Publisher's Synopsis
The exhibition The Art of the Book: Treasures from the Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, showcases a variety of artworks housed in the Special Collections Research Center at Temple University's Charles Library. Organized through a curatorial collaboration between graduate students from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, the exhibition and catalogue examine how the format of the book has been treated across time and geography. A key question at the heart of this exhibition is, what constitutes a book? The diverse examples featured in this show challenge our preconceived notions and expand our definitions of this type of object. Melding illustration, painting, object-making, calligraphy, and storytelling, the objects featured in The Art of the Book transmit a robust sense of the time and place in which they were created. Many of these books function as repositories of memory that simultaneously refle
