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A woman with light colored skin, wearing a black top and white pants, talks to a group of people in a gallery room. She stands in front of a large, painted portrait of a woman in a high-collared red dress.
NMWA Tickets
National Museum of Women in the Arts

Book as Art XII: Artists’ Books From the Permanent Collection

Large sheet of parchment with vertical creases appearing as open pages unbound from a book. Down the center spine, varying-sized squares have been cut out, creating a three-dimensional quality. The cut-out squares have been arranged to resemble musical score on the adjacent pages.
Jan 24 to Dec 31, 2000

Please note: Information about this exhibition is limited.

Featured Artists

Mirella Bentivoglio

Mirella Bentivoglio is known for her exploration of the relationship between image and word.
Close-up black and white photo of an older woman with light skin and cropped hair. She holds up two small, speckled eggs to her eyes, the right one just visible. She sits in a bright, sun-lit room, a window on her right and wears a dark blazer and wrist watch.

Julie Chen

Book artist and instructor Julie Chen is known for her work's innovative use of non-traditional structures and high level of craftsmanship.
A light-medium-skinned adult woman with medium-length black hair wears a blue floral blouse and glasses. She is in an art studio, behind a green cutting mat, looking down and holding open a flag-style book. Equipment is on the counter behind her.

Elisabetta Gut

Endowed with an aura of originality and poetic whimsy, Elisabetta Gut’s book objects must be seen rather than read.
Wearing a black turtleneck sweater, a light skinned woman leans on her jacked with her chin resting on her arm. She has straight, dark hair that is pulled back by a headband, and stares directly at the viewer.

Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide’s photographs reveal the daily lives, customs, and rituals of Mexico’s underrepresented native cultures.
A black-and-white photograph of an adult woman with short, dark hair looking into the viewfinder of a small film camera. She is outdoors with grass behind her. She holds the camera with her right hand and focuses the lense with her left. She is smiling as she looks into it.

Meret Oppenheim

Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim used a range of mediums and styles to explore dualities: sensuality and desire, friendship and love, nature and culture, reality and imagination.
Black and white photo of a woman shot from the shoulders up. She leans to the left, bringing her hand to her ear. Her light hair is cropped very short to her head and she looks past the camera with a thoughful expression, looking as if she were about to begin speaking.

Jan Owen

Music is an important source of inspiration for the work of book artist Jan Owen.
An older light-skinned woman with short white hair wears glasses and a long-sleeve blue top. She stands inside, holding open a large black book with an abstract gold design printed across two pages and unreadable gold writing.

Elena Presser

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, book artist Elena Presser moved with her family to the US in 1966; she has become known for creating visual interpretations of music.
An older light-skinned woman with short, dark, curly hair looks directly at the viewer. Posed from the chest up against a light grey background, she wears a darker grey sweater, eye glasses, pearl earrings, and lipstick.

Renée Stout

Renée Stout is a Washington, D.C., artist whose paintings and sculptures have earned her international recognition.
" A black-and-white photograph of Renee Stout. With medium-brown skin and thick dreadlocks, and clad in a dark jacket, she looks away from the camera as she leans against a wall. Her figure casts a looming shadow against the wall."

Claire Van Vliet

Her early exposure to nature heightened Claire Van Vliet’s interest in the outdoors and influenced her desire to celebrate the landscape in her book artwork.
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.

M. L. Van Nice

Influenced deeply by the work of El Greco and Marcel Duchamp, M. L. Van Nice transforms objects into works of art, creating new poetic and visual context.
Black and white photo of a middle-aged woman with short grey hair and light skin. She sits against a wall and looks down, her glasses sliding down her nose slightly. She has an expression of concentration, as if she is focusing on something in her hands.