constraints of a nineteenth-century library space where fixed book shelving is the main storage. “Many artists’ books need bespoke treatment, provided where possible by the museum’s conservators,” she said. One example is the box created for the 1992 The Book of Nails by the performance artist group Floating Concrete Octopus. It includes a book titled Vincent van Gogh sealed at the edges with nuts and bolts, with protruding red-spattered nails driven through the book so it cannot be opened. A gold-colored facsimile of van Gogh’s signature on the cover is accompanied by a torn collaged portrait of the artist.

“Storage can also present challenges when objects are made from ephemeral or even harmful materials,” Bracchi noted. “A host of post-World War II artists have utilized bodily materials. One artist’s book in the Smithsonian collection is bound in lead, making it so heavy that it takes two people to maneuver it safely.”

Modern artists are continually exploring the possibilities of different media, and in the boundary-blurring world of artists’ books, this gives those who catalogue these unique objects an incentive to be creative, too. “It is absolutely worth the effort to promote artists’ books collections and make them findable and accessible,” Bracchi said.