News & Features

Monique Peperkamp, Art Against the Machine: Untrapping Life from Profit-Driven Tech Dependency — ArtEZ Press

Jon Rafman, Main Stream Media — Hatje Cantz

Beni Bischof, Psychobuch 2 — Edition Patrick Frey

Doron Langberg — Phaidon

Nancy Spector, Felix Gonzalez-Torres — Phaidon

Elle Pérez, Devotions — Aperture

Jess T. Dugan & Charlotte Cotton, Love Pictures — Radius Books

Nan Goldin, Honey on a Razor Blade — Steidl

Gordon Parks, Diary of a Harlem Family, 1967/1968 — Steidl

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Focus Desire — Spector Books

Walter Pfeiffer, In Good Company — Mousse

Ray Johnson, Ray Johnson — Karma

Alex Da Corte, Roy Lichtenstein: Like New — Yale University Press

Antonio López Alonso, Richard Prince: Tell Me Everything — Rizzoli Electa

Pierre Huyghe — The MIT Press

Siri Engberg, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Books, Prints, and Photographic Editions, 1960–2022 — Steidl / Gagosian

Kari J. Brandtzæg, Paula Rego – Dance Among Thorns — MUNCH

Emma Lavigne, Lorna Simpson: Third Person — Marsilio Arte

COVINGTON, Ky. — Over roughly the past two months, the used and rare bookshop Conveyor Belt Books has received what it describes as a series of atypical emails from unfamiliar buyers seeking to purchase titles in bulk. The groupings, the store says, had no thematic logic connecting them, mixing genuinely rare items with merely hard-to-find ones.

One title drew two separate inquiries: a Chris Burden artist's book that the shop notes was self-published by the artist and is especially difficult to locate.

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This September, the art and publishing world will converge at 101 Spring Street, the historic SoHo home and studio of Donald Judd. MACK is hosting an exclusive weekend popup, featuring a vibrant program of public talks, book signings, and celebrations highlighting their latest season of releases across art, photography, design, and literature.

Set against the architectural backdrop of Donald Judd's iconic, permanently installed spaces, the weekend brings together leading contemporary creators, photographers, and writers for intimate conversations. Visitors can explore new works and critical discussions covering everything from landmark architectural surveys to powerful visual storytelling.

Whether you are looking to dive deep into contemporary photobooks or explore the intersection of art and living spaces, this multi-day event offers a rare chance to engage directly with prominent cultural voices in a legendary setting.

MACK will welcome twenty-five artists, writers, curators and editors across the three days, among them Jerry Hsu, Daniel Arnold, Ryan McGinley, Irina Rozovsky, Nick Haymes, Lina Kutsovkaya, Keisha Scarville, Justine Kurland, Joseph Szabo, Sofia Coppola, Nicole Fleetwood, Stephen Shore, Rainer Judd, Wendy Goodman, Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, Aria Aber, Ariana Reines, Negar Azimi, Omar Berrada, Vince Aletti and Joel Smith. An hour of readings is given over to the Lebanese poet and artist Etel Adnan. A pop-up bookstore runs alongside the talks with a selection of MACK publications for sale.

25–27 September 2026, 12:00–18:00. Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, New York. All events are free and open to the public; advance registration is encouraged, and priority goes to those who register, though it does not guarantee admission once an event reaches capacity.

To explore the full schedule of talks, check out the complete lineup and plan your visit through the MACK at Judd Foundation Eventbrite Collection, or read the programme announcement on MACK's site.

This is a proposal with a cost, and the window on it is closing.

A collection of collections is the only acquisition left that can't be outbid, front-run, or bought at auction next spring. It has to be built. The great private collections of the last fifty years are being broken up right now, not eventually, and what disappears in a lot sale is not the books but the argument they were arranged to make. The number is knowable: $8 million to open in contributed space, $2 million a year to run, $45 million to endow. $100 million buys the building and founds it outright.

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The diagram's history is rooted in the effort to institutionalize and define the "Artist Book" as a specific medium during the late 20th century.

Clive Phillpot, while serving as the Director of the Library at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), developed the original version of this diagram in 1982. His goal was to provide a rigorous taxonomic structure for librarians and curators. At the time, the term "artist book" was being applied broadly to everything from hand-painted one-offs to mass-market paperbacks.

Phillpot's diagrams were polemic tools designed to isolate "Book Art" as a distinct category where the artist uses the book's specific mechanics (sequencing, paging, and portability) as the primary medium.

The Democratic Multiple

The history of this diagram is tied to the 1960s and 70s movement of the "Democratic Multiple." Artists like Ed Ruscha and groups like Fluxus sought to bypass the gallery system by creating cheap, mass-produced books. Phillpot used the diagram to champion these "multiples" over "book objects" (sculptural, unique works). He argued that the true artist book belonged in the "Multiple" or "Large Print Run" strata because its value lay in its ability to be widely distributed, rather than its rarity.

Reshaping the Institution

Phillpot's work at MoMA shifted how the institution collected these works. By categorizing books based on their position between "Art" and "Books," he moved the acquisition of these items from the curated print departments into the museum library. This established the library as a site of active artistic engagement rather than just a repository for research materials.

The Kione Kochi Update

The version you are looking at was updated by Kione Kochi for Half Letter Press to address the collapse of traditional publishing hierarchies. While the 1982 original focused on the tension between the gallery and the bookstore, the modern update reflects the historical shift toward decentralized production. The inclusion of the "Digital" strata acknowledges that the "Democratic Multiple" has moved from the offset press to the PDF and Print-on-Demand (P.O.D.) services, effectively removing the "Gatekeeper" (the Pear side) from the equation entirely.

The diagram remains a standard reference in Art History and Library Science curricula. It serves as the primary conceptual bridge between the Fine Art tradition (centered on the unique object) and the Mass Communication tradition (centered on the disseminated idea). It is historically significant for being the first visual attempt to map the socioeconomic forces (dealers, publishers, and distributors) that dictate the life of a book-as-art.