The 5th International Symposium on Artist Books, organized by the artist publications fair Arts Libris (Barcelona, 2018) and moderated by art historian and curator Glòria Picazo, focused on artist’s books collecting. Participants in the sessions included João Fernandes, deputy artistic director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; Anne Thurmann-Jajes, from the Center for Artist’s Publications at the Weserburg-Museum für moderne Kunst (Bremen); Sergio Rubira, deputy director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern; and myself.
The idea was to reflect on the role of artist’s books collections. As artist’s publications have taken on a more prominent role in museum institutions in recent decades, they have ceased to be marginal, complementary materials assimilated to documents (and not to artworks) in order to become objects of desire and, often, also causes of dispute between the Collections and Documentation Center departments.
My presentation focused on two private archives with which I was collaborating closely at the time: the Archivo Lafuente in Santander and the Archiv der Avantgarden in Berlin.