by Emily Margosian (MA 2015)

Internationally renowned and publically accessible, SAIC's Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection is a Chicago treasure that happens to be one of SAIC's most popular special collections.

 

SAIC has been in possession of artists' books since the 1960s, but it was not until 1989 that the Joan Flasch Collection was named and established as a separate entity within the John M. Flaxman Library. With the rise of artists' book production in the subsequent decades, these titles were circulating within the school's main collection and eventually pulled and separately housed behind the reference desk for a number of years. A formal space for this important collection was not possible until funding was raised through a memorial fund honoring late faculty and staff member Joan Flasch.

 

The tiny room of books on the sixth floor of the Sharp Building (37 South Wabash Avenue) was managed for a few years by Printmedia faculty member Sally Alatalo until Doro Boehme became its caretaker in 1997. The collection has not only grown from 1,500 titles to more than 7,000, but also offers public programming, workshops, lectures, performances, and an active exhibition and loan program.

 

The collection is known for its generous representation of artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement, an international network of mixed media artists operating during the 1960s. Boehme makes it a priority to acquire curriculum-driven works so that students can use the hands-on collection for their research. She says, "I go through each and every SAIC departmental course listing long before the semester begins and then purchase work that is potentially interesting for our students and faculty."

 

As a result of her efforts, a wide range of departments actively utilize the collection: Fashion, Designed Objects, Visual Communication Design, Printmedia, Writing—all regularly visit the collection to study the physical architecture of books, the conceptual mapping of narratives, and the successful combination of visual and textual elements.

 

Performance faculty member Mark Jeffery structures his class Performing the Document around the collection, believing it to be vital to the student experience at SAIC. "We look at performance scores and books and what it means for students to work with ephemera," he explains. "It's great for students to see failed grant applications and have them re-perform those failed files. It's like forensics, to think about the material in terms of their own practice, and how they begin to find themselves in a relationship to documents that might be 15 or 20 years old."

 

The sensory experience of encountering these works is what makes the Joan Flasch Collection special. While all efforts are made to balance easy access and physical handling with preserving the works for generations to come, a few select titles need to be used in ways that will alter them permanently. Boehme notes, "We have a Christian Boltanski book called Scratch, and you have to scratch off a gooey substance that covers the pages in order to see the photographs, to allow for the work to function."