David Senior
Interview realised in winter 2023
David, you used to work at the Museum of Modern Art Library (MoMA) where you were in charge of the Library collection, you have been curating multiple shows on and around artists’ publications, you write, and you now are the Director of the Library and Archives of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Maybe the first question I’d like to ask you is how did you come to work with artists’ books?
As I got out of school, I sought out work in libraries as a safe space to have a job. My first job was at the Newberry Library in Chicago where I worked with old books, early printed books and maps. I was interested in bookish things – philosophy, media studies and the history of technology as a student and young adult. The Newberry Library had an interesting history of printing collection that was a real foundation for later work. A lot of my friends were artists, and I did make art in college, but my reference would have been punk zines and that kind of DIY photocopy publications in terms of early personal connections with ‘‘artists publications’’ or self-publishing.
I fell into a job at MoMA as a library assistant when my girlfriend and I moved to New York in 2002. It was very lucky. From that point, my surroundings at the library were a constant education and I never stopped learning from the collection at MoMA. Working there combined this experience of library work with a growing interest of mine to engage with contemporary art in my new context in NYC. I was also learning from friends. Artist friends in New York made books and magazines as part of their practice and I learned from them how this medium could be utilized by artists to produce work on their own terms and connect with others through dispersing their printed materials. After a few years at MoMA, I was given more responsibility to grow the collection and I connected closely with Printed Matter to acquire new things, but generally also, through my job, I became part of the community around Printed Matter. It was around this time too that The New York Art Book Fair was starting and that had a big influence on how you could connect with the local community of publishers in New York, but also a broader international community as well that came for the fair. There were other projects happening that I noticed like Publish and Be Damned in London and Christoph Keller’s Kiosk project/archive that were working towards contemporary models of promoting and disseminating artists’ publications.
So, to answer your question – I learned on the job at MoMA about the historical legacy of artists’ publishing in the 20th century and then was engaged with friends and a growing international network of artists/publishers in the aughts (2000s) to learn and document how artists and designers were still using the space of books and other printed matter to make new work.
When it comes to curate shows with and on books, there is always a trick as those works were first made to be manipulated, but because of their rareness and history, we are used to show them under a glass. How are you dealing with this question?
Usually, if I am dealing with contemporary materials, I try to find a way for the materials to be available for touching. I generally find that people are respectful of materials that you leave out and it is a matter of working with publishers to get handling copies of the books or magazines. With historical stuff, it needs to be in cabinets and vitrines for obvious preservation reasons. I have always liked the design challenge of finding the right opening and combination of openings and covers of books and magazines together to tell a good graphic story on a given subject. I am not that distracted by what is not shown, though obviously the best way to engage with the materials is to handle and page through the materials first-hand. In some cases, we have made facsimile copies of works in exhibition to give a better understanding of handling the displayed work. At MoMA, there were display screens in the exhibition space for the library that could be used to run slideshows or videos of materials in the exhibition. Exhibitions of posters, invitation cards and flyers are fun because you do not have to choose an opening the same way you do with a book show.
What does it mean to be the Director of the Library and Archives department of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art? What is your role?
Modern art museums like SFMOMA conceived of their libraries as public education spaces for learning about the new art practices of the 20th century. SFMOMA was founded in 1935 and the library collection was started then. They were information services for national and international happenings in modern art and design. So, a big part of my job is working with my team to care for and make accessible the historical collection of books, magazines and ephemera in the collection. The collection is used for research, and we work with museum staff and public patrons to help them find what they need for their research.
Like the collection at MoMA in New York, SFMOMA’s library documented the different ways that artists have used publishing as part of their work and there is a very rich collection of artists’ books, magazines and artists’ ephemera in the special collections. It specializes in avant garde activity from the west coast of the United States, particularly in the Bay Area, but also has a great international collection of experimental publication from the last 50 – 60 years. I have learned a lot from the collection in the last 5 years since I arrived. The job now involves adding to the historical collection of materials through new acquisitions as well as engaging with contemporary artists, designers and publishers to document what is happening now in the field. I work with curators at the museum to support their work and often new acquisitions are guided by exhibition projects and collection research in the different curatorial areas.
I really like to teach with the materials from the library. We regularly host classes and other groups in our reading room, and we take this aspect of our work very seriously. That was one of the hard parts about the pandemic, the stopping of our program of class visits. The work we do make most sense when we are finding creative ways for students and other audiences to encounter the special things on our collection. Similarly, opportunities to exhibit materials from the library in the galleries of the museum is another kind of outreach to try to engage with new audiences.
So, the job is to care for the existing collection, grow it in interesting ways and to strategize new ways that people can connect with the materials in the collection.
How do you manage an artist’s publication collection?
In these kinds of libraries, you inherit the structure given to collections by your predecessors. Managing a collection often involves revisiting previous decisions and making sure they are still working for the books and for the researchers. So that is part of process – working with your staff to figure out cataloging, preservation for the materials and selection of new materials. There was not a distinct artists’ books collection at SFMOMA when I arrived, so we made one in the last few years. There were a lot of artists’ books already in the collection, but we just grouped them together physically in this specific collection in our stacks and made sure they were properly described in our catalog. In terms of selection, I use a broad network of booksellers, artists, publishers and professional colleagues to learn about new projects and follow along with projects I am already familiar. This is the fun part of my job, and I am always grateful to connect with the people in the book community.
The definition of what makes an artists’ publication has moved a lot, or let say there are multiple schools and point of view on that subject. How do you approach this question? Has your point of view on that question evolved with the time?
I generally rely on what the artist says the object is in terms of identification. If they tell me it’s an artist book or if some descriptive text in the publisher’s catalog describes it as an artist publication, I am good with that. At MoMA, there was a librarian named Clive Philpot that sought to define clearly what it was he called artists’ books and created graphs and visual aids to support his thinking. I learned from those cues in my early work at MoMA, but I also quickly learned to listen to the producers of the stuff.
Decisions that we make when processing new materials in terms of this category are often pragmatic decisions regarding how a book needs to be stored or whether it should circulate. When we classify something as an artist book, it gets a special housing, and it does not circulate out of the library.
Working at SFMOMA includes you are dealing with history, and, in the mean time, with the most recent artworks. I know you also are in the Printed Matter Inc. Advisory Council and were a Board Member of Primary Information. Since a couple of years now, we see more and more articles, shows and books claiming a ‘‘rebirth’’ of publishing practices into the contemporary art field. I would be curious to know what are your thoughts about it? And how do you see those new editorial practices?
I am excited by new projects and am always curious to learn about an artist, designer or art worker’s trajectory that led them to begin publishing, to work in this way. The stories I hear are often related to a motivation to get their ideas and work out into the world without having to ask anyone else’s permission, or to go through the normal use publishing, printing and creative distribution strategies of printed work to get new ideas out into the world and to help form new communities through this communication tool of a book, magazine or printed ephemera. I like being surprised by things that arrive in the mail and that continues to happen. Thanks to all the colleagues around the world that continue to work hard to make our mail interesting!