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National Museum of Women in the Arts

Claire Van Vliet

A black-and-white photograph of a light-skinned adult woman with close-cropped light colored, straight hair. She is smiling and wearing a dark colored turtleneck shirt. She is shown from the neck up against a black background.

Photo by John Somers; Courtesy of the artist, © John Somers

Born in 1933

Van Vliet spent her childhood in the area of England near Stonehenge, where her father served in the Air Force. “We had an English nanny, and she took us on a long walk every day…so I was in the landscape a lot. I suspect that those walks were most formative,” she remembers.

The artist lost both parents before turning 14 and was raised by her aunt in California. An exceptionally gifted child, she graduated from high school at 15 before continuing her university education.  In 1955, she moved to Philadelphia to work as an apprentice at Pickering Press. That same year, Van Vliet’s first artist book of wood engravings, The Oxford Odyssey, was published.

Van Vliet started Janus Press, presently located in Newark, Vermont. The press embodies the age-old tradition of book making, yet it also experiments with innovative book formats and structures. In addition to the more than 90 artist’s books that Van Vliet has published, she has also created hundreds of drawings, prints, pulp paintings, and broadsides.

Van Vliet exhibits and lectures around the world, in universities and museums, and has led multiple book-art workshops. She has been a recipient of many awards and honors, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989.

Artist Details

  • Name

    Claire Van Vliet

  • Birth

    Ottawa, Canada, 1933

  • Phonetic Spelling

    klair van vleet

  • NMWA Exhibitions

    • Bound to Amaze: Inside a Book-Collecting Career, 2018
    • 25 x 25: Artists’ Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts Collection, 2012
    • Moveable Feast: The Book as Art, 2008
    • The Book as Art: Twenty Years of Artists’ Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2006–07
    • Book as Art XV, 2004
    • Insomnia: Landscapes of the Night, 2003
    • Book as Art XIII: Artists’ Books about Artists, 2001
    • Book as Art XII: Artists’ Books from the Permanent Collection, 2000
    • Book as Art: Tenth Anniversary Exhibition, 1997
    • Book as Art VII, 1994–95
    • Presswork: The Art of Women Printmakers, 1991
    • Book as Art IV, 1991
    • Book as Art I, 1987

Works by Claire Van Vliet

  • Circulus Sapientiae (Circle of Wisdom)

    View Artwork Details
    An accordion-style pop-up book made of paper displayed upright and open. The central portion has flames made of paper that extend beyond the top edge of the book. In front of the book there is a CD coming out of its golden holding case.

    Claire Van Vliet, Circulus Sapientiae (Circle of Wisdom), 2001; Pulp painting on handmade paper, CD, 5 1/2 x 12 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Museum purchase: Library and Research Center Acquisition Fund; © Claire Van Vliet

  • Dido and Aeneas

    Dido and Aeneas celebrates the 300th anniversary of the Baroque opera by Henry Purcell, which was first performed in London in 1689. Nahum Tate’s libretto tells the drama of Dido, the betrayed and abandoned queen of Carthage who throws herself on a funerary pyre as the ship of her lover, Aeneas, leaves the harbor.

    Each scene of the opera has text from...

    View Artwork Details
    Accordion book of peach paper. Blocks of text, in geometric and organic-shaped boxes, occupy the lower half of the pages. Each block of text has additional folds, forming a mini-book. Above, warm colors fade into dark skies, trees, and ship masts, and then again into pink tones

    Claire Van Vliet, Dido and Aeneas, 1989; Monoprint and handmade paper, 15 x 42 x 6 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Museum purchase: The Lois Pollard Price Acquisition Fund; © Claire Van Vliet