Collection and promotion of artists' books

The Book Art Museum is a place to collect and promote artists' books, especially Polish ones, made in the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. Quite big collection of artists' books, mainly foreign ones, had been created before the Museum was established. Nowadays the majority of them belongs to the handy “education collection” being used to explain different forms of artists' books, the system of classification and relations to the codex as a point of reference. This collection, together with “CdA books”, is accessible all the time and used during lectures, presentations and meetings. On the initiative of Alicja Słowikowska and Jadwiga Tryzno and thanks to the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage the collection of “Polish artists' books from the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries” has been created. The Collection consists of works made in 1990-2010 by Polish artists of several generations; the items took part in various book festivals in Poland and abroad, were awarded in competitions or were selected by the jury of the Collection. The list has not been closed. The parallel process of creating other collections is taking place. The Museum collects artists' books “close to the idea of correspondence of arts”, “inspired by technique and material heritage”, “basing on typography and image of writing” and “books for children of any age”. Since 1993 the Book Art Museum has been organising exhibitions and taking part in exhibitions. Temporary exhibitions used to show the works of individual book artists from Poland (Radosław Nowakowski, Maciej Jabłoński, and others) and abroad (Matilde Marin, Kostas Kiritsis and others), art groups (for example Joanna Adamczewska, Joanna Hoffman and Tomasz Wilmański, Atelier It Plain), art circles (Łódź, Israel, Bulgaria, Forum Book Art, and others). The events within the “correspondence of arts” are organised, too. For example: An Open Exhibition, Festival of Design, Festival of Photography. Also promotion action: The Museum Night, Festival of Science, Technology and Art, Children's Day in the Republic of Book. BAM took part in the international book fairs in Warsaw, Leipzig, Jerusalem, Frankfurt, Seoul; also in exhibitions inaugurating the libraries in Alexandria and Singapore, in exhibitions presenting works of Polish book artists in Brema, Dublin, Tokyo, in exhibitions presenting CdA books in London, Paris, Hamburg, Praha. Since 2009 BAM organises exhibitions of the Collection, in Poland and abroad, and since the beginning of 2012 the cycle of exhibitions in Poland within the “Correspondence” International Book Art Festival.