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PUBLISHER
Esopus Books

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9.5 x 12 in. / 354 pgs / 235 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2019 p. 100   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780989911771 SDNR40
List Price: $60.00 CAD $85.00 GBP £75.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

TERRITORY
WORLD

THE FALL 2024 ARTBOOK | D.A.P. CATALOG

Artbook | D.A.P. Catalog Cover Link
Preview our FALL 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
  

ESOPUS BOOKS

Modern Artifacts

Edited with text by Tod Lippy. Text by Michelle Elligott. Contributions by Mary Ellen Carroll, Rhea Karam, Mary Lum, Clifford Owens, Michael Rakowitz, Paul Ramirez Jonas.

Modern Artifacts

An LA Times 2020 holiday gift guide pick
A New York Times critics' pick | Best Art Books 2020


Modern Artifacts includes all 18 installments of the series, copresented with Esopus and the Museum of Modern Art Archives, that originally appeared in Esopus, the award-winning nonprofit arts annual that suspended publication in 2018.

Each of these installments focuses on a particular part of the MoMA Archives—subjects include the museum’s first guest book, its “Art Lending Service” program, activities in the museum’s garden, materials from the archives of contemporary artists such as James Lee Byars, Scott Burton and Grace Hartigan, and correspondence, photographs and other ephemera related to exhibitions such as the groundbreaking Spaces show in 1970 devoted to installation art.

The book, which features several removable inserts of archival materials printed in facsimile, also includes brand-new contributions commissioned from six contemporary artists—Mary Ellen Carroll, Rhea Karam, Mary Lum, Clifford Owens, Michael Rakowitz and Paul Ramirez Jonas—who have each created a project in the book inspired by a particular item or series of items in the MoMA Archives.


Featured image is reproduced from 'Modern Artifacts.'

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Brooklyn Rail

Jennie Waldow

A collection of the art journal’s lushly illustrated pages featuring ephemera and documents from the Museum of Modern Art’s archive with newly commissioned artists’ portfolios and essays.

PRINT

Steven Heller

[A]n incredible range of content—from art and artifacts to prose and music...It is a joy to hold and a beauty to have.

Los Angeles Times

Christopher Knight

As with rummaging around in a favorite old friend’s attic, unexpected treasures turn up from the deep archives of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in “Modern Artifacts” by Michelle Elligott and Tod Lippy. Whether it’s a 1967 letter from artist James Lee Byars to curator Dorothy Miller (“I regret not seeing you but to imagine you on vacation is a miracle”) to records of the museum’s 10th-anniversary festivities featuring President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Walt Disney and a dinner menu starring an alligator pear (a.k.a. an avocado), an eccentric cultural landscape unfurls in this elaborately designed book.

New York Times

Roberta Smith

In 2006 Tod Lippy, an artist and editor, invited Michelle Elligott, chief of the Museum of Modern Art’s fabled archives, to write a column on some aspect of its holdings for his just-founded magazine, Esopus. This she did for each of its 18 issues, until 2018. All are republished here, with actual-size reproductions of telegrams, photographs, carbon copies of letters (remember those?), newspaper clippings and an early V.I.P. guestbook. Foldout facsimiles include Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s sketches for his famous chart of modernist art movements. Mixed with these are new projects by six contemporary artists ... that illuminate additional aspects of the archive, revealing their contemporary implications.

Modern Artifacts

STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

For assistance locating a copy, please see our list of recommended out of print specialists

TOD LIPPY MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

Tod Lippy: Private

TOD LIPPY: PRIVATE

Mirrorical Books

ISBN: 9798988264507
USD $25.00
| CAD $37.5 UK £ 22

Pub Date: 1/16/2024
Active | In stock