The American Academy in Rome presents Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge, an exhibition looking at the relationship between arts, graphic design, publishers, and books—ultimately exploring their physicality and their power of circulation.

Artists Making Books is based around the books that Ed Ruscha donated to the AAR Library while visiting the Academy in 2001. The exhibition brings together over one hundred books envisioned, conceived, and made by artists from 1905 to the present, from AAR’s Arthur & Janet Ross Library and two major private Italian collections.

Carrying experiences and experiments, the exhibition will explore the intrinsic qualities of books with a particular focus on the experimentation of artists with the medium. From materiality and size, letter presses to pamphlets, three-dimensional constructions, source engines, and classifications, artists who make books conceptualize and redesign the media.

The exhibition presents examples of radical approaches to books. Subverting, inventing, inverting and celebrating letters, words, texts, form and shape; it shows a selected history of how books were created with different creative and graphic solutions. Looking at the relationship between the historical avant-gardes and the contemporary moment, Artists Making Books wants to prove how the book was, and continues to be, an object of experimentation, a way of resisting commercial constraints and becoming, ultimately, a space of refuge.

The show will display early examples of modernist books by European artists Natalia Goncharova, Tristan Tzara, Fortunato Depero, and Marcel Duchamp, as well as work by artists associated with Pop art such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and John Baldessari. Also featured will be works prominent contemporary artists that have been AAR Residents such as Kara Walker (2016), Jenny Holzer (2004), and William Kentridge (2011, 2016); books by Rome Prize Fellows including Ana Mendieta (1984), Tony Cokes (2023), Rochelle Feinstein (2018), Tricia Treacy (2018), and Allen Frame (2018); and work by Italian Fellows Luca Vitone (2009), Nico Vascellari (2008), Marco Raparelli (2011) and Rä di Martino (2018).

Focusing mainly on dialogues between Italy and the United States, Artists Making Books will also be a selection of books by contemporary artists available through a special display. We invite the public to explore these and to consult books in the Academy’s Barbara Goldsmith Rare Book Room.

The show is curated by Ilaria Puri Purini, Andrew Heiskell Arts Director, with Sebastian Hierl, Drue Heinz Librarian; Lexi Eberspacher, Program Associate; and Johanne Affricot, Curator-at-Large.

The exhibition is designed by Supervoid, an architecture office based in Rome led by the architects Benjamin Gallegos Gabilondo, Marco Provinciali, and Anna Livia Friel. Supervoid’s work focuses on space as a material and cultural construction. The office has realized projects at various scales in Italy, Chile, France, and the United States. Their work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the Milan Triennale.

The exhibition will be open from September 27 to December 7, 2024.

Gallery Hours

The AAR Gallery and Rare Book Room are open on Fridays and Saturdays from 4:00 to 7:00pm until December 7.

With works by: Vincenzo Agnetti, Micol Assaël, Josef Albers, Giovanni Anselmo, Stefano Arienti, Fabio Barile, Balthus, Elisabetta Benassi, Eugene Berman (1957 Resident), Irma Blank, Alighiero Boetti, Agostino Bonalumi, André Breton, Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder, Canemorto, Chiara Camoni, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Maurizio Catellan, Alessandro Cicoria, Francesco Clemente, Tony Cokes (2023 Fellow), Gianluca Concialdi, Enzo Cucchi, Hanne Darboven, Giorgio de Chirico, Willem De Kooning, Michela De Mattei, Fortunato Depero, Rä Di Martino (2018 Italian Fellow), Marcel Duchamp, Rochelle Feinstein (2018 Fellow), Leonor Fini, Lucio Fontana, Allen Frame (2018 Fellow), Mario Gooden (2024 Resident), Natalia Goncharova, Keith Haring, Ann Hamilton (2017 Resident), Arturo Herrera (2024 Resident), Jenny Holzer (2004 Resident), ILIAZD, Emilio Isgrò, Isaac Julien (2016 Resident), Vassily Kandinsky, Alex Katz (1984 Resident), On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, William Kentridge (2011 and 2016 Resident), Kiki Kogelnik, Jannis Kounellis, Maria Lai, Fernand Léger, Sol LeWitt, El Lissitzky, George Maciunas, Jackson Mac Low, Kazimir Malevich, Piero Manzoni, Franz Marc, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Henri Matisse, Mel Chin (2024 Resident), Julie Mehretu (2020 Resident), Ana Mendieta (1984 Fellow), Mario Merz, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Joan Mirò, Nelson Morpugo, Bruno Munari, Wangechi Mutu (2019 Resident), Francis Offman, Luigi Ontani, Giuseppe Penone, Gordon Powell (1988 Fellow), Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Marco Raparelli (2011 Italian Fellow), Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Ed Ruscha, Kay Sage, Alberto Savinio, Kurt Schwitters, Dread Scott (2024 Fellow), Dorothea Tanning, Tricia Treacy (2018 Fellow), Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Tristan Tzara, Grazia Varisco, Nico Vascellari (2008 Italian Fellow), Elihu Vedder, Luca Vitone (2009 Italian Fellow), Kara Walker (2016 Resident), Andy Warhol, Laurence Weiner, Francesca Woodman, Xu Bing (2024 Resident), and La Monte Young.

Leadership exhibition support provided by Susanna Borghese.