Libraries and Danger
A compilation of text and images that grew out of the 2006/2007 “Library” exhibit and programs at Proteus Gowanus, this volume will explore many topics surrounding the evolution of libraries.
The project examines the life and death of libraries and the healing they bring us in essays written by Corina Bardoff, Susan Bernofsky, Ron Janssen, Tom La Farge, Wendy Walker, and Nathalie Wolfram, with an introductory essay by Deirdre Lawrence, head librarian at the Brooklyn Museum. It will explore such topics as language-death, book thieves and biblioklasts, the Cotton Library fire, the restoration of the incinerated papyri from Herculaneum, the incarceration of dangerous books and the chaining-up of irreplaceable ones, the shelling of the university library at Leuven and the Vijecnica in Sarajevo, and the looting of the Bayt al-Hikma in Baghdad. This volume will include images of burned, bombed, rotting, and neglected libraries around the world, as well as of beautiful living, life-giving libraries.
This project is currently on hiatus. Stay tuned for further details...