Making the Book, Past and Present explores the intersections of history, art, and practicality. What can we learn by placing books, materials, and makers from the Middle Ages through today in conversation with one another? Many techniques and materials common centuries ago still inspire contemporary book artists and bookbinders.

Image credit: Chihongo (male face mask), Chokwe style. Early to mid-20th century. Wood, cotton, bark, raffia. 11 1/2  x 9  x 10 3/4 in. University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, The Stanley Collection of African Art, X1990.598 SAAH Visiting Scholar Professor Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz will join Professors T.J. Dedeaux-Norris (Associate Professor, SAAH) and Beatrice Mkenda (Associate Professor of Instruction, French and Italian), and Dr. Cory Gundlach (Curator of African Art, SMA) for a workshop on...

Visiting Scholar Professor Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz will be giving a public lecture titled “Made to be Seen: Kongo Graphic Writing as a Basis for Rethinking the Transmission of Knowledge.” Professor Martínez-Ruiz is the Tanner-Opperman Chair of African Art History in Honor of Roy Sieber at the Department of Art History at Indiana University. He is also Senior Research Associate in African Art and Its Diaspora at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town...