Join us on Wednesday, February 11, 2026 at 6pm EST for "Waste vs. Want: On Bookkeeping and Deaccessioning Artists Books" an in-person talk by 2025 Center for Book Arts Research Fellow Julian R. Silverman.
Waste materials, waste as content, and waste as an inevitable outcome are explored across the Center for Book Art’s collections. In nature, waste is a matter of perspective as it is always transformed as part of larger cycles. However, across artists’ media, artists’ books, and collections, waste is defined and managed through metadata and the systems we use to catalog objects. The Fine Arts Collection features works made from and highlighting waste, inviting us to reconsider the value of discarded materials. The Reference Collection offers a starting point for discussing conservation and what it might mean to intentionally unravel and return books to natural cycles. Items in the Archive Collection invite discussions on institutional deaccessioning as an analogous practice for when and how we meaningfully let go of artists’ books. Connecting these ideas to studio practice, a trash audit reveals both the material makings of artists’ books and waste generated along the way. Ultimately, as contextual information, metadata connects materials to larger systems. When metadata stays with the material, there is no such thing as waste.
The talk will last 40-45 minutes, followed by a Q&A with the Book Arts Research Fellow
For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be live-streamed through the following link: https://youtube.com/live/3HSH3It1Ee0?feature=share