Moveable books, decorative bindings featured in two library exhibits

The Department of Special Collections highlights color lithographic proof sheets of moveable children’s books from the Lothar Meggendorfer Collection in this exhibit, which runs through Saturday, April 15, in the Memorial Library.

Meggendorfer created more than 100 children’s books during his career, many in multiple editions and translations. To set Meggendorfer’s “paper engineering” in context, the exhibit also contains books with moveable parts from the Renaissance through the 21st century, including treatises on cosmography, geometry, landscape design and the automobile. It also contains works from contemporary artists and books from the Kohler Art Library.

The UW–Madison Libraries showcase illustrates book bindings in an exhibit highlighting the library’s three-year project, which was funded by a grant from the national Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The project created a database and related resources to open the books, once commonly found in American homes, to a wider audience. Included in the exhibit are books with designer bindings from the 1890s and early 1900s, books from the Civil War and World War I, and books from the mid-19th century whose colorful bindings and endpapers depicted and enhanced Americans’ interest in an expanding world.

This exhibit, “The Art of Books: Publishers’ Bindings Online, 1815-1930,” runs through Wednesday, March 29, in the Main Lobby of the Memorial Library.