Visit the Jack Ginsberg Book Centre, Wits Art Museum
International guests staying at Liz at Lancaster who have visited this jewel of a gallery, have been rendered speechless at the works on display from this extraordinary collection. Why is it so special? What is an artist’s book? Who is Jack Ginsberg? Where to start? “Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” And the beginning must be Jack Ginsberg.
Who is Jack Ginsberg?
This quiet unassuming generous man is the most extraordinary supporter of the visual arts in South Africa. He is a founding patron of The Ampersand Foundation which established the Ampersand Fellowship Awards for young professional South African contemporary creative artists and arts administrators. An Ampersand Award gives the recipient a funded one or two-month residency in New York at the Ampersand apartment. Paul Emmanuel was the first candidate in 1997.
Ginsberg is also a supporter of Artist Proof Studio which used to be in Newtown and has now relocated to Houghton. And as if that is not enough, he is a board member and on-going art donor to the Wits Arts Museum (WAM). Apart from donating his extraordinary collection of artists’ books and books about artists’ books to WAM, he has donated his Walter Battiss collection of more than 700 artworks, books and related items.
And of course Jack is a bibliophile of note: I came from a very bookish family, so I was surrounded by books all my life and I started collecting artists’ books and art by my late teens. I think my first book was a pop-up book of Alice in Wonderland.
The Book Centre holds 3 or 4 Exhibitions a year
Below is an example of a poster summary of an exhibition “Small Editions” held in 2022
This is a relatively new genre or category of art making which started in the 1970s. Artists’ books are artworks in the form of books (well the loose definition of a book) rather than books about art. Do not expect only what “us oldies” understand as a “traditional” book, in other words paper pages bound in a cover. Artists being artists test the limits and stretch the boundaries. The Ginsberg collection includes books of all sizes (miniature to 10m long fold outs); a variety of unexpected shapes: triangles, circles, in boxes, house-shaped, even on a horse’s skeleton; materials range from hand-made paper and linen, to metal, wood, glass, cork, clay, ceramic, acetate, leaves, metal, fabric, leather, stone, tinfoil; as well as a surprising range of found objects like matches, stamps, sequins, coins, feathers and more. There are illustrated books using a range of different media, graphic novels, pop-up and pop-down books, digital books.
Over three thousand books in the collection, of which 500 are by South Africans
In the collection, although not currently on show, are works by well-known international artists such as Matisse, Miro, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, Barbara Kruger, Picasso, Ed Ruscha, Salvador Dali and Delauney, to name but a few.
The extent of the Jack Ginsberg collection is astounding and is brought home as one moves around the beautifully curated works in their glass cases, trying to take in the scope, variety and wonder of the works on display. It’s astonishing to think that only very few of the 3000 works in the collection are every exhibited at once.
What makes this museum experience so special?
Prior to some exhibition walkabouts, the curators take out several books for attendees to touch, feel, page through -an extraordinary opportunity to engage with these jewel-like objects in a very direct and experiential way. Ginsberg says:
Artists’ books are about a haptic experience of art – you have to touch them. Your fingertips know instinctively if you’ve picked up one page or two pages, and with an artist’s book you are forced into a sequential experience that the artist intended.
Here are some of the gems I’ve been privileged to open, reveal, page through and simply ogle in wonder, awe and admiration.
And this below ….
…… reveals, opens, unfolds into this:
The Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts is open to the public from Tuesday to Friday, from 10:00 – 16:00 by appointment only. Thanks to the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, there is R650K a year for 3 years (2 more?) for research staffing and development. Ginsberg has also been instrumental in establishing an online database of South African artists’ books. See also Masabelaneni Exhibition review